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Ayya Medhanandi's Dharma Talks
Ayya Medhanandi
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.
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2019-04-18 Life Saving Sanctuary 25:31
Our spiritual home is within the heart. Are we able to activate that awareness, and to treasure kindness and goodness in our daily actions and speech? Can wholesome states of mind prevail even when we face difficult or painful conditions? Moral purity is the harbinger for our waking up to the Truth within us. As we hasten to empty and weed out self-centredness, the poison arrow of craving is extracted. This is freedom – this is life-saving sanctuary.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center The Heart of Wisdom: Monastic Retreat
2024-12-06 Spiritual Joy 25:18
Giving our full attention inwardly is waking up to the truth of pure presence. In one breath, one moment of pure awareness, we can know a spiritual joy that deeply calms the mind. The shutters of the heart open to a piercing clarity that cuts through the blinding deceptions of the world. Here in the silence at the very core of our being, we listen. The heart fills with joy and light, resplendent – just as the morning sun emerging from the horizon lights up the world. What we have been seeking far and wide is right here within us – seeing and knowing our true nature as it really is, we receive the gift of Unconditional Love
Sati Saraniya Hermitage
2024-09-01 What is Dhamma? 17:21
The Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching, guides us to a moral awakening, a realization of ultimate truth. We have forever searched for eternal peace in the world of fleeting promises where happiness never lasts. And now we turn to pure conscious awareness, stopping as witness in the silence of the heart. Seeing all as empty, fleeting, free from wanting, free from suffering, we rest in knowing the timeless, boundless, transcendent presence that runs through all things. This is the reality of what we are – unconditional love
Sati Saraniya Hermitage
2024-11-08 Our Weapon Is Love 28:26
We wake up to Truth in the silence of the mind. Where else could we possibly discover it? To see and understand what we truly are, abandon the distractions of the world and purify consciousness. But are we willing to let go? Can we trust enough to enter the unknown? Humbly and tirelessly, bless each present moment with moral integrity, faith, courage and focused attention. Listen! The Buddha’s voice reveals all, not known by will-power but by wisdom power. Sustain pure awareness – and true happiness, peace, and freedom await us. It is the weapon of nobility – nothing less than unconditional love.
Toronto Theravada Buddhist Community (TBC) :  Our Weapon Is Love
2019-04-19 Our True Inheritance: Guided Meditation 18:40
We keep searching for happiness through travel, surfing the internet, shopping, and other worldly ways – but does it ever last? Supreme happiness arises right here in the heart. When we are present and patient beyond measure, we are stronger than we know. This groundbreaking inner seeing is free of devices – and free of vices. Pure, wise clarity and conscious awareness disentangle and unburden the mind of fear, obsession, all distractions, and at last, all suffering! This is the key to our self-made prison of beliefs, thoughts and opinions. We wake up to our true inheritance – the liberating Truth of what we are.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center The Heart of Wisdom: Monastic Retreat
2019-04-18 Life Saving Sanctuary 25:31
Our spiritual home is within the heart. Are we able to know and bring to life that awareness, to treasure goodness in our daily acts and words of kindness as well as in wholesome states of mind - even where conditions are not so conducive to that? Let us empty ourselves of self-centredness to embody more and more the realization of the Truth within us. Let us guard the mind against the hindrances and pull out the poison arrow of craving. What freedom! We shall brighten the mind and lift up our hearts. This is life-saving sanctuary.
Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center The Heart of Wisdom: Monastic Retreat
2022-11-18 A Path of Prudent Happiness 28:33
How blessed we are to walk this path of awakening into the vast frontier of the mind. We discover unimaginable treasures using our inheritance from the Buddha and directing ourselves with the compass of compassionate wisdom. This walk is internal, silent, hidden. We are learning to actually see with new eyes – clear and far-sighted – but well-attuned to our penetrating task of exploration and discernment. What has felt painful and fearsome really holds powerful antidotes to pain and fear. What we most valued pales when compared to the joys of pure awareness, and of knowing and sharing the true gifts of our humanity.
Ottawa Buddhist Society (Galilee Centre) :  A Way of Benevolence: Freedom from Fear, Peace and Wise Compassion
2024-11-17 We Are the Mandala 24:06
Pure present moment awareness reveals what we are not; and thereby, what we truly are. Investigate and question all thoughts you see circling in the mind – fearful or fanciful, liked or not. Know their clever disguises: impermanence everywhere! Not what we are, but empty, ephemeral in nature, they orbit like space debris – crowding the heart mandala of consciousness. Let go and rejoice when states of wanting, judgement, restlessness, fear, unhappiness and all the many faces of 'self' dissolve in the silence of pure awareness. This is true refuge – here and now. All else withers in the furnace of eternity.
Sati Saraniya Hermitage
2017-10-15 Choose Love Not Sorrow 20:41
We can be kind to anyone with practice. So start where you are and trust this practice of kindness. Even in the face of painful times, reflect wisely – not to be poisoned by fear, despair, or sorrow. Rather see the truth within and open a well-spring of infinite love in your own heart. For you are the hero of your life. First, we slay the dragons of fear and aggression. Gently and resolute, break them apart and extend kindness to all as to yourself. To accept the miracle of pure awareness – patient, diligent, with unwavering compassion, draw out the dart of sorrow and know the gift of love.
Sati Saraniya Hermitage
2024-08-07 A Noble Heart 28:24
We can't think our way to awakening. How then can we ennoble the heart? Practising right resort will purify the mind with present moment awareness. We give truth a voice, a prevailing knowing reinforced by mindfulness and wisdom. Instead of allowing delusion to rob us of our chance to awaken, we burn it away in its many guises of selfishness, hatred, despair and a host of dark states of mind. Patiently, faithfully, and gently, we navigate the way to true peace, unconditional love, and compassion.
Sati Saraniya Hermitage

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