Bhikkhu Bodhi is the single most influential English-language translator of the Pali canon working today. Born Jeffrey Block in Brooklyn, he received a PhD in philosophy from Claremont Graduate School before travelling to Sri Lanka in 1972 to ordain as a Buddhist monk. He received bhikkhu ordination in 1973 under the renowned scholar-monk Ven. Ananda Maitreya Mahathera.
For over two decades he served as president and editor of the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, Sri Lanka, where he edited and translated foundational works of Theravada Buddhism. His translations include the Majjhima Nikaya (with Bhikkhu Nanamoli), the Samyutta Nikaya, the Anguttara Nikaya, the Bhikkhu Bodhi reader, and a substantial portion of the Abhidhamma — including A Comprehensive Manual of Abhidhamma. Taken together, his work has made the suttas of the Pali canon accessible to the English-speaking world at a scale and standard previously unimaginable.
He returned to the United States in 2002 and currently resides at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. He is the founder of Buddhist Global Relief, a humanitarian organisation that addresses chronic hunger and malnutrition, particularly in regions affected by climate change. Buddhist Global Relief operates in over twenty countries and has funded major food security and agricultural projects in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
Bhikkhu Bodhi teaches an annual cycle of suttas at Chuang Yen Monastery, livestreamed worldwide, which has become one of the most rigorous and accessible study programs in the Theravada world. His teaching style is precise, scholarly, and deeply grounded in the canon — he uses very little ornamentation, and the suttas themselves are made to do most of the work.
Applications for personal time are rare. The standard pathway is to study the recorded sutta lectures and to support Buddhist Global Relief.
