John Main was born in London as Douglas Main, the fourth of six children of David and Eileen Main. In the 1940s he joined the Canons Regular of the Lateran and studied at the diocesan seminary of St Edmund's College, Ware in England before being chosen to pursue theology studies at the Pontifical Athenaeum Angelicum, Rome. He began to doubt his vocation to the priesthood and decided to leave his order to go toDublin, where he studied law at Trinity College. He graduated in 1954 and joined the British Colonial Service, working as a civil servant. Main was assigned to Kuala Lumpur in Malaya, where he met Dr Swami Satyananda, who taught him meditation using a mantra as the means to arrive at meditative stillness. The swami taught Main to meditate by giving him a Christian mantra. In 1956, Main returned to Dublin and taught law at Trinity College. In 1959 he decided to join the Benedictines at Ealing Abbey in London. He took the name of John, in honour of St John the Apostle. He was ordained a priest in 1963. Following his ordination he taught at St Benedict's School, Ealing, which is governed by the monastic community of Ealing Abbey. In 1970, Main was appointed the headmaster of St. Anselm's Abbey School in Washington, D.C., where he began to study seriously the writings of the desert fatherJohn Cassianfor the first time. Main saw parallels between the spiritual practice taught by Cassian and the meditative practice he had been taught by the swami in Kuala Lumpur. In 1974, Main left Saint Anselm's Abbey in Washington and returned to Ealing Abbey in London, where he began Christian meditation groups at an old house on the monastery grounds. He was assisted in this work by Laurence Freeman, also a monk of Ealing Abbey. In 1977, Main and Freeman were sent to establish a new Benedictine monastery in Montreal, Quebec. There too, they taught Christian meditation groups. Main died of cancer, at the Benedictine monastery in Montreal in 1982. Freeman continued Main's work, travelling widely to establish Christian meditation groups across the world. In 1991, these Christian meditation groups were networked together into the World Community for Christian Meditation. Each year the WCCM hosts the John Main Seminar, which has been led by Mary McAleese, Huston Smith, Charles Taylor, Father William Johnston, Father Richard RohrOFM, Sister Joan Chittister OSB, AnglicanarchbishopRowan Williams, Greek Orthodox bishop Kallistos Ware, AbbotThomas Keating, Dom Bede Griffiths and the Dalai Lama, among others.
