Ayyā Medhānandī Bhikkhunī, is the founder and guiding teacher of Sati Sārāņīya Hermitage, a Canadian forest monastery for women in the Theravāda tradition. The daughter of Eastern European refugees who emigrated to Montreal after World War II, she began a spiritual quest in childhood that led her to India, Burma, England, New Zealand, Malaysia, Taiwan, and finally, back to Canada.
In 1988, at the Yangon Mahasi retreat centre in Burma, Ayyā requested ordination as a bhikkhunī from her teacher, the Venerable Sayādaw U Pandita Mahāthera. This was not yet possible for Theravāda Buddhist women. Instead, Sayādaw granted her ordination as a 10 precept nun on condition that she take her vows for life. Thus began her monastic training in the Burmese tradition. When the borders were closed to foreigners by a military coup, in 1990 Sayādaw blessed her to join the Ajahn Chah Thai Forest Saņgha at Amaravati, UK.
After ten years in their siladhāra community, Ayyā felt called to more seclusion and solitude in New Zealand and SE Asia. In 2007, having waited nearly 20 years, she received bhikkhunī ordination at Ling Quan Chan Monastery in Keelung, Taiwan and returned to her native Canada in 2008, on invitation from the Ottawa Buddhist Society and Toronto Theravāda Buddhist Community, to establish Sati Sārāņīya Hermitage.
Shrouded in the cloud of ignorance, we believe that suffering will never happen to us. But when we emerge from that fog into a radical simplicity of heart, suffering becomes our teacher. Our eyes are opened thanks to Right View and direct experience of the Four Noble Truths. At last we transcend the tyranny of fear.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
Practice means we keep trying to purify the mind and strengthen our commitment to the precepts. There is no failure – we just begin again and again until we find our Dhamma wings. A short talk given during a Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC) retreat in Toronto.
While living in New Zealand, Ayya Medhanandi pays respects to the relics of St. Therese de Lisieux that were brought to the Catholic Cathedral in Wellington during a world tour. In this interview for the Catholic diocese, she reflects on what drew her to the spirituality of St. Therese.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
Can we fearlessly accept all that life gives with a wise and compassionate heart? We see how the sun shines unilaterally on all beings giving life and nourishment. But we must use sharp wisdom to discern what is harmful and abandon that; and to know what is wholesome and cultivate that. Even as a mother, may we emulate the Buddha's compassion that flows without bias in all directions across millenia.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
Though we feel powerless to effect change globally, we can purify the mind and restore trust, peace, and harmony in our own lives. Six special qualities of reconciliation help us nurture the balm of forgiveness. We learn to see how our suffering begins and how to stop the bombs in our own minds. Practising kindness and compassion, we let go hostility. We put down our weapons and enter the temple of the heart.
Are you interested in becoming fully awakened? The development of determination (aditthana) is one of the Ten Perfections that will allow you to persevere with your practice in spite of difficulties and distractions. A talk given at the Melbourne Buddhist Society of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia in 2005.
When a river flows into the sea it acquires one taste, the taste of salt. As our meditation deepens, regardless of age, health, race, gender, culture or social status, delving into the mind, we discover one taste, that is the taste of truth. The world is full of suffering, not what we want it to be. And on the street where you live is your monastery, your garden, the thorns and the flowers, the compost and the field of cultivation – from feeling hopeless despair to the dawning moment when you understand the origin of suffering and the way to the Deathless. Letting go in the very marrow of the moment, spread peace and compassion in all directions – on the street where you live.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
Seeing the honest truth of the mind's delusion can teach us to develop a healthy mind and know true happiness. It is a doorway to freedom, opened through mental cultivation including loving-kindness and compassion for ourselves and all beings.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
The way out of pain is not in sense pleasure. But suffering can be a ticket to Nibbana – maybe not the one we asked for, but it's in our hands. So we try. Taste the moment just as it is. Choose love when there is every reason to hate. Trust when there is every reason to despair. Be patient when anger is burning within. Faced with terror or far from peace, let go. Being still in the very midst of fear, we can know non-fear. All is fleeting, not what we are, and nothing to hold onto. There, in the silent flow of the breath, the heart will soften in a tender wave of unconditional love.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
In a psychic feat for his sister, Sundari Nanda, the Buddha creates a vision of a beautiful lady who transforms into an old woman. Through this direct experience of impermanence, her mind is liberated. Likewise, those who rightly love wisdom and contemplate death without fear see the emptiness and impermanence of all conditioned things. Realizing the futility of all clinging and the inevitability of death, our wisdom and faith in the Dhamma ripen and reveal the doors to the Deathless. This is the path of awakening.
Bodhinyanarama Monastery, Stokes Valley, New Zealand
