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.
When the mind is completely silent, we experience the peace and happiness of pure awareness. This far surpasses any worldly promise of impermanent gains or pleasures. Instead, through wise intuitive insight, we enter into a blessed interior seclusion. Metaphorically speaking, not a shred of love exists in the cloud where we trust storing all our important digital data. Yet with our pure awareness, we see what can never be seen in the cloud. Where else but within does the Buddha guide us to know our true nature? Giving up all self-preoccupation for unconditional love, we know the heart’s true freedom.
Strong in restraint, courageous in wisdom, we use the compass of right view to steer us on the Noble Eightfold Path, while right intention sustains the healing actions of mind that let go unwholesome thoughts and endless fabrications. We learn to live and respond to life compassionately, responsibly, mindfully, with integrity and noble presence of mind. Healing from above and below, from the outside and internally, we listen to the unspoken silence of the heart that resounds in the galaxies. Keenly aware, supremely blessed, we rejoice in the totality of unbounded compassion.
How can we tread the path of nonviolence that rises above anger, blame, and mistrust? Try choosing compassion, kindness and forgiveness. For inner peace is nowhere to be found if not within your own heart. Even in the throes of tempestuous life situations, draw out courage from that as water from a deep well within. By the power of refuge in what upholds Truth, you navigate through the most fearsome obstacle even if it seems impossible. And then your heart will truly shine.
Emptying the mind of fearful thoughts, we stop clinging to anything of the world – one moment at a time. And we come to know a liberating joy. It's a way to enter a dimension of transcendence and to be uplifted beyond the prison of grasping a self with all its adornments and entanglements. As we let go identification with the self, there arises the peace of selfless awareness and waking up to the ultimate truth that is the end of suffering.
How well are we spending our time? Do we endlessly cling to all that perpetuates suffering? Death will have no holiday. So what will free us from the tyranny of death? Be courageous enough to see what gives us true happiness and what brings misery; what is harmful and what is beneficial. Keep the company of those who support our virtues and our best qualities. Stay ‘far from the madding crowd’ and walk the way from blindness to bliss. Reference verse 174 Dhammapada
To directly know Truth, we enter the depths of the vast ocean of the mind. We refine our attention and focus it like a laser beam. In the knowing of knowing itself, impermanence is revealed together with the inherent suffering of the conditioned world and the intrinsic emptiness of everything everywhere. In the starkness of this Reality, unwavering awareness sees all that we cling to as nothing while ego capitulates to liberating insight.
Where is safety in this world? As the Buddha taught: “Not apart from awakening and austerity, not apart from sense restraint, not apart from relinquishing everything do I see any safety for any living being”. So with unshakeable faith, not faltering in the face of difficulty or pain, we nurture heroic patience and compassion. Wisely probing and seeing the Noble Truths of suffering, its cause, its ending, and the way beyond suffering, we hasten to follow the Noble Eightfold Path into the stream and across – to our freedom
In the face of horrific suffering, how can we abide in the ground of love, protected from every kind of pain? True path effort – inspired courage leaning on virtue – ardently works its way into the heart. Through the power of forgiveness, patient enough to love without blame, we touch the fount of compassion itself. We invite the miraculous.
Our mission is to find truth by turning inward to the space of the heart. We may think we know why we are here on this earth but we can only really know when we enter the sanctuary of this inner space and turn the world off. Then we will surely find the pearl of truth we long for. It is universal, not contrived nor concocted by our ignorant mind – and it gives us a peace and happiness that is unshakeable, incorruptible, and unconditional.
Let us truly live with compassion enough to care. And share that beautiful mind energy with a depth of awareness and attention to each moment. Keeping far from the noise of the world, every breath, every new moment will arise in a field of compassion and condition the next moment after it, the next breath, with kindness and presence of mind. Just so, we learn the art of loving all that we are and the path's unfoldings that free us from fear.
