Samaneri Jayasāra

Samaneri Jayasāra is a ten-precept Buddhist nun in the Theravāda forest tradition who lives at Viveka Hermitage, a small monastic house near Mount Gulaga on the far south coast of New South Wales, which she shares with Ayya Jitindriyā. She first took robes as an eight-precept anagarikā in 2002, training at Dhammasara in Western Australia and at Amaravati and Cittaviveka in England, and took up the robe again as a samaneri in 2018, spending the next years at Santi Forest Monastery in New South Wales and helping it grow as a place for women monastics. Before ordaining she earned a doctorate in education, researching how spiritual traditions, Buddhism and psychotherapy meet, and taught psychology and counselling at university level.

She is best known for Wisdom of the Masters, a YouTube channel she began from the hermitage, where she reads aloud passages from Buddhist, Advaita, Dzogchen, Taoist, Sufi and Christian contemplatives, alongside her own guided meditations and yoga nidra practices. Her approach leans towards the non-dual: resting in awareness, self-enquiry and silence. The hermitage cannot host guests, so she teaches in person through occasional silent retreats at Kamalashila Buddhist Centre near Tilba, and shares guided meditations freely on Insight Timer and the hermitage website.