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.
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.
How can we rescue ourselves from the obstacles to our happiness? We must not disregard the power of awareness in the present moment to vanquish suffering. For in this very moment is everything we need to know. All moments, whether tainted or blessed, are conditioned by their predecessor. Without care and discernment, vigilance and integrity, we could easily fall into states of decline. Ill-will begets enmity, while joy begets ease and serenity, and each moment is the mother of the next. So too, stepping into the joys of life as it unfolds, we live by the best qualities we can reap. One bare insight into truth and we know what we truly are. Then we open the gates to the Deathless.
Let faith be our foundation for a mindfulness that never tires of examining how we are within us. We may eat well, dress well, and look good but what is the real state of the mind? Day by day, finding safety in virtue, aware of the right qualities that direct, protect, and teach us to root out unworthy habits, let us harvest the profound joy and goodness of this life. It’s not how much we work or gain but how well we honour the noble Dhamma as servants of selflessness and human kindness.
Listen to the interior silence with audacious selfless attention and see how pure awareness catapults us into a dynamic intuitive presence. We connect to the Dhamma without obstructions. Silence is formless, soundless, complete. We are witness to an emptiness beyond attachment where the burdens of identification have no footing. There is no 'one' to be in that – for when the intellect bows in faith to the heart, we abide in the loving presence of what is here and now. Ahh! but can we sustain it?
We humans share this journey of birth, old age, sickness and death. Sometimes we succumb to fear or sorrow; sometimes we are exhausted or disoriented as if lost on a perilous path. Seeing this universality of suffering and knowing its causes, we ask: "What will set us free?" With the lens of refined moral aptitude, in silent witness, we stop to listen and directly know for ourselves the inner joy and peace of true harmlessness. Patiently, our noble guides of benevolent compassion and wise reflection steer the heart to its liberation – awakening to Unconditional Love.
Was the Buddha a Buddhist? The Buddha was fully awakened, having realized the truth beyond convention, beyond worldly identities. We want that – to fully awaken; to understand our experience at its core through the purification of the heart. When the mind is completely content within itself, in pure awareness, gone beyond attachment to worldly perception, sensation or gratification, we can know a loving authentic opening to true consciousness, godness itself. We are that.
The human realm is ever fraught with greed and delusion, conflicted and loud in its extremes. These violations are just that – destroyers of our spiritual verve. As pilgrims of peace, we disarm them in the interior silence of the heart. Courageous, we stand our moral ground, resolved to hold the bar. Our faith, generosity and discernment rescue us from the flames of sensory fears and infatuations. There is giving up and letting go but the Buddha’s promise is true. Where kindness and compassion prevail, the heart knows unshakeable peace.
Just as the sun is eclipsed by the moon passing over it, so the mind is submerged in 'totality' due to the veil of our human conditioning. But we can shatter that darkness by diving deeply with moral vigilance and wise attention into the silence of the mind. There we know suffering, how it begins and the exhilarating joy of witnessing its end in the vastness of the heart's inner dimensions. With unshakeable faith, insight, and understanding, we abide in that sacred space of pure awareness and unconditional love – like the sun freed from the shadow of the moon.
Throughout history, hatred, human violence and horrific sufferings have plagued the world. Truth is never diminished by these worldly conditions. So we feed the mind with what supports inner peace and awakening and not with thoughts of depression, disappointment, despair, or fear. What we most fear is unconditional love. That's not consent for nor approval of hateful conduct but rather a call to bear compassion – the most difficult love of all. Like the sun that gives warmth to all beings, the awakened mind does not differentiate. It does not choose one over another. It just gives light
What does it mean to be noble? As a daughter of the Buddha, I learn that no name can confer authority or self-respect, nor does opinion, tradition or entitlement bestow them, for as the Buddha wisely teaches, “One does not become a noble one by birth. It is by one's deeds that one attains to nobility.” Just so, the riches of our human journey are revealed in the fire of inner purification. Therein we find our true name. It is nothing less than the pure presence behind every name – the emptiness in which all personal identity dissolves. And where only unconditional love abides.
