Don’t wither, stand firm these fretful days
Won’t the glaciers calve as we chant our praise?
Won’t the stars recede to their noble berths
When we frankly ask: who of us dies first?
Are we strong enough, is our chorus heard?
Know your song as pure, be a midnight bird.

Wait as one shipwrecked, trusting in rescue
Even shattered or weak, we have fear to subdue
So resist vanishing into fine ocean sand
Or these crystals of ice melting in your hand.
Take your cosmic aim, pierce the far galaxy
Know your song as pure, let your heart stay free.

Burn the mind’s incense through grief or despair
Every jewel in your eye was once unaware.
What ancients foretell in a voice not heard
A breath of power will arise unperturbed.
No gust can devour, no river engulf
Know your song as pure, bow to silence itself.

One promise remains as our sole reprieve
From the depths within such treasures retrieve
As the heart’s true poise and the patience to wait
For a moment’s grace at the Deathless gate.
When the hails rain down, you just persevere
Know your psalm as pure, light will soon appear.

Be the waves, be the sea, circle wide and deep,
Be the prairies wild, and the mountains steep.
As in all that is lived, in the knowing seen
Every season dies and the winds in-between.
Chanting peace in the world, in the shadows of fear
Know your psalm as pure, why believe what you hear?

Now the mind’s gone quiet and you thought you knew
But your psalm stayed pure when the storm came through.
Emerge from the dream healing lifetime scars
Letting clarity surge in a banquet of stars.
Knowing cold and peace, value stillness alone
Then we learn just this – life’s continuing poem.

Yes, unblinding Truth can’t be chemo’d away
Waking up can we hear a new rhapsody?
Travel empty and wise in the mouth of a whale
To the far galaxy, tell this strangest tale.

© Ayyā Medhānandī, 2025
ice crystals photo © Ursula Noircent, 2024

Ayyā Medhānandī and Ayyā Nimmalā will join  TBC, Toronto Theravāda Buddhist Community, for Dhamma teachings:

• Friday night, Nov 8, meditation & Dhamma talk at Quaker House, downtown Toronto
• Saturday daylong, Nov 9, Mindfulness at Quaker House, Toronto
• Sunday a.m., Nov 10, at the Carrot Common,
  Toronto

Registration is required. The retreat is offered in-person and online. Here is the link for more information and to register:
https://www.theravadabuddhistcommunity.org/announcements/

Please do join us.

We are paying tribute to five members of a Sri Lankan family and their dear friend who all perished in a brutal attack in their Ottawa home on March 6, 2024. They were Darshani Ekanayake, her four young children: Inuka aged 7, Ashwini 4, Ranaya 2, and Kelly 2 months old, and their family friend, Gamini Amarakoon. Surviving Darshani and her four children is their devoted husband and father, Dhanushka Wickramasinghe, who was severely injured during the attack; and surviving Gamini in Sri Lanka is his beloved wife Dishani and their two young daughters.

We hold them all in our hearts, honouring the gifts they brought to each other and to all those connected with them – their kindness, generosity, courage and love. May they realize the highest blessings of complete freedom from suffering.

For Dhanushka, Dishani and all their surviving family members, may the care and support of our wider community surround them with strength and healing. May they be uplifted by the power of our compassion and their own faith, gentleness, resilience and spiritual refuge.

May our minds not be caught in the strong currents of sorrow, pain, outrage, grief or despair. Instead, may we reflect wisely and gain deeper understanding of our shared human journey.

And for all who have been touched by these tragic events or face such violence in their own lives, may powerful healing and wise compassion prevail and offer uplift, comfort, and strength.

Hatred is never overcome by hatred but by love alone together with a sense of forgiveness. In no way do we condone such acts for accountability is necessary. At the same time, we must take care to deflect the venom of ill-will that is so disabling to our peace of heart. This may seem impossible but forbearance can draw forth wisdom and resilience to enable us to abide in loving-kindness and compassion even in the face of violence.

May we realize the impermanent nature of all conditions and the truth of suffering within our own hearts – seeing its cause, its ending, and how we can cultivate the way leading to freedom.

Wishing the blessings of great compassion and peace of heart for all,

Bhikkhunis Medhānandī, Nimmalā and Anuruddhā

Have you ever tried chanting to learn its hidden powers as a channel for disarming obsessive thought, calming the mind, and preparing the ground for Nibbana to arise?

