Introduction:  Venerable Canda Bhikkuni Thera  is the only fully ordained female monastic in the UK in the Theravada tradition. She's also Spiritual Director of the Anukampa Bhikkhuni project. She established this project in 2016 - it's a charity committed to spreading the early Buddhist teachings and developing a monastery where, for the first time in the UK, women will be able to train towards full Bhikkhuni ordination. She recently moved into that property.

Helen:  I'm curious as to how you first heard the Dhamma, how you first became involved, or heard about Buddhism - because UK is more of a Christian country.

 

Ven Canda: That's true.  My family was certainly not religious. Most of us used to talk quite a bit about how religion can create a lot of divides and conflicts, and we were very staunchly kind of - what's the word - atheist, but I think it was in my teens that I started getting this kind of compelling urge to understand why I'm here and the meaning of this life, and I couldn't find those answers in the society around me, because most of the meaning that was offered was through work or family or making your way in the world. For me, that just seemed not to answer my question around why we're here and how we can live compassionate lives. So yeah, a burning urge for a sense of purpose when I was around 15 or 16, and I guess at that time, it was hard, especially for my parents, to differentiate that from sort of teenage rebellion. But to me, it felt significant, and it didn't really let up. When I was about 19 and finally had a bit of freedom, I was officially an adult, I drew on a small amount of money that my grandmother had left me and managed to get a ticket to India with my best friend, and we had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for at all. There was a lot of culture shock and disorientation and experiences that we couldn't even put words to. It was another world. But I quickly realized that the people over there seemed to have that sense of purpose and meaning, at least a sense that there's something bigger than themselves, that they were sort of contained within. And that sounds a bit mystical, that's not exactly the Buddha's teaching, but still, it gave me a sense that there was something giving these people an inner strength. I think for me, the realities of impermanence and suffering were very obvious in that society. In Western societies, or let's say more capitalistic societies, death and difficulty and differences are also kind of kept behind closed walls. We don't really see them. In India, I just saw the entire gamut of humanity, from the kind of desperation of poverty to this incredible spiritual search that had many, many forms to it. So it was in India that I first heard about meditation, heard about retreats. When I heard - through my own practice, I was meditating and watching my mind, but I was also hearing that the Buddha spoke about suffering. He addressed the matter of suffering at a very deep level, and it just resonated.

 

Helen: You found a Buddhist centre in India?

 

Ven Canda: It was a Vipassana centre. It was a meditation centre under the guidance of Goenka, SN Goenka, who was an Indian teacher from a Burmese tradition.  The retreat is very intense, so you don't really have a way to distract yourself from what's going on in your mind.

 

Helen: I understand from there you went to Burma?

 

Ven Canda   That was many years later. From there, I decided to dedicate my life to the practice. It was a sort of instant sense of this is going to be my path.   I spent the next probably seven or eight years deepening my practice through serving also on those retreats, and because the tradition came from Myanmar, I was always curious about going there, and the aspiration to ordain was deepening every time I meditated. So finally, I managed to make a few trips to Burma in that time, but it was very, very hard to find an opportunity to take robes as a woman. There were very few places that would accept you, few places that you could meditate, in the way that I wanted to meditate.  It took about 10 years until I actually found an opportunity in Myanmar to ordain.

 

That was with my teacher, Sayadaw U Pannajota who is a very well renowned monk in Myanmar, but not really known about in the West, partly because he only speaks Burmese.  I had to learn the language, and I guess, just a hidden gem.  The lifestyle was very simple. He ordained me in Myanmar on eight precepts. The usual ordination platform in Burma is eight precepts or ten precepts. But there's not a lot of difference between the two, because I had all the conditions really, to live a very enriching renunciate life, and even on ten precepts, the problem is that there's no actual systemic structure to support that, you really need to rely on family and friends.

 

Helen: Even when you're in Burma?

 

Ven Canda.    Pretty much. I’ve noticed that most of the nuns, even if they're on ten precepts, they have funds set aside for them to use. Usually these are their own funds from family or friends or whatever. There aren't really any structures or systems of support that allow you to enter the Sangha fully and to be recognized as a field of merit as a member of the Sangha in the way that monks are.

 

Helen: And from there, I understand you met Ajahn Brahm, was the one who guided you next.  I'm curious as to how you met.

