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.
Sariputta said (SN 21.1): “There is nothing in the world with whose change there would arise in me sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, and despair.” It is hard to remember the Buddha’s teachings when the mind is beset with fear and anxiety. But we can escape from these bonds by disempowering the hindrances, calming the mind and seeing with greater wisdom. For this process to bear fruit, we have to fully trust the path alone and not put our trust in the world. A talk given at a 7 day SIMT retreat in the Chapin Mill Zen Retreat Centre, Batavia, Rochester, NY.
To bring the mind to peace, we must learn about all that makes it unpeaceful, unquiet. We learn how to prevent those things from arising, and how to deal with them if they do. Follow virtue. Stay close to spiritual friends, to the Buddha. Practise gratitude, generosity, and kindness. Wake up. Love wisdom more than life.
Intuitive wisdom develops gradually as we learn more and more to drop the story and view the flood of impermanence in the silence of the mind. Eventually we will be able to answer the question: what remains after the work of purification? A talk given during a Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto retreat in 2016.
The mind is so easily duped by its own delusion. By holding perceptions, views and opinions - our own, as well as others - as "uncertain", and being circumspect, we can bear witness to experience as the Knowing Mind, unburdened by its conditioning. When the five faculties are strengthened through practice, this knowing mind can arise in its utmost purity. We can overcome delusion by stripping our experience of any packaging; only when we know things authentically for what they truly are, can we let them go. We practice fearlessness, harmlessness, selflessness, until there is nothing to fear, except delusion itself. If we are awake to that Truth, then we can be sitting under the Bodhi Tree in the truest way. A talk given during a 7 day Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto retreat at Chapin Mill Retreat Centre, Batavia, Rochester, NY.
Where is safety in a world burning with greed, hatred, fear and violence? It is within us. Under the protective canopy of Dhamma, with unshakeable faith in the Buddha's awakening, we purify the heart – emulating his tactical strategies for training the mind to abandon unskillful physical and mental habits. We look for 'nothing' apart from how to wisely observe and truly see with penetrating discernment, and how to let go the delusion of self-identity. Secluded from the world, awareness knows imperturbable peace. This is the path of selflessness, of generosity, of great compassion, of harmlessness.
Ajahn Chah describes his process of overcoming fear while staying in a charnel ground in Thailand and urges us to try it out! What he means is not in the charnel ground, but right here wherever we are and with the ghosts of our own minds. A reading given during a Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto retreat in 2016.
The jhana factors serve as antidotes to the five hindrances as well as supports in developing the Noble Eightfold Path. But they are not enough in and of themselves to establish wisdom. Studying the body and mind through samatha and vipassana, we come to understand the Four Noble Truths. As we transform consciousness, we transcend the world. A talk given at a 7 day Satipaññā Insight Meditation Toronto retreat in the Chapin Mill Zen Retreat Centre, Batavia, NY.
Nature is begging us to wake up especially when we find ourselves at the mercy of fear arising like ghosts in the dead of night. What will protect us from these intruders? At the moment of ambush, can we see their true qualities in the light of suffering and its cause? Know that truth of suffering, its cause, its cure and the truest way of healing to break out of the prison of delusion. Now enter the measureless liberation of mind.
