Biography of Luang Pho Sanit, Wat Lam Bua Loy
Birth name: Sanit Mipong • Born 28 April 1925, Ban Bang Kung, Si Maha Phot, Prachin Buri • Ordained at Wat Tha Rue at age 23, monastic name Yasintharo
In the lowland fields of Prachin Buri, the boy named Sanit Mipong learned early what endurance feels like. Work was plain, expectations were modest, and the local temple set the rhythm of the day. By twenty-three he entered the robe at Wat Tha Rue, receiving the monastic name Yasintharo. From the first weeks, he chose the narrow path: little speech, simple requisites, and a commitment to the Vinaya that did not bend around convenience.
At Wat Lam Bua Loy he became known for an ascetic practice that did not advertise itself. He took to tudong pilgrimages season after season, living lightly and refusing to accumulate more than he needed. Villagers remember a monk who treated everyone the same—rice farmers, merchants, soldiers—listening first, advising without theatrics. Behind that gentleness was a craftsman’s mind: he studied traditional medicine, protective formulas, and the careful preparation of sacred objects, always with the sense that what matters is intention steady enough to hold a blessing.
Stories gathered around him, told without exaggeration by people who otherwise had no taste for marvels: that he sometimes seemed to know a visitor was coming before footsteps reached the gate; that when he promised help, the promise was kept like a vow. None of this made him aloof. If anything, the more people tried to praise him, the more he stepped to the side and pointed back to practice—keep precepts, cultivate patience, meet the day with a clean heart.
Sacred Works and Iconography
Among his sacred works, two lines became closely associated with his name. The first were the turtle “house” pieces (Phaya Tao Ruean), carved from stone in sizes that ranged from pendants to small household figures. Their form echoed ancient tales of the Bodhisattva as a turtle: patient strength, shelter carried within. People who wore or kept them at shopfronts spoke of quiet metta at work—better fortune in trade, a steadier stream of customers, and, in rare cases, the appearance of tiny relics on the surface. Some even told of pieces that seemed to shift their facing on their own after prayers, as if they were aligning themselves to bless the room.
The second were his crocodile amulets (Phaya Jorakhae), a first edition cast in lead in 1966 with the “Isawasu Nama Pa Tha” yantra engraved beneath. He made them as protective pieces for soldiers and police, giving a short instruction to keep the mantra “I Swa Su” close to the breath when danger pressed near. Their language reaches back to the legend of Phaya Kumphi, lord of aquatic creatures—an earlier life of the Buddha that became a teaching on fearlessness. He learned the crocodile lore from his uncle, Luang Lung Seng, and kept the rituals tight. Old disciples recount extraordinary rites in which wooden or stone crocodiles, after prolonged chanting, were said to take on a breath of life—an image less of magic than of the mind’s power when concentrated and aligned.
Passing and Remembrance
Luang Pho Sanit passed away on 14 March 1999, aged 74, after 51 years in the monkhood. For a time his body rested undecayed in a glass coffin, and disciples reported that strands of hair had transformed into relics before the final cremation. The stories do not end there: amulets are still worn, the turtle figures still placed above shop altars, and his direct manner of counsel quietly passed from elder devotees to the young. If there is a summary to his life, it is not a single miracle but a habit—doing the next right thing with care, until the ordinary becomes the field of blessing.