 

Ven Canda: This happened because I was in Myanmar practicing in a way that I was finding extremely beneficial and really committed to practicing there under my teacher, but I got very sick, and it wasn't the kind of sickness that would just disappear. I mean, when you live in Asia, it's normal to get infections and parasites, and you just take it, you just take it with a pinch of salt or with like a package of antibiotics, and you carry on. But this was chronic. It was something that was quite alarming, in a sense, and wasn't getting resolved. And around the same time as wondering what that meant for my future, I got hold of some little the recordings of Ajahn Brahms early rains talks, quite a different Ajahn Brahm from the Friday night public speaker that we see now, and very, very deep Dhamma that went straight to my heart, and I just had this compelling sense of, I need to find this teacher. It was visceral and it was inspirational for me. Also, I was hearing Dhamma in English for the first time in many years. And something about that just soaks in in a different way. And I guess it came to me at a time when I was already having some insights into the kind of practices he taught, the kind of approaches that he taught, and I just kind of went on a wing of faith to try and find this teacher. So two years later, I made it to Perth. Yeah, I was sort of wandering, I was a wandering nun in Europe for a while. I met him a couple of times and did retreats with him, expressed my wish to be under his guidance, and I think he took me in. But it wasn't for two more years till I had the chance to get to Australia, because there just aren't many opportunities for women.

 

Helen: And you did the rains retreat, your first rains retreat with him then?

 

Ven Canda:  That was 2012, so that was my sixth, or seventh rains retreat that I did in Perth. And, yeah, I think he knew that I was looking for a way to continue my monastic life under his guidance.

 

Helen: From there, did you start going back to the UK?   I hope you were well, too.

 

Ven Canda:  Actually I settled in Australia for a good while. First I went over to Santi monastery in New South Wales, which is now bhukkini monastery. At that time, Bhante Sujato just left his Abbott role and Ajahn Brahm, even though I was only a novice at that time, he seemed to want me to kind of take some sort of leadership role there. So he always sort of seemed to think that I should do that. I don't know why I was very reluctant to do this. So in the end, yeah, in the end, it didn't work out. And he said, Well, stay in Perth and take the bhikkhuni ordination. So I said, Oh, well, if that's being offered, why wouldn't I receive it? So I never looked for the ordination. It was something that just came as a gift.  I think for any woman who is interested in or has taken the first steps, you take them with your full heart. You don't take half an ordination. You renounce, you renounce 100%, so in a way, it was just, of course you would take the full training on that the Buddha laid down. So I stayed in Dhammasara monastery for about three and a half years, and trained there.

 

Helen: That must have been one of the first Bhikkhuni ordinations?

 

Ven Canda:  I think it was the third. So the first one was in 2009 with four bhikkunis. Then there were two more nuns in 2012 - Venerable Munissara and Venerable Pasada. Then ours was 2014  -four of us again. I think I was the 10th, or something like that.

 

Helen: Ajahn Brahma going out on a limb?

 

Ven Canda:  He'd already done that, yeah, already out on a limb, so to speak. And I think there were no regrets. You know, there was a sense that the monasteries in Perth were operating more and more in alignment with the early Buddhist texts, and less and less with this Thai flavor. I mean, of course, the training in Thailand is the training of simplicity, right? Quite a close relationship with the vinaya. But I felt it was more friendly, more welcoming and more democratic, actually, than many of the systems that sort of passed down from teacher to disciple. Here we were taking the Buddha as our guide, and that was inspirational for me.

 

Helen: On what difference did it make taking that full ordination, you know? How did you change or your life change?

 

Ven Canda:  Right? It's an interesting one, because I think often when we think about taking an ordination, and I love the way you put that, I don't believe we become bhikkhunis. That's another identity. Is that we imagine, I don't know that somehow, I don't know, somehow, we've become we have more privileges in some way, but actually it's the opposite. It's a deeper renunciation, and I think it opened me to being more ready to take the guidance of my teacher in a sense and take the guidance of the Sangha. So one of the beautiful things that we chant at the ordination is, may the Sangha lift me up out of compassion. And I think that was a very visceral experience that now, for the first time, I was actually being taken in to the Sangha that the Buddha established, rather than having renounced, but somehow not having my place, and always having to sort of negotiate for a little bit of place, a bit of ground to stand on, to practice or to sit on, or to walk on.

