Bhante Sujatha

Bhante Sujatha is a Theravada Buddhist monk from Kandy in Sri Lanka, often called the loving-kindness monk. He took robes as a boy of eleven, trained at a monastic school in Kandy and taught there before moving to Brisbane in 1993 to teach meditation. A few years later he came to the American Midwest, helped found a Sri Lankan temple in Michigan, and then settled in McHenry County, Illinois, where classes he began in 2003 at a local college and a Unitarian church grew into the Blue Lotus Buddhist Temple in Woodstock. He serves as its abbot.

His teaching is relaxed and practical rather than doctrinal. He pairs metta, or loving-kindness, meditation with mindfulness practice, and his dharma talks look at how ordinary work, family life and difficult moments can become the ground of practice. He wants complete beginners to feel at home, and he speaks about kindness, patience and joy in plain terms. Alongside weekly sessions at the temple and on Zoom, he visits colleges and communities across the United States. His books include Sitting on the Toolbox, written with Stacey Stern, and he shares many guided meditations and talks online.