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.
First talk given inside the new Sati Saraniya Temple building. Within us we have a sacred space that we need to reclaim - the very space inside the heart. Here the Four Noble Truths come to life. Know our suffering, not blaming anyone or any conditions for it, see its origin within us, and right here, resolve it, uproot it. Here then, we realize suffering's end, time and again. And so in clearing the heart, we clear the Path.
All of us can train our minds. When we are driven by lack of wisdom, ill-will, greed or confusion, we live in a wilderness of the mind. In spiritual community, we hold together to blaze a trail through that wilderness, establishing trust and confidence, and persevering. We are guided by wisdom and mindfulness to purify ourselves; and we are willing to make sacrifices – even to suffer – for the treasures of the Path.
