Bhaddanta Āciṇṇa

The Most Venerable Bhaddanta Āciṇṇa Mahāthēra (ဘဒ္ဒန္တအာစိဏ္ဏ), more commonly referred to as the Pa-Auk Sayadaw, is a Burmese Theravāda monk, meditation teacher and the abbot of the Pa-Auk Forest Monastery in Mawlamyine.

Most Venerable Āciṇṇa Mahāthēra ordained as a novice in 1944, receiving full ordination in 1954. Immersed in the study of the Pāli Canon from his days as a novice, he gradually broadened his scope of attention to include meditation, initially training under Mahasi Sayadaw and U Paṇḍitā. Not long after, he would also decide to become a forest monk. In the months and years to follow, he would deepen his meditation abilities under the Kathitwaing, Thanlyin and Shwetheindaw sayadaws, eventually developing his own set of meditation methods, often collectively referred to as the "Pa-Auk method".

On July 21, 1981, Most Venerable Āciṇṇa Mahāthēra succeeded the Phelhtaw Sayadaw Aggapañña, at the latter's invitation, as the abbot of the Pa-Auk Forest Monastery. The monastery would then grow into a network of meditation centres across Southeast Asia and beyond, and is currently the largest network in Myanmar.

Awards and honours
In 1999, the national government awarded Āciṇṇa the title of Aggamahākammaṭṭhānācariya (အဂ္ဂမဟာကမ္မဋ္ဌာနာစရိယ). In 2018, his title was raised to that of Abhidhaja Aggamahā Saddhammajotika (အဘိဓဇအဂ္ဂမဟာသဒ္ဓမ္မဇောတိက). In 2021, he received the title Aggamahāpandita (အဂ္ဂမဟာပဏ္ဍိတ) and in 2024, he received the highest title, Abhidhajamahāraṭṭhaguru (အဘိဓဇမဟာရဋ္ဌဂုရု).

In May 2017, Āciṇṇa was conferred an honorary doctorate of philosophy from Mahachulalongkornrajavidyalaya University in Bangkok, Thailand.