This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Wat Phra Dhammakaya was founded in 1970 in Pathum Thani province, Thailand, as a Buddhist temple and modern meditation movement. It grew to become the country's largest and wealthiest temple, generally regarded as such among Thai religious institutions.
The temple publishes no independent audited accounts of its own. Nearly everything publicly documented about its finances has surfaced instead through Thai law enforcement investigations, Department of Special Investigation statements and court proceedings beginning in 2016, rather than through voluntary disclosure by the temple. That pattern shapes what can be verified about the temple's finances today: the figures on the public record come from prosecutorial and investigative sources, not from the temple's own reporting.
Wat Phra Dhammakaya remains active today, continuing to operate as a functioning temple and meditation movement more than five decades after its 1970 founding. Its scale, reached within one generation, made it a fixture of Thai Buddhist institutional life. That combination, a temple widely regarded as Thailand's wealthiest whose own finances remain undisclosed by its own choice, has left Wat Phra Dhammakaya about as well known today for what is not publicly known about it as for the meditation practice it teaches.