Venerable Samādhikusalà Bhikkhu
Bhikkhu Samādhikusalà is an ordained Buddhist monastic (Bhikkhu) in the Theravada tradition from Sri Lanka. He is a well-known meditation teacher and famous for his recollection of past lives and spontaneous recitation of ancient Buddhist scripts in his early childhood.
In his quest for liberation, the then layman Dhammaruwan was permanently ordained as a Buddhist monk on April 10th, 2016, by his preceptor and long-term teacher, Bhante Gunaratana. The ceremony took place in the Bhavana Society’s Forest Monastery in West Virginia, USA, before a large gathering of monks, lay devotees, students, and friends. Before ordaining as a monk, he taught meditation for many years as a lay teacher. He had previously led a normal married life before raising two children as a single parent.
He trained under many meditation masters and Dhamma teachers and has a very strong base of traditional orthodox Buddhist practice. He has also trained in non-Buddhist mindfulness and adaptations of Dhamma practices in modern Western traditions. These experiences have made him a teacher who delivers complex teaching in an applicable and palatable way that relates to contemporary lifestyles and challenges. His unique and personable style of teaching focuses on individual potential to empower meditators to progress in the path.
Rather than teaching the theory of meditation through lectures and public forums alone, Bhanté’s teaching focuses on the “Nirodha Retreat” allowing yogis to benefit from training in meditation lifestyle practice in a silent and secluded environment.
Today, Bhikkhu Samādhikusalà teaches and trains an exclusive group of meditation students at Nirodha Retreats Worldwide®. He is the Head Abbot of the Nirodha Meditation Centre and is also in the process of training of future teachers and completing the Retreat Centre.
Venerable Samādhikusalà Bhikkhu
A meditation master and Buddhist monk with over 40 years meditation experience and over 30 years of teaching experience.
Samādhikusalà Foundation
Samadhikusala Foundation is a non-profit organisation that holds the rights to publish, preserve, and propagate the teachings of Bhanté Samadhikusala Bhikkhu. The Foundation also manages the Colombo city Meditation centre and the Retreat Centre in the in Sri Lanka.
Biography by Bhante Gunaratana
Dhammaruwan was born in a small village near Kandy, Sri Lanka in November, 1968. From the age of about two, before he could read or write, he spontaneously started to chant the ancient Buddhist scriptures in the original pali language, known only to a few scholar monks.
Each day, somewhere around two o’clock in the morning, after sitting in meditation with his adopted and devoted Buddhist foster father for about twenty to forty minutes, he would spontaneously start to chant pali suttas. On the Poya or lunar Observance Day, he would sometimes chant for two hours. Dhammaruwan’s foster father started making amateur recording of the chanting and invited prominent scholar monk to listen. The monk verified that it was indeed the ancient pali language and the boy were chanting it in an ancient style which no longer existed in world.
At the age of three in “Kelstan” Kandy he started to chant a certain verse of “Dammacca Sutta” (“Chakkukarani Nayanakarani….”). Ever since that day he has been chanting suttas from the tripitaka (Pali Canon) with little or no mistakes. The chanting style of these suttas are his own and nowhere else to be found or trace back to.
As the child grew in age and was able to speak more, he related where he learnt this particular style of chanting the suttas and how he was able to chant such deep and profound suttas, which even an adult find difficult to chant precisely. He has said that in 5th century A.D. he together with few monks accompanied the scholar Monk, Bhadanthachariya Buddhagosa to Sri Lanka. He has said that including him (Mudithagosa) the others were monks who had by-hearted the tripitaka or part of it. He says it is from this memory that he chants the suttas by recollecting that life. Until the age of 10 he was able to chant the suttas. The earliest recorded chanting was at the age of three.
Featured in Publications
Bhikkhu Samādhikusalà (previously Dhammaruwan) is featured in “Rebirth in Early Buddhism and Current Research” by Bhikkhu Analayo as a case study of xenoglossy, the ability to speak languages one has not been taught.
"The case Bhikkhu Analayo cites, of a young boy able to recite Pali from a bygone era that he is unlikely to have encountered in any other way, also corresponds to my experience".
- Foreword by His Holiness the Dalai Lama