Ajahn Nissarano, Bhikkhu from Perth visits Sri Lanka

by Nanda Pethiyagoda

This article conveys glad tidings of great benefit to Buddhists of this country. Ven Ajahn Nissarano Bhikkhu is already in the island and moving around conducting meditation retreats and will be here for around three weeks. However, the gladder tidings is that his visit precedes that of the Most Ven Brahmavamso Bhikkhu later in the year. Thus our country which suffers an economic downturn and many other travails will benefit from spots of illumination brought by revered monks from Australia visiting us. Even if we all do not get to listen to their sermons nor have access to the meditation retreats they will be conducting, their coming over and being in the country will be propitious and a joy and solace to many.

Ven Ajahn Nissarano

The Ven Bhikkhu was born in Perth in 1952. He worked as a librarian for twenty years and then, having read about Buddhism, probably met and conversed with Buddhist monks in Perth, including perchance Ven Brahmavamso, he decided to ordain. He did this in the late 1970s when he was in his thirties. At age 46, in March 1998, he obtained full ordination at the Bodhinyana Monastery from Ven Brahmavamso.

He stayed at Bodhinyana, Serpentine, Western Australia, for nine and a half years after which he went to Thailand in 2005. The famous meditation guide – Ajahn Chah – who very many international bhikkhus claim to be their meditation teacher, was dead by then but the fact of the country being well known for meditation would have been why Ven Nissarano ventured to Thailand. The next year he moved to Sri Lanka and communed with foreign monks resident in the island and lived with Sri Lankan monks. In one of his sermons which I listened to recently on YouTube, he mentions by name two of them who died in 2022, one attacked by an elephant. He resided four years in aranyas, probably in the Island Hermitage in Dodanduwa and the Forest Hermitage in Udawattekale, Kandy, among others.

Desiring solitude and more space and time to spend in meditation, Ven Ajahn Nissarano moved to Balangoda where he made Bhadhdhekavihara Monastery his residence in Tanjantenna. He had his kuti under a rock on a mountainside, surrounded by forest and of course animals. Such forest monks depend entirely for their sustenance on villagers who live in the vicinity. Once in a while dane offered could be inappropriate as it was in the case of Ven Nanavira, forest monk who lived in solitude far down South and had to partake of food with much chillie in it which caused him grievous stomach ailments.

Whatever it was, maybe the racial and political upheavals in Sri Lanka, induced Ven Nissarano to return to Perth. The second JVP insurrection of the 1980s was what caused Ven Ayya Khema Bhikkhuni to give up Nuns’ Island in the Ratgama Lake in Dodanduwa which she had painstakingly got constructed, and return to Germany.

However, mercifully, Ven Ajahn Nissarano has visited Sri Lanka off and on and is again among us Sri Lankans. Just as Ven Brahmavamso’s visits are crowded with meditation retreats to lead and sermons to deliver, Ven Nissarano Bh too will have his time fully occupied with happenings.

The first on his schedule is a short stay in his old kuti in Balangoda, hopefully leaving him free to meditate and acclimatize himself to the local climate which is not bad just now for foreign visitors. He then proceeds to conduct meditation retreats in Pelmadulla, followed by a retreat in the Aranya at Belihul Oya where he stayed a year before leaving for Australia. A retreat is being organized by a group of devotees in Kandy and then will be retreats at Kalalgoda, organized by the Ajahn Brahm Society of Sri Lanka; later Pelmadulla and Kosgoda.

These visits, first by Ven Ajahn Nissarano Bh and then towards the middle of the year by Ven Brahmavamso Bh, are great blessings to this country in its great need of blessing. Organizers such as our Ajahn Brahm Society; benefactors; hosts and hostesses; are greatly thanked. Even more appreciated are the two venerable bhikkhus who travel far to visit this country and pass the word of the Buddha and what he advised, excellently to us in Sri Lanka.