Shaun Chiverton becomes Thailand's first foreign-born senior monk at Somdet Phra Rachakhana rank

Chiverton's path began with questions he posed as a teenager on the Isle of Wight — about the best way to live and whether the world could be better. After traveling to India and eventually settling in Thailand, he joined the forest monks of Theravada Buddhism, an austere tradition of discipline, renunciation and meditation. Much of the past two decades were spent in a hermitage near the Khao Yai mountains, where he wrote books in English and Thai, held retreats, and built a YouTube channel with 100,000 subscribers.

His elevation to Somdet Phra Rachakhana is unusual given that background. He describes his own forest life as "completely left-field" compared with senior monks who lead top monasteries, and says he feels "completely unqualified." Yet he argues his broader knowledge of relating traditional teachings to a changing world gives him particular insight. He supports the broad ban on female ordinations in Thai Buddhism but says there should be a way to accommodate women who want to study and practice.

His teachings focus on living a good life and letting go of material things and negative habits, and he has acknowledged "a certain amount of corruption" within the monkhood following sex and fraud scandals. Whether his rare rank translates into influence over the hierarchy, or remains largely symbolic, may depend on how he balances his outsider background against the expectations of the role.