 

Helen: It sounds like instead of being an individual, you were part of the team.

 

Ven Canda:  Right? Something like that. That's a summary, yes. In a sense, yes. And even though a lot of my monastic life since has been sort of pioneering this project, and in a sense, being alone, it's in a wider context, and it's a global context too.

 

Helen: But how important is it for you to still do these long rains retreat, how do you balance that with the very demanding project you've undertaken?

 

Ven Canda:  I think from the beginning of this project, I knew that the only way to do that, I wouldn't agree to it really, was to still have these three month retreats, because I essentially came into monastic life as a mediator, as somebody who loves to meditate, and who spent, you know, 18 hours of my day in Myanmar meditating, and for me, that's the foundation of everything I do. There isn't much of a point in having a monastery if it isn't going to support the awakening of whoever comes here. And for that, the leader has to be practicing. They don't have to be fully enlightened. Otherwise we'd never start. But I think we have to be practicing to the extent that we can give a bit of guidance to others. So for me, that's obviously the heart of my monastic life. It's the goal is the direction, right? We do this for the sake of nirvana. Another thing we say at the ordination ceremony is, may you give me the going forth for the realization of nirvana, and this is a very clear framework for everything that we do.

 

Helen: So Ajahn Abram ordained you at that that time, 2014, when did he first talk about this idea of a monastery and why? Because there are Buddhist centres for nuns, at least in the UK. So why did he have this clear idea of the bhikkuni monastery?

 

Ven Canda:  Yeah. Well, firstly, the Bhikkhuni Sanga ordained me, so just to make the kind of technical point a bit a little bit clearer, that my preceptor was actually Aya Santini from Indonesia, who I haven't actually met since, and I would love to meet and pay my respects to and the bhikkhu Sangha do the confirmation. So then you're considered ordained on both sides, but the official ordination is with the Bhikkhuni Sangha, and you're accepted by both Sangha’s. So Ajahn Brahm is my mentor and guide, and to some extent second preceptor, let's say. So, yeah, I was staying at Dhammasara for two or three years by then, and I realized that, okay, at Dhammasara there's a lot of resources, there are also a lot of bhikkhunis, but there aren't many bhikkhunis or opportunities anywhere else. And I don't know, something to do with wanting to be under Ajahn Brahm’s guidance, something to do with me having made myself available to serve, and then also having, I guess, England as a home country in common. And actually, the way it happened was, it's sort of as a joke. Don't think anyone knows this, but it was kind of a joke. I just said to him, Well, Ajahn, you know, I don't know about the future, but maybe I should go and do something in England. And, you know, we were just joking and having a casual chat, and he just became suddenly kind of serious in a quite dramatic way, and said, Yes, that's what you should do. If you're my disciple, you should go to establish a monastery in England. And it was kind of a joke, because Ajahn Brahm never says that's what you should do. He always just supports whatever a person wishes to do. But I took it kind of seriously. I meditated with that for the Vassa 2015 and at the end I said, Oh, you know when we talked about that, were you actually. Serious. And then he said, Oh, just go over and see. Just go over and sort of see if there's any interest. And I was going home anyway on a visit.

 

Helen: You didn't even have a centre in the UK.

 

Ven Canda: I had nothing. I literally came back on a return ticket. Well, it was supposed to be a return ticket to visit my family for a month, and while I was there, my friend in Perth had told me, you need a Facebook account. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it, because I'd always avoided Facebook, but she said you need a Facebook account, because otherwise how is anyone going to know who you are or what you want to do. So I did that, and I just started collecting a few unknown people who said, Oh, this is something that needs to happen. So I told that to Ajahn on the phone, and he said, Oh, that's good. And I said, Yeah, but it can't actually happen. I mean, I'm coming back to Australia, and if it's going to happen, you're going to have to join our trust, and you're going to have to come over and teach every year. So you know it's not going to happen. Because I knew how busy he was, and he said, Yep, no problem. And then I thought, oh, because this meant, what would I do? Would I now not be able to come back to Australia? Would I have to stay in England? And I spoke to my Abbot in Perth, and she said, Well, you can't really organize something if you're in Perth, you'll have to stay there. So it was a very scary, viscerally terrifying, week for me. I had for probably a couple of weeks, like dreads in my stomach. You know when you just can't even sleep and your stomach is just like, almost lurching over. It was like that for a couple of weeks because I thought, gosh, I've burned my bridges. The visa was suspended, and I had nowhere to go. I couldn't stay with my parents. I hadn't got money, obviously. And I only had like, one friend here, because I lived in Asia most of my adult life, so it was very scary, but he was at the other end of the phone if I needed him, and I just started frantically scouring for like venues, trying to ask people if they knew how to form a trust, if they knew how to build a website. And we just started from there.

