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.
Right mindfulness developed with meticulous appreciative attention on the breath enables us to tame the wilderness of the mind. If we are careening off course – just when the canoe starts to tip – we notice and immediately rebalance, regaining awareness and sustaining it as best we can. We continue to polish the mirror of the mind each moment, discovering the joy of seeing its true nature: impermanent, imperfect and empty. With nothing to hold onto in the world, we are free to enter the shrine of Truth.
Use the practice to understand the boundaries, structures, and limits of our lives to locate that terrain within us which is beyond boundaries. We go to it by inclining the mind towards stopping, taking precepts and fully arriving in the present, in the sanctuary of now. We stop in the silence and with curiousity and wonder, investigate the true meaning of our life.
Listen deeply to the resonance within where virtue sows fields of goodness, wisdom and compassion, and Death teaches us to let go. At first, we tremble with fear. But out of that fear, we draw strength. Out of anger – a stillness and forgiveness. Out of greed, we draw generosity and gratitude. And from true vulnerability, we awaken to the Deathless.
The Buddha gives us lessons in emptiness. We are compelled to trust so completely to be able to truly receive these teachings, surrendering to the Dhamma, offering everything. We bless each step, harvesting wisdom with a brave heart. And in this remarkable learning, we shall know the unexcelled fragrance of the Dhamma, the island beyond which we cannot go.
As we grow in wisdom, our fear of death dissolves. The more we purify from within, the more we abide with a clarity of mind that bestows the ultimate seeing, our cosmic ordination, our unburdening from the sufferings of this realm. The veil of delusion collapses in the sacred footprint of the Dhamma. This will be our noble warming.
