The Pārāyana Vihāra community will be in Winter Retreat Jan 15 – March 18. Please check the Events section for the Sunday Gatherings schedule.

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Resident Community

Ayya Ānandabodhī

Ayya Ānandabodhī was born and raised in Wales, UK. Ayya first encountered the Buddha’s teaching in her early teens while reading about the Four Noble Truths. This was life-changing and from that moment she experienced a deep confidence in the Buddha’s insight and a wish to understand his teachings more deeply. At the age of 24, Ayya began monastic training at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in England under the guidance of Ajahn Sumedho. Seventeen years later she moved to the USA with a wish to create more opportunities for women monastics. In 2011 she took full Bhikkhunī Ordination, joining the worldwide revival of the Theravāda Bhikkhunī Order. Ayya Ānandabodhī loves to share the Dhamma. Ayya’s practice is guided by early Buddhist scriptures, living in community, and through nature’s pure and immediate Dhamma.

Venerable Sīlānandā

Ven. Sīlānandā grew up in Alexandria, Virginia as the only child of a Filipino immigrant father and Caucasian-American mother. She received a BA in sociology and a MA in public administration before working for seven years as a program and policy analyst in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Refugees, Population, and Migration and Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons. Ven. Sīlānandā studied Buddhism during her senior year of college and became affiliated with the Insight Meditation of Community of Washington in 2014. After living and teaching English at a monastery in Nepal in 2016, she moved to Sravasti Abbey, a training monastery in the Tibetan tradition near Spokane, WA. She took novice ordination as Ven. Thubten Kunga under Venerable Thubten Chodron in 2019, and full ordination under Venerable Master Wuyin in Taichung City, Taiwan in 2024. In November 2025, Ayya Ānandabodhī ordained Ven. Sīlānandā Bhikkhunī into the Theravada monastic lineage, with Bhante Sumitta Maha Thero serving as the presiding monk elder.

Venerable Satimā

Venerable Satimā was born in Little Rock, Arkansas and grew up the youngest of 13 in the small rural town of Hazen, Arkansas. She discovered the Buddha’s teachings in her mid-thirties from her first meditation teacher, Tara Brach. From 2010 to 2012 she participated in Spirit Rock’s Community Dharma Leaders (4) teacher training program at the conclusion of which she resolved to take the brahmacariya vow for life. Not long after, she visited the Bhavana Society in High View, WV where she met the mindfulness meditation master, Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, who in April of 2021 became her Sāmaṇerī preceptor. In October of 2024, Venerable Satimā took full Bhikkhunī Ordination, joining the great lineage of Theravāda Bhikkhunīs around the world. Her love of Dhamma practice in accordance with the Early Buddhist Suttas complements her deep aspiration to not give harm but to help others in the gentle ways of the Buddha’s own attendant and her lineage role model, Venerable Ananda.

Anāgārikā Khemā

Anāgārikā Khemā (previously Bryanna) grew up in rural Minnesota. After college and two years in the Peace Corps, she spent seven years becoming a grown up in New York City. She moved to Washington state in 2021. After cycling sufficiently through a pattern of psyched-about-life-to-existential-crisis, she found her way to more serious inner work and meditation in 2018, which made her a little less restless, a little less angry, a little more pleasant, and a lot more content.

Her practice has continued to deepen since then, with renunciation becoming increasingly important. She has explored many spiritual traditions and tools and was particularly drawn to Theravada Buddhism. She found her way to the Clear Mountain Monastery community in 2022 and was thrilled when Ayya Anandabodhi landed in the PNW soon thereafter. In July 2024, she took the eight precepts from Ayya Anandabodhi and explored a lay renunciate lifestyle, with an intention to await the right conditions to allow her to go forth. She served three months at Parayana between January and April 2025 and in November 2025, took on the Anagarika training at Parayana Vihara.

Joan Wheeler

Joan grew up in New Jersey, spent seven years living and working in New York City immediately after graduating college, and lived in Massachusetts for 38 years before moving to Port Townsend to serve as steward. She has deep ties with Insight Meditation Society (IMS), where she began her practice 25 years ago, and where she first encountered Ayya Anandabodhi. Joan has an affinity with early Buddhism and the Thai Forest tradition. She has been on an accelerated path of practice since 2019, which has been fueled by sutta study, the guidance of dear teachers, the support of spiritual friends, as well as her connection with nature and its inhabitants. Being a mother to a son and a daughter and the aunt to a niece and nephew has been among her greatest blessings and joys.