Bhante Anandajoti is one of the most prolific living scholars of the Pali canon and one of the principal English-language teachers at Lumbini. Born in London in 1955, he ordained in Sri Lanka in 1985 and spent the formative decades of his monastic life in Burma, Sri Lanka, and Malaysia before settling for substantial periods at Bodhinyana Monastery and at the Royal Thai Monastery in Lumbini.
He has produced an extensive body of public-domain English translations of the Pali canon and post-canonical texts, including the Dhammapada, the Sutta Nipata, the Udana, the Itivuttaka, the Khuddakapatha, the Mahaparinibbana Sutta, and substantial portions of the Vinaya and the Khandhakas. His translations are characterised by close fidelity to the Pali, accompanied by clear annotation and metrical analysis where the source is in verse.
His website AncientBuddhistTexts.net has become an essential reference for Pali-language students worldwide; the corpus he has built there is widely cited in academic Buddhist studies and is used as primary reading in monastic seminaries from Sri Lanka to North America.
At Lumbini, he is a familiar figure at the Royal Thai Monastery, where he teaches in English and conducts intensive Pali readings during the Buddha Jayanti, Asalha Puja, and the Pavarana ceremonies. He has lived at intervals at the Sacred Garden of Lumbini for the past fifteen years and is one of the principal living scholars of the place's textual heritage.
Applications for personal time are received through the Royal Thai Monastery on a quarterly cadence, with priority for serious Pali students and for practitioners undertaking long-form retreat at Lumbini.