 

Helen: How did it grow?

 

Ven Canda: I'm in disbelief now when I wake up and see this place, because, yeah, for about five or six years, I was just staying with various laypeople for maybe three days, maybe two weeks, if I was lucky, and just doing my work, trying to pull people together, trying to put the legal systems in place for this to happen, and doing a lot of teaching and outreach as well. So that's how we did it. You know, we organized retreats for Ajahn Brahm every year and we reached a lot of people. And so donations started coming in, and I started realizing, gosh, this is something real, and I also have a responsibility to the community that are supporting it.

 

Helen: So Ajahn  Brahm in his usual way, was able to inspire people in the UK to donate, and things got going.

 

Ven Canda: I think I did most of the groundwork in the UK. I mean, his retreats were hugely important and essential to all of this. But I think it was mainly the international supporters, mostly for Ajahn Brahm in the beginning, not so much people in the UK. So we had a big donation from somebody the first year after the first tour, and Ajahn wrote me an email said, sit down before you read the email. And I opened it and it said a message to Ajahn Brahm thank you for giving me the opportunity, I've just donated £400,000 pounds, and I felt kind of a bit giddy, because I realized now I'm in it, and they wanted to remain anonymous, so it was really amazing. And I know they're from an Asian country, and there were another couple of big donations, but then it was also 1000s and 1000s of small donations from people all over the world,  ordinary people, even people in Sri Lanka, at one point, there was a fundraiser there, and people were giving, like, a couple of rupees, you know, just to contribute. So it feels amazing, really, that we've been able to involve and include so many people over the years.

 

Helen: Venerable, I'm intrigued, because here you are, you're a Bhikkuni, but you're saying you were just living in various friends’ homes, which must be terribly difficult.

 

Ven Canda: It was, and they were people I’d just met.

 

Helen: With all the restrictions can I say that?

 

Ven Canda:  I guess it took a lot of faith, in a sense;  it was awkward for me. I mean, this is part of the renunciation. It can feel awkward to ask for support. It can feel awkward to be in someone's house and they're feeding you and you're saying, I need time to work. Also, there's a responsibility you want to sort of give some guidance, give some advice, talk about meditation. So it was very, very full time. But I don't know how it happened. It just sort of strung itself together. And I also spent some time in America in a bhikkuni monastery there, Aloka Vihara, which is now sadly no more, but the nuns from there have gone to other projects, yeah, so I just kind of patched up my time. And every year I had this three months in Perth. Also the Bhikkuni Alliance, Alliance for bhikkunis in America, supported some of my travel expenses. So I really have to give them a big call out here. So yeah, the generosity  of people, when you're living such a vulnerable life as a bhikkuni you really see the best of people, because I wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the fact that there's so much kindness in the world.

 

Helen: So somewhere along the line, was the first step to get a room or a centre?

 

Ven Canda: So, yeah. About five years in, we managed to rent a little place in Oxford. The reason we thought Oxford might work is simply because there was a little insight group, and I knew one or two people.  I had wanted to wait until we had a big enough outreach that people might come and stay and cook. So that's been difficult the whole time. It's like constant kind of outreach, and it's, I guess that's what I mean by creating the structures that don't exist yet, because people have got to first come to you and participate in dana to understand why it's important. Getting that actually happening is actually quite hard, but there was a very sort of slow, small trickle of guests, so usually just one other person staying with me, so I was able to maintain my practice and vinaya really well.

 

Helen: I understand you also began teaching giving retreats.

