The
Venerable Dr. Kusala Ananda Thera is a Buddhist monk of the Theravada
school. He is Swiss citizen and also Czech national, thus speaking several
languages. He presently lives in a Forest Monastery near Sri Lankan
ancient royal town Kandy, where his teachers, the German Theras Nyanaponika
and Nyanatiloka have been living.
After an intensive meditation training with Acharya Anagarika Munindra
in Bodh-Gaya, India, he became a teacher of Satipaþþhana-Vipassana-Meditation
in 1967. Then during the nineteen seventies, he worked in Switzerland
as psychotherapist and professor of psychology at the Berne University.
He is the founder of the Swiss Buddhist Union and the Dhamma Group.
In 1983 he has moved to Sri Lanka, where he lived at first as Anagarika,
then since 1987 as a family father. Since the nineties he has been teaching
Dhamma in Czech Republic, while lecturing also at the Universities in
Prague, Olomouc, and Brno; he has founded several Bodhi Groups in the
main cities of this newly liberated country. In 1997 he has returned
home to Sri Lanka and received there ordination as a monk (Bhikkhu)
named Kusalananda.
Venerable Kusalananda mediates the Buddha Teaching as a practical method
of life mastering (Ayu-Kusala), as it is explained in his book
The Art of Happiness - Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, which
has been published in several languages still under his lay name
Mirko
Frýba. His latest English book has the title:
THE PRACTICE
OF HAPPINESS - EXERCISES AND TECHNIQUES FOR DEVELOPING MINDFULNESS,
WISDOM, AND JOY, Shambhala Publications, Boston & London 1995.
Ven. Ayu Kusalananda
Sri Dalada Tapovanaya
Forest Monastery
Udawatta Kele
Kandy, Sri Lanka
ayukusala@hotmail.com
