Travels

Bhante Suajto has been invited to go to Indonesia to attend a conference on the topic of bhikkhunis. This is mostly related to the local Indonesian Bhikkhuni Sangha and giving them support. They have not received support from all monks there and one monk has said that if you give good to bhikkhunis you will go to hell!

The conference will fit up 1300 to 1500 people. They have invited many different groups in Indonesia including University groups, local Sangha of both Mahayana and Theravada traditions and many more.

I first met Ayya Santini (one of the Bhikkhunis from Indonesia) when i was in Bodhgaya (click here for pictures from the Indian trip) in February this year with Bhante Sujato for the Tipitaka chanting. she is an amazing nun. I found out that she got a pass to stay inside the temple componds over night so that she could do meditation. she would meditation there all night, come out at later on in the morning and then go have a short rest before going to breakfast, then do the chanting all day and then also attend the Bhikkhuni and Samaneri training in the evenings. In her monastery in Indonesia they do 8 hours a day of meditation.

Ven. Tapassi is going to Melbourne for a short visit for the Vesak celebration to be held at that the BSV. He will be returning on the 30th of May Also on the 30th of May is the arrival of a Ven. Mudita from Perth who plans to stay with us for the rains retreat. We look forward to having him here.

Candle Light Vigil

9th April, The Santi community went to Sydney and spent a beautiful evening with Tenzin Palmo. That was a great and delightful up close chat on various topics at Susan's house. Tenzin Palmo's warm hearted, out spoken, humorous and spontaneous personality had instantly lit up the audience, inviting many good questions and answers.

After that, all of us attended the candlelight vigil 'Stand up for Tibet' at Martin Place, Sydney. Bhante Sujato gave a speech on peace action in support of Tibet. We were invited to do some chanting to bless the event.

Multiple Languages!

A simple form of Santi's website has been translated into many different languages. Keep in spirit with that fact that the Buddha wanted us to learn Dhamma in our own language we are thus making our website available in as many languages as possible. Anyone who was spend time at Santi would know that we serve a community of many nationalities.

So far it has been translated into:

Chinese people speak some form of Chinese as their native language, the worlds largest language family. We have , both both simplified Chinese for those from mainland China and traditional Chinese for those from Taiwan and Hong Kong. Thanks to all the hard work done by Ayya Jagariya for her hard work in translating it for us, i saw her working on it for many hours. One-fifth of the world’s population

Vietnamese. Australia has 180,000 + people who were born in Vietnam. As you may the Vietnamese community of Australia has been very generous in supporting Santi. A total of 68 million speakers world wide. Thanks to Bhante Mettabha for the translation.

Indonesian Bahasa. One of Bhante Sujato's Supporters in Malaysia knew someone in Indonesia who might be able to translate it in to Indo Bahasa. Thanks to Yulia from Indonesia for the translations.

Sinhalese is the language of Sri Lanka. Santi Forest Monastery receives most of it's lunch dana offerings from the Sri Lankan community. Australia has 70,000 + citizens of Sri Lankan origins. Thanks to Guptila's cousin for the translations.

Our Germen site is fairly new. A lot of the early 20th centry western monks to ordain in Sri Lanka were German. When we had visited Thailand in Feberary, we visited Wat Pah Nanachat and there were about 8 German and Austrian monks there. Thanks to Max from Austria for the translations.

Translations underway and to begin soon.

Hebrew - Underway at the moment. Anagarikaa Galia from Isreal is understanding the task of translating our site into Hebrew, she is however afraid that more Israelis will some to Santi!

French - Hasn't begun yet but hoping to start soon. Anagarikaa Jen learnt French at school and did her high school certificate in French in France, she also lived in France for sometime. Also our lay guest Dania who has our Polish roots (sadly her Polish to not good enough to translate the site) can also speak Fench because was lived in Quebec in Canada.

Did you know that English is the 3rd largest spoken language after Mandarin and Spanish? Thus we are looking for someone who could translate our site into Spanish, does anyone know anyone who might be interested in doing this? We would like to have as many language on our site so that as much people as possible can read our site, it is so nice to be able to read things in your native tounge and anyone who has been to a country that doesn't speak English would know how hard it is to get around, however when we meet someone who can speak our language it's so wonderful we could spend many hours talking, it is always nice to make people feel welcomed to help them to over come their shyness because of language differences. If you would like to offer your time to offer translate the site into a language you know please let us now by sending us an e-mail to the office.

Anagarikaa ceremony for Galia & Angie

Currently, we have total of 5 monastics. Three Bhikkhus (Ajahn Sujato, Bhante Tapassi and Bhante Mettabha) and two Samaneris (Ayya Jagariya and Ayya Adhimutta).

At this point in time we have five Anagarikas. Eva, Varada, Jen, Galia, Angie and our only male anagarika Daryl as well as Chandra as a long term resident.

Anagarikaa ceremony for Galia & Angie

Galia and Angie had their Anagarikaa ceremony on 12th April. We welcome both of them to the community. Galia is from Israel, she was a biologist and also an artist. She encountered Buddhism about 20 years ago and was inspired by the teaching of the Dalai Lama and Buddhadasa.She attended a retreat and heard a talk about renunciation and was inspired and thus she now has the aspiration to become a nun.

Angie is from Malaysia. When she was 5 years old she went to Sunday Dhamma school and also begun to practise meditation when she was 17. She is mother of 3 daughters, 14, 12 and 10. They also practise meditation and follow the path of dhamma. She was a volunteer yoga teacher at Sentul Temple, Malaysia. Her dhamma teachers including Bhante Javana and Bhante B. Saranankara. She met Ajahn Sujato in Bodghaya early this year and then came to Santi with the intention to ordain as a bhikkhuni.

Varadaa is from England. She started to lead a renunciate way of life in Aug 2000. Since then, she has kept the 8 precepts and spent most of her time practising in the forest monasteries of Ajahn Chah's tradition in Thailand, England and New Zealand.

She found out about the evolving Bhikkhuni Sangha at Santi whilst at Wat Pah Nanachat. Since then serendipity has led her here where she hopes to eventually ordain as a Bhikkhuni