Dharma Teachers
of Barre Center for Buddhist Studies
Teachers are listed alphabetically by first name,
with monks and nuns given priority. You may also enter any part of
a name in the text box and click "Find Teacher by Name."
Ajahn Brahmali was born in Norway in 1964. He first became interested in Buddhism and meditation in his early 20s while visiting Japan. He took full ordination in 1996 at the Bodhinyana Monastery with Ajahn Brahm as his preceptor. Ajahn Brahmali is renowned for his excellent knowledge of the Pali language and his enthusiasm for teaching the suttas. He has also published numerous essays on important points of Dhamma, including the legitimacy of bhikkhuni ordination, which he is a supporter of. In 2022 Ajahn Brahmali was awarded an honorary doctorate degree for his contribution to Buddhist studies.
Born in Boston in 1967, Ajahn Jayanto grew up in Newton and attended the University of Wisconsin at Madison, during which time a period of world travel kindled a great interest in the spiritual life. A meditation class at the Cambridge Insight Meditation Center led him to live for a while at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he made plans to join the monastic community of Ajahn Sumedho as a postulant at Amaravati Monastery in England in 1989. Taking bhikkhu (monk) ordination at the related Cittaviveka Monastery in 1991, he trained there and at Aruna Ratanagiri Monastery until 1997, at which point he embarked on a period of practice in Thailand and other Asian Buddhist countries. He returned to the UK in 2006, where he lived at Amaravati until moving to Temple in 2014. Since 2009 Ajahn Jayanto has helped to lead the efforts to establish a branch monastery in New England, and he now serves as abbot of Temple Forest Monastery.
As a monk, I bring a strong commitment, along with the renunciate flavor, to the classic Buddhist teachings. I play with ideas, with humor and a current way of expressing the teachings, but I don't dilute them.
Sitting in a field of fifty to eighty people really starts my mind sparking. Since I don't prepare my talks ahead of time, I find myself listening to what I'm saying along with everyone else. This leaves a lot of room for the Dhamma to come up. Just having eighty people listening to me is enough to engage me, stimulate me, and create a nice flow of energy. The actual process of teaching evokes ideas that even I did not realize were being held somewhere in my mind.
Different teaching situations offer their own unique value. In retreat, you are able to build a cohesive and comprehensive body of the teachings. When people are not on retreat and come for one session, it opens a different window. They are more spontaneous and I'm given the chance to contact them in ways that are closer to their "daily-life mind." This brings up surprises and interesting opportunities for me to learn even more.
I'm continually struck by how important it is to establish a foundation of morality, commitment, and a sense of personal values for the Vipassana teachings to rest upon. Personal values have to be more than ideas. They have to actually work for us, to be genuinely felt in our lives. We can't bluff our way into insight. The investigative path is an intimate experience that empowers our individuality in a way that is not egocentric. Vipassana encourages transpersonal individuality rather than ego enhancement. It allow for a spacious authenticity to replace a defended personality.
Ayya Anandabodhi first encountered the Buddha’s teachings in her early teens, igniting a deep interest in the Buddha’s Path of Awakening. She lived and trained as a monastic in the Forest Tradition at Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries in England from 1992 until 2009, when she moved to the US to help open more opportunities for women to live the monastic life. She took full Bhikkhuni Ordination in 2011. Her practice and teaching are guided by early Buddhist scriptures, living in community, and through nature’s pure and immediate Dhamma.
Ayya Cittananda lives at Karuna Buddhist Vihara in Boulder Creek, CA. She teaches from the suttas of the Pali Canon. Ayya has been on the Buddhist path since being inspired in 2005 by a college philosophy class to spend time practicing at monasteries. After completing a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing and working at a hospital as a registered nurse in Texas, she lived as a monastic at a small Pure Land/Chan monastery in Florida for a year before moving to California. She spent two years living and working in Redwood Valley, made daily visits to Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, and sat several long retreats at various monasteries and meditation centers. She left Redwood Valley in 2013 in search of a place to ordain as a Theravada nun, spending six months at the Ajahn Chah lineage monasteries in England and Scotland. She also spent seven months at Aloka Vihara in Placerville, helping the nuns settle into their new home and serving the 2015 Winter Retreat there. Ayya Cittananda took Anagarika precepts at Karuna Buddhist Vihara in March of 2015, Samaneri ordination in April of 2016, and Bhikkhuni ordination in May of 2018 at Buddhi Vihara in Santa Clara, California.
Santacitta Bhikkhuni hails from Austria and trained as a nun in England & Asia from 1993 until 2009, primarily in the lineage of Ajahn Chah and has also received teachings in the Shechen lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She is committed to our planet as a living being and resides at 'Aloka Earth Room', currently located in San Rafael, California. Santacitta Bhikkhuni stammt aus Österreich and begann ihre Nonnenausbildung 1993 in England & Asien, vor allem in der Traditionslinie von Ajahn Chah und hat auch Unterweisungen in der Shechen Traditionslinie des Tibetischen Buddhisms erhalten. Sie ist unserem Planeten als lebendes Wesen verpflichtet und lebt im 'Aloka Earth Room', derzeit in San Rafael, Kalifornien.
Ayya Santussika, in residence at Karuna Buddhist Vihara (Compassion Monastery), spent five years as an anagarika (eight-precept nun), then ordained as a samaneri (ten-precept nun) in 2010 and as a bhikkhuni (311 rules) in 2012 at Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles.
Ayya Santussika was born in Illinos in 1954 and grew up on a farm in Indiana. While being a single mother, she received BS and MS degrees in computer science and moved with her two children to the San Francisco Bay Area. She worked as a software designer and developer for fifteen years. Her search for deeper meaning and ways to be of service led her to train as an interfaith minister in a four-year seminary program that culminated in an Masters of Divinity degree and a brief period of practice as a minister before ordaining as a Buddhist nun. She is currently serving on the Board of Directors for Buddhist Global Relief.
Ven. Bhikkhu Analayo was born in Germany in 1962 and ordained in Sri Lanka in 1995. In the year 2000 he completed a PhD thesis on the Satipatthana-sutta at the University of Peradeniya which was published as the highly regarded book Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization. At present, he is a professor at the Numata Center for Buddhist Studies, University of Hamburg, and works as a researcher at Dharma Drum Buddhist College, Taiwan.
Dharma practice is medicine for the mind -- something particularly needed in a culture like ours that actively creates mental illness in training us to be busy producers and avid consumers. As individuals, we become healthier through our Dharma practice, which in turn helps bring sanity to our society at large.
Giving dharma talks offers me the opportunity to express gratitude for my Thai teachers -- Ajahn Fuang Jotiko and Ajahn Suwat Suvaco -- in appreciation of the many years they spent training me, which came with the understanding that the teachings continue past me. Giving dharma talks also pushes me to articulate what I haven''t yet verbalized to myself in English. This in turn enriches my own practice. When you help a wide variety of people deal with their issues, it helps you practice with yours.
When giving a talk, I try to remain true to three things: my training, my study of the early Buddhist texts, and the needs of my listeners. The challenge is to find the point where all three meet -- not as a compromise, but in their genuine integrity.
For this, I play with analogy. Meditation is a skill, and our meeting point as people, whatever our culture, lies in our experience in mastering skills: how to sew clothes, cook a meal, or build a shelter. So I've found that one of the most effective ways of explaining subtle points in meditation is to find analogies with more mundane skills. Through the language of analogy we find common ground from which our practice can grow to meet our individual needs, and yet remain true to its universal roots.