From ancient times, sacred chants have invoked higher energies, adorned rituals, and expressed faith, homage, healing and celebration. More potently, chanting is a leavening agent, an internal cleansing that divests the mind of toxins and impurities, freeing it from its insatiable habit of feeding on thought.

We chant not to remember words or conform to rituals but to unify our attention through repetition. Whether silently observing the breath or intoning mantras, verses and words of reverence and praise for the highest, the mind is trained to stay present. With sound, we enter the selfless vibration of it – not the doer ‘doing’ it. We open to being what we truly are, rather than what we think we are.

When we chant pure sounds, the body becomes an instrument. We viscerally interact with our environment through vibrations – sound energies reverberating within and flowing out again. More practice yields more pure sound until we are silent, for silence is the ground of being – and of sound.

One way animals restore themselves after an attack and regain equilibrium is through the trembling of the body. We too, as humans, can intone rhythmic vibrational waves that relieve us of locked-in fears, grief, anger, or regrets and restore us to profound inner peace. The senses unify and soak in the sound of the breath itself. Trusting the heart’s innate goodness, we feel uplifted and restored. We connect in the same chord of pure presence born from our purity of intention.

In village India, I learned from local women how to remove debris from their raw rice using a flat basket ‘plate’. They toss the rice up and down in the basket so that any grains of sand, small stones or other detritus separate to one side while the cleaned rice remains on its own.

Chanting does just that for our mental health, removing debris from the mind and tuning us to the pure resonance within us. As we chant to that frequency, we balance inwardly – as if we were grains of rice bounced up and down until all the detritus of life’s painful memories and past traumas are evacuated from our system.

These intonations are both fathomless and timeless. Indeed, our life is a spiritual chant, from the cry of a newborn to the last ebbing of consciousness into the arms of our karmic unfolding. And if the heart is pure, we shall hear the sound of silence at the dawn of its awakening.

So may you chant with all your heart and bless the moment.

© Ayyā Medhānandī 2023

On Aug. 28th, 2021, Venerable Dr. Bhikkhuni Kusuma Mahatheri passed away peacefully in Sri Lanka. She was 92. Her doctors marvelled to witness such a peaceful death. We marvel at the gifts of her life.

Venerable Kusuma Bhikkhuni was internationally respected as a Buddhist monastic, scholar and teacher. We remember her and honour her remarkable service to the Buddha Sasana and, especially, her pioneer work for the restoration of bhikkhuni ordination in Sri Lanka after a lapse of 1000 years.

Profoundly devoted to the Buddha’s teachings, she was a loving mother and grandmother; a graduate in molecular biology in the United States; and a university professor of science and English. She also completed two doctoral degrees in Pali and Buddhist studies and established the Ayya Khema Meditation Centre in Sri Lanka, named for her beloved mentor. She authored numerous books, represented Sri Lanka at international Buddhist conferences, and, even into old age, she continued to travel throughout the world to teach the Dharma.

For all her early academic research, Venerable Kusuma Bhikkhuni’s fervent questions about the nature of existence were only resolved through her study of the Buddha’s teachings. Inspired by the ordination of the Buddha’s mother, Mahapajapati Gotami, and the verses of arahant bhikkhuni disciples of the Buddha, she travelled to Korea and Taiwan where she could experience living female Buddhist monastic lineages. In Sri Lanka, she advocated fearlessly for the uplift of female education and full ordination in the face of vitriolic opposition from the conservative Buddhist clergy.

At last, in 1996, she was able to formally take her own higher vows as the first of ten Sri Lankan candidates in a dual ordination ceremony in Sarnath, India. This historic ceremony simulated the ancient ritual for female higher ordination prescribed by the Buddha himself more than two and a half millenia ago. It was conducted by a united Sangha of elder bhikkhus from the Mahā Bodhi Society of India as well as elder bhikkhus and bhikkhunis from Korea, thus rekindling the Bhikkhuni Sangha for modern day Theravada Buddhism.

At its helm stood a lioness of a woman, Venerable Kusuma Bhikkhuni – courageous leader, compassionate Dharma mother, and stellar role model – particularly for bhikkhunis and women the world over. She embodied the noble qualities of a modern day Mahapajapati, blessing us with an indelible Dharma legacy for generations to come.