 

Ven Canda: I think I probably started gradually, but yeah, as soon as I got to the UK, really, somehow, we got noticed, I suppose, because of bringing gender equality to the Sangha.  People started giving me opportunities to teach, and that went really well. And thanks to my teacher, and the conversations and the practice I've been able to have, I gradually built up my confidence in sharing the Dhamma. But the most important time in all of this was the Coronavirus pandemic.

 

Helen: How?

 

Ven Canda: That was the time I was in the first rented place, and suddenly, after a year, the Corona pandemic hit, and I didn't know what to do. At first I thought, is this a chance to take a break, to have some retreat, but then I realized, no, I need to serve. People are going through, we're all going through something unprecedented.  Obviously I couldn't have guests at that time, so I had to use one of the allowances in the Vinaya for times of danger and difficulty;  I had to cook for myself. So we basically set up systems through the help of our supporters, whereby I'd receive a vegetable delivery every week and cook myself simple meals, and I would give about three teachings a week online, and the online community started to grow.  I was getting like 60 people every time, regularly, and I started noticing they're coming every week. I think we had about 300 people coming very regularly. That means at least once a week or once a fortnight groups of 60 each time, and it was an immense support for me as well. From this, you know, I was being fed, I was being supported through the Corona Pandemic, and I suppose gaining that confidence, you know, as a leader of the community. It's since then that we felt ready for the next step, because we started meeting these people as the Pandemic passed, they started coming to the events, and we felt like we already knew each other.

 

Helen: In those teachings, those teachings on Zoom, were you giving meditation or were you giving Dharma talks? How did they work?

 

Ven Canda: On Sunday evening we do meditation, Dharma talk, Q A. On a Wednesday, I do some chanting to share dedications to anyone who might be struggling and suffering, and that's continued since the corona pandemic. And what else did we do? We did meta meditations on a Saturday. And later on, we started doing sutta discussions as well. So, now we also have silent meditations and the sutta discussions and sometimes Sunday teachings. So it's quite a thriving online community.

 

Helen: I wanted to ask about the aspects of the Dharma that really resonate, and I understand metta is very important to you.

 

Ven Canda: The whole eightfold path is very important to me, and the more I practice, the more I move away from particular methods and more in alignment with the whole eightfold path. Because I think when we begin our practice, we often think that practice means meditation, and sometimes if the meditation is not unfolding in a particularly linear way, that's normal to the degree, but if we're having trouble in our meditation, it's often because the foundations are not fully in place. And those foundations are things we develop in our daily life, through our way of looking at the world, through the way we use our minds, through the way we use our speech, and you know what we give our energy to, whether through a livelihood or through the people in our lives. So for me, the practice has become a lot more about an integrated way of life.

 

Helen: I was going to say that for many, the Eightfold Path is a way to live in the world. You know, it’s right livelihood, it's right speech.   But you still find it very relevant?

 

Ven Canda: But we all live in the world

 

Helen: Is very much the community is at the top of the list.

 

Ven Canda: In terms of right livelihood, I think you can't get a purer livelihood than living as a virtuous monk or not. It can be exploited like anything else; it doesn't necessarily mean that because we wear the robes, we live it well, and that's for the lay people to be discerning about.  The whole eightfold path is essential for all of us.  Some of us might have more time to cultivate particular aspects of that path. If we're busy working during the day, then right speech, right livelihood, right action, right intention should be always under that, informing that, as well as right view, a sense that, there's suffering in this world. Are our actions of body, speech and mind, going to alleviate that within ourselves and in the society, or are they actually building it, through unskilful ways of looking and relating. But monastics, ideally do have a bit longer perhaps, depending on the layperson. But many lay people, many of my lay friends, have a lot of time for practice. They live very simple lives and make a lot of space for that. That's a privilege, of course, but yeah, we might have more time for the actual meditation practice, but still, if we're not using our mind skilfully outside of meditation practice, it's not going to be that effective. So I guess when you talked about metta, yes, I think as a cultivation, it's one of my favourite practices, but that informs right  intention that then informs the rest of the path. Because, in a sense, the Eightfold Path is linear. Each feeds into the next, reinforces and strengthens the next, which then feeds back on itself. So the deeper our meditation, the more we purify our view.

 

Helen: You see metta as a starting point, or is it all circular?

