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.
Patience is love, a faith both fearless and true. How can we know and embody that? How can we value each moment and care for it, patiently turning the mind away from the world to the peace within us – to that raw dimension of a subtle and stunning silence? The less we cling, the deeper we enter it. Emboldened by formidable spiritual tests, as we abandon and purify the mind, the Path unfolds beneath our feet. With joy, wisdom, and gratitude, we persevere to the heart’s freedom – the Deathless.
The deity Brahma Sahampati appeared before the Blessed One and urged the Buddha to teach to those who had little dust in their eyes so that they could learn the Dhamma and practice for their own awakening.
The Fourth Insight known as udayabbaya ñāņa arises bestowing six qualities of upekkha as well as intimate knowledge of anicca through seeing the arising and disappearance of all conditioned things - most importantly, the emptiness of 'self'.
Most highly revered treasures and our true refuges - the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha - are extolled in this devotional chanting of a traditional Pali sutta. The style of the chant arose in the heart while walking in the forests of Sati Saraniya Hermitage.
As the witness of suffering, we gain new eyes to see. A doorway to knowing non-duality opens – there is no 'you', no 'me'. We are in the realm of no separation in one moment – gone beyond opinions, beyond wanting, beyond our pains and brokenness, and our enslavement to all that drives us. Can we see them as empty and powerless apart from the power we give them? Emptying the mind's rubbish each day, every moment that we can – enough to see, to intuitively know unconditional love – we ascend the Everest within to behold the jewel of the heart’s Himalaya.
How long must we wander misguided in life? To courageously seek Truth, extract all impurity from the mind under the scrutiny of the Wisdom Eye – silent, watchful, fully aware, and dedicated to inner purification. See what fills the space of the mind, what percolates within and how we fuel it. Gradually, we will triumph over the sway of delusion and habitual distractions that betray the mind again and again. We’ll take our rightful seat, empty and poised on the throne of present moment awareness. In the safety of true refuge, there’s no going, and no one who goes. When the mind sees itself, there's just pure knowing, awake to its innermost sanctity.
Forest devas chanting these beautiful ancient refrains of the Ratana Sutta at Sati Saraniya Hermitage came to an old bhikkhuni while she walked the trails of the monastery. When we are protected by the sanctuary of the Noble Triple Jewels, the heart's purity is sustained and great blessings rain forth - supreme refuge in the Buddha, Dhamma and Sangha, great compassion, wisdom, and incomparable peace. Herein - the joy of chanting our praise of these blessings.
To free us from our relentless conceptualising and the suffering that comes of it, the Buddha has thrown us a lifeline. We can grab hold of it by continually using the perspective that “this is impermanent”, and, thereby, we can pull ourselves to safety. A breakfast reflection given at Sati Saraniya Hermitage in 2018.
We sit at the edge of the heart peering in, tangled by clinging, inflated and inflamed by worldly ways. Yet we long to know the truth of what we are. For that we must explore the inner core. This is a letting go both magnificent and excruciating. So how can we bear it? Burn up all that you think you know to discover that which cannot be burned. It's a corelessness – the pure, unfathomable truth. Trust and see through to the emptiness of 'I' – there is no me and nothing to cling to. That knowledge and vision will set us free.
Satipanna Insight Meditation Toronto (SIMT) Retreat, Chapin Mill, Batavia, N.Y.
Entering the Gate: Four Spiritual Qualities
Though our spiritual paths are many and varied, we can all practice with enough present moment awareness, faith, energy and commitment to realize the boundless nature of the heart that seemed at first beyond our reach.
