About north of Ukiah, the monastery has its origins in the 1980s when the UK-based Ajahn Sumedho, foremost western disciple of the Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, started getting requests to teach in California. Visits by Ajahn Sumedho, as well as other senior monks and nuns, resulted in the Sanghapala Foundation being set up in 1988. The monastery's first were given to the foundation by the devotees of Chan Master Hsuan Hua, founder of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas in Talmage, before he died in 1995. Currently, the monastery rests on of mountainous forest land.