 

Ven Canda: I don't know. I think people need to start wherever they can and wherever they're inspired to begin. Right view is the first of the Eightfold Path.  I think there's a reason for that. If you look in the gradual training, for example, in the Majjhima Nikaya, Number 51 and number 128.  Have a look, check it out. It starts every time from hearing the Dhamma and preceding that, is a sense of understanding that we suffer, that we all suffer, and we all desire our happiness, every living being.  I think when we have an appreciation of that, that can lead to a genuine motivation of loving kindness, compassion, generosity, giving, rather than trying to attain. Because we understand that our own liberation is inevitably bound up with the happiness and suffering of all beings. If there is an end of suffering, if the Buddha teaches an end of suffering, it has to be a universal solution, right? So suffering in many parts of the text is the start of the path.

 

Helen: It’s not just about personal enlightenment?

 

Ven Canda: I don't see how it can be. I mean, it's not that we can actually enlighten other people. We can't do the meditation for them. We can't tell them how to live. But if the meditation is bringing benefit to us, it will naturally bring benefit to others. And if our practice is motivated by compassion, not just for ourselves, but for everyone it's going to be far more powerful, far more powerful. It can get very dry and brittle if we're just focused on our own practice. And I think from the beginning of my practice, it was inculcated into me that service is an important part of the path. My first teacher, Goenka, for all the limitations that we can perhaps talk about in that tradition, because every tradition will have its limitations, he always said that the way to measure one's progress is by a sense of gratitude and a feeling to serve others, not by jhanas, not by enlightenment, not by my meditation getting deep, but by a feeling of gratitude and a sense to serve. And I think that's so important to understand. If we're still self centered, if we're taking to the path as a kind of self-improvement or a spiritual bypass, then actually, it's not going to work. Of course, there might be some bypass, some idea of self-improvement in the beginning, but it has to give way to something bigger.  

 

Helen: Venerable, you mentioned that a lot of your teaching is based on the early Buddhist texts. Is that correct? And why those?

 

Ven Canda: Because the Buddha's my teacher, and thanks to Ajahn Brahm as well, and all my teachers, really, I started to feel a lot more connected to the teachings, and I started to relate to them as though the Buddha was speaking to me. And I think that's because of my practice, but also because of the way they've been explained to me in context of practice and monastic life, and I really recommend that people try to get into the Buddhist teachings or read books or practice meditation or study the suttas alongside teachers who understand those teachings, because nobody can express the Dhamma more perfectly than the Buddha himself. I mean, if we call ourselves buddhists, it's because we have some amount of faith in the fact that the Buddha was enlightened. And we don't know with anyone else, we can have faith that our teachers walked to a certain length on the path, but we don't know that. And for me, they just start to come alive. Like the example of the gradual training that I'm talking about, this is a very extended and elaborated version of the Eightfold Path. And once you start to see the entire text in that framework, then whenever you pick up a little bit from here or there, you can see the context in which it was taught, and you can see how that would then feed into the next. So for example, metta is not a practice in and of itself, but it's part of right intention, it’s part of right endeavour, right effort, it's part of cultivating wholesome states, which are then going to increase mindfulness and increase samadhi.

 

Helen: Do you perhaps feel connected in any way to the early first bhikkunis, to the first women who were ordained?

 

Ven Canda: Well, one of the beautiful things about being a bhikkuni, one of the upsides of the downsides of not having a living lineage now, or a very new living lineage now, is that we tend to look to the bhikkhunis in the Buddhas day as our foremothers. Can you say foremothers like forefathers?   Let's call them our foremothers, our elders, right? They are elders. These were Sravaka Arahants, people enlightened, in the Buddha’s time under the Buddha, through His instruction. I love to read the Theragatha  - there are bhikkunis from that time that really inspire me. I've got an amazing wooden carved Statue of Patacara upstairs. The serenity that the artist has conveyed through her features and presence is so deeply touching, many of my visitors, men included are moved to tears when they see this statue because of the story of what she underwent. She lost her whole family overnight and yet here she's serene. It's really lovely to start actually having visual representations of the early Buddhist nuns and bringing them to life, because often the female history has been lost.  

