Bhante Henepola Gunaratana — known affectionately throughout the Theravada world as Bhante G — is the founder and abbot of the Bhavana Society in High View, West Virginia, one of the longest-running Theravada monasteries in North America.
Born in the rural village of Henepola in Sri Lanka in 1927, he was ordained as a samanera at twelve and as a bhikkhu at twenty. He studied at Vidyalankara College in Sri Lanka and the Buddhist Missionary College in India, and went on to receive a PhD in philosophy from American University in Washington, DC. He has taught Buddhism and meditation at over a dozen universities, including American University, Bucknell, and the University of Maryland.
In 1985 he founded the Bhavana Society on twenty-five forested acres in the Allegheny Mountains. The Bhavana Society offers a full programme of meditation retreats throughout the year, full ordination training for both monks and nuns, and a particularly notable commitment to bhikkhuni ordination — Bhavana has been one of the few centres in North America where the full bhikkhuni lineage has been transmitted to Theravada-tradition women.
His 1991 book Mindfulness in Plain English is widely regarded as the most accessible introduction to Theravada vipassana practice ever written in English; it has sold over 250,000 copies and been translated into more than a dozen languages. The book belongs to a small handful of works — alongside The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching and What the Buddha Taught — that have shaped the Western lay encounter with Buddhism.
Bhante G's teaching style is famously gentle, patient, and rooted in his own decades of cave-and-monastery practice. Now in his late nineties, he continues to teach with extraordinary clarity. The Bhavana Society receives applications for retreats throughout the year; personal interview applications are received quarterly through the monastery office.
