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 cleared of obstacles, we gain a special skill in developing samadhi. Mindfulness is the gatekeeper enabling the burning away of the defilements. There in the clear, stilled, stabilized mind of unfabricated, primordial purity, the factors of awakening arise. No where else in the world but within this seclusion of mind can we find our true home and realize our Buddha nature.
The Buddha gives us a flawless positioning system that will guide us to the coordinates of Truth. That ultimate refuge and peace is not to be known anywhere but in the sanctuary of our own heart. To find our spiritual bearings, we explore our true nature and the real origin of our sufferings. Step by step, our wise friends and daily practice of virtue, mindfulness, heroic forbearance, and faith will reinforce and steady us as we navigate the tempests of life. But this is a journey of great joys as well as trials. Like the hollow reed that becomes a flute, we empty ourselves of fear to be the true love we seek
