America's Amazing "Buddha Girl"

Mother Asokha with Dhr. Seven, Ashley Wells, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly

The amazing "Buddha Girl" -- Ratanayani -- at nuns' full-ordination ceremony for three Western Theravada Buddhists, Dharma Vijaya Temple, L.A. supported by Bhikkhu Bodhi, Wisdom Quarterly, Ruth Denison, Ven. Karunananda Theri, family, friends, Nov. 2012 (WQ)

Bible Belt South: Georgia borders North and South Carolina (aussiefitzy.com)

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Bright Buddha banner (Georgie_girl/flickr)

DHARMA VIJAYA TEMPLE, Los Angeles - Wisdom Quarterly loves and supports "Buddha Boy," Nepal's Ram Bahadur Bomjon (aka Ven. Dharmasangha, formerly Ven. Palden Dorje).

Apsaras (Andreadaddi/flickr)

And late in 2012 we met an equally amazing American "Buddha Girl," the samaneri Ratanayani. She is a Cambodian-American (Theravada Buddhist) child in the U.S. who felt so strongly about ordaining as a nun and making known the Buddha's liberating teaching (Dharma) that she swayed her Georgia town to make accommodations and swayed her reluctant brother (photographed above in Buddhist robes next to her as he holds his breath with arms crossed) to come along with her on this monastic journey.
 
She is a samaneri (a female novice, "little ascetic," probationary "Buddhist nun-in-training"). She intends to become a bhikkhuni (fully ordained Theravada nun) in America's Bible Belt.

Angkor Thom (Ramsch_ursel/flickr)

We spoke to her mother, who told us the details and have been hit and miss about publishing the story without an extended sit down interview with the family.

Buddha Boy, a bodhisattva intent on training in the Ten Perfections to eventually become a supremely enlightened teaching buddha (samma-sam-buddha).

The venerable novice Ratanayani ("Jewel Vehicle") is a Cambodian-American Buddhist, the first "little nun" (samaneri) from Clayton County, Georgia, Southern United States of America.

Her family has many accomplishments to announce. For example, on November 5, 2013 the novice and her brother, Jadetha Samanera, were set to receive the first proclamation from Commissioner Jeff Turner of Clayton County, Georgia. This award was the first ever issued by a commissioner to any Buddhist monastic in Georgia's history.

The award was presented in the town center with reporters from local papers in attendance. We will offer more "Buddha Girl" coverage but first, What is a Buddhist "novice"?

• Going Forth: A Call to Buddhist [Monasticism]
• The 10 Training Precepts of a Buddhist Novice
• Novice Chants (excerpt from The Khuddakapatha)

10 Questions of a Novice

Samanera Pañha, "The Novice's Questions" (Ven. Piyadassi, edited by Wisdom Quarterly)

1. What is one? All beings subsist on nutriment [Footnote 1].
2. What is two? Name and form [2].
3. What is three? The three types of
   feeling (sensations) [3].
4. What is four? The Four Noble Truths [4].
5. What is five? The Five Aggregates of Clinging [5].
6. What is six? The six internal sense bases [6].
7. What is seven? The Seven Factors of Enlightenment [7].
8. What is eight? The Noble Eightfold Path.[8].
9. What is nine? The nine abodes for beings [9].
10. What is ten? Endowed with ten qualities, one is called an arhat (a fully enlightened person) [10].

FAME: depressed, drunk, sickly Selena (W)

FOOTNOTES: 1. "There are these four nutriments for the establishing of beings who have taken rebirth or for the support of those in search of a plane to be reborn. What are the four? Physical food, gross or subtle; contact as the second, intention [a representative mental formation] the third, and consciousness the fourth" (SN 12.64).

2. Mental and physical phenomena.

3. Pleasant, painful, and neutral (neither pleasant nor painful).

4. Disappointment (suffering), the origination of disappointment, the cessation of disappointment, the path of practice leading to the cessation of disappointment.

5. Form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.

6. Eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, and mind.

7. Mindfulness, keen investigation of mental phenomena (dhammas), energy (persistence), rapture (joy), serenity (calm), concentration (collectedness), equanimity (non-bias).

8. Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

9. Seven stations of consciousness and two spheres. There are beings with diversity of diverse form (body) and diverse perceptions, such as human beings, some devas, and some beings in the lower realms; this is the first station of consciousness. There are beings of diverse form and singular perceptions, such as the devas of Brahma's Retinue generated by the first meditative absorption (jhana); this is the second station of consciousness. There are beings of singularity (not undiversified) form yet diverse perceptions, such as the Radiant Devas; this is the third station of consciousness. There are beings with singular form and singular perceptions, such as the Effulgent Streaming Devas; this is the fourth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of perceptions of [physical] form, with the disappearance of perceptions of resistance, and not attending to perceptions of diversity