About
Ajahn (Ven.) Canda Bhikkhuni is a meditation teacher in the Meditation tradition.
Teaching focus
Her teaching follows classical Theravada practice with anapanasati, the brahmaviharas, and the suttas as primary sources. She teaches from a renunciate framing while remaining accessible to lay practitioners. The work draws on Theravada Buddhism in its classical form as the foundational framework, taught with care for the textures of present experience rather than as abstract doctrine. Mindfulness of breath, body, feeling tone, and mental states forms the spine of the practice, with the four foundations of mindfulness as the standard organizational frame. The brahmaviharas, lovingkindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity, are taught as serious meditative work alongside the mindfulness curriculum. Lovingkindness gets serious time on retreat, treated as central practice rather than supplemental, and the broader brahmavihara framework offers additional ground for the slower work of equanimity and forgiveness. Daily-life integration runs through the recorded teaching as a steady concern. The same awareness that opens during a sit is the awareness that meets traffic, family, and work, and the teaching keeps coming back to that continuity rather than treating retreat as a separate world. Across the recorded teaching runs a steady commitment to the actual work of practice, the slow unfolding that doesn't always make for inspirational soundbites but that carries the path forward across years of sitting. There's also careful work with the harder stretches of practice, the dry months, the periods when nothing seems to be moving, the recurring difficulties that don't resolve quickly. The teaching treats those stretches as honest dharma material rather than as obstacles to be pushed past.
Background
Ajahn (Ven.) Canda Bhikkhuni is an established teacher in the Theravada tradition descended from the Burmese and Thai vipassana lineages as carried into the West. Ayya Canda Bhikkhuni is a fully ordained Theravada bhikkhuni based in the UK. She's the founder of the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project, which is establishing a bhikkhuni vihara in the British Theravada community. Her recorded archive holds about 54 talks across 10 retreats. The Dharma Seed archive at dharmaseed.org/teacher/1213 holds about 54 recorded talks across 10 retreats, a substantial body of work for students to study at distance. Established teachers occupy a useful middle position in the directory, with enough recorded teaching to give students a sustained body of work to study, and enough ongoing practice to keep developing. The recordings carry a quiet warmth and an attentive specificity, the kind of teaching that rewards careful listening over time. The teaching reflects both the depth of a long practice lineage and the practical concerns of contemporary practitioners working ordinary jobs, raising children, and trying to integrate serious dharma into lives that don't pause for retreat. That practical orientation runs through the recorded material as a steady undercurrent. Like many teachers in the wider Insight community, this teacher's path includes time on long silent retreat, ongoing study with senior teachers, and gradual integration of teaching responsibility through co-teaching and small local programs before stepping into broader retreat work. That apprenticeship model shapes the careful pacing of the teaching.
Lineage
Canda is a fully ordained Theravada bhikkhuni in the broader Western forest tradition, working to establish bhikkhuni monastic life in the UK through the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project. The teacher holds full monastic ordination and teaches from inside that renunciate framing. She founded and leads the Anukampa Bhikkhuni Project at anukampaproject.org, working to establish bhikkhuni monasticism in the UK.
What to expect
Retreats and programs through the Anukampa project follow Theravada monastic forms with morning and evening Pali chanting, formal sittings, and the rhythms of bhikkhuni community life. Retreats typically follow a classical Theravada structure with sittings, walking meditation, dharma talks, and one-on-one meetings with the teachers, often with chanting and shorter formal periods built into the schedule. The atmosphere is warm and committed rather than performance-oriented, with serious dharma underneath an accessible surface. First-time retreatants are usually welcomed without fuss, and the format is designed to support practitioners across a range of experience levels rather than only veterans. Newer students may want to begin with shorter programs and work up to longer silent residential retreats over time.