 

 

​

​

​

​

 

 

Bhikkuni Patacara

 

Helen:  I'd like to hear about the monastery. We got as far as hearing how you were fundraising, and you had a centre, or you had a room in Oxford. How did that evolve into  your own house?

 

Ven Canda:  We don't so much build our own homes over here as Australia, plus, I just couldn't do it with everything else. So, yeah, it's amazing, really. I mean, after the corona pandemic, I didn't have anywhere to live again because the rental place was sold, but we decided, we found this little four bedroom terrace in Oxford, similar to the one we were renting. It wasn't a monastery. It wasn't what we really aspired to but at this point, we were kind of desperate. I was desperate to have somewhere to land. By then, it was 2022 so many years after beginning this. We saw this little four bedroom place while I was in Perth, and I didn't even go and visit it, but I just showed it to Ajahn Brahm, he said, just go for it. And we thought, let's just do it, so at least we've got some funds in bricks. And then last year, I came back to it and found it really cute and conducive, and again, we started having enough guests, and really wonderful guests and people looking after us and my friend, Venerable Upekkha, came over from Perth. She's one of the bhikkunis I ordained with and so we stayed there for about nine months before the rains retreat, and then after last rains retreat, November 23 I came back, Ajahn Brahm was here again, and I was talking to him about the next steps. I was saying, Well, I don't want to get stuck now, because we've got something. I don't want to get stuck because that's not actually a monastery, and I can't train other women there. And he said, Well, I don't know. We can't really do much more fundraising. There's nothing much more we can do, things are slow, and situations have changed and I felt a little bit of despair arising, and then I caught myself and thought, okay, don't go that way. Let me just look online once more. By now, I've searched through 1000s of properties around the country. So right there and then, with Ajahn Brahm on the train, I looked online, and this property showed up in the perfect location, my choice location of everywhere in the country, I'd kind of whittled it down to this area so that we can still maintain contact with our supporters, because there aren't that many, so not many locally. And so I phoned the agent there and then, and I said, we've got one hour spare while Ajahn Brahm is here, because he's only here another three days, can we come and see it. And amazingly, they had an opportunity for us to come have a look. And I just looked at it, liked it immediately, that turned into liked it a lot. And by the time we were sitting down in the lounge together with Ajahn, I was like, I love this. This is perfect, because a sense of just peace came over me, like a sense like I can land here and there's a beautiful dhamma hall, which is where I'm sitting. There's another room where which is even a bit bigger and can take about 20 or 30 people. What I loved is that this room for meditation is completely separate from the others. That was always my kind of, that's like a non-negotiable. So we found this place and managed to tell the retreatants on the last two days of Ajahn's tour, and we were about £800,000 short, which is quite a lot of money. So we told them, just thinking, let's see. And we did a little bit of fun fundraising with like, little kind of pictures with Ajahn Brahm quotes and things like this. And I was just so touched that my own volunteers, who are not rich, were donating like, £4000 for a little pack of cards with Ajahn Brahm quotes. And I was overwhelmed and then we started receiving offers of loans, and all together, we collected probably up to £900,000 worth of loan offers, interest free from people around the world. And what I noticed, the thing that made me realize we can do it, is that they were not Ajahn Brahm supporters. They were mine. And I feel like crying when I say that, because these are people that you know I've been serving through the zoom and meeting and developing relationships with over many, many years. A couple of them were actually closer to Ajahn Brahm, they were kind of his disciples, but they know this project too, but they were mostly kind of homegrown through the project, and so it was an inside thing. And then I realized, gosh, even though we can't possibly accept all those loans with the paperwork and the auditing, we're ready, this is actually right.   Ajahn Brahm went back to Perth three days later, and that happened to be a trustee meeting over there, and they made a decision to loan us the funds from there. The only thing now is that we still have the debt, and we still have to sell the other property to pay this off, and that's becoming very laboured and slow. Because it's Buddhist friends, I think we're going to be okay.

 

Helen: Well done that is marvellous.

 

Thank you so much for being with us, it's really amazing to hear this story of your project.

I really would like to thank you for taking the time when I know you're so busy, and I wish you a very safe trip coming out to Australia.

 

Ven Canda – links for website and youtube

https://anukampaproject.org/youtube/

https://anukampaproject.org/

https://anukampaproject.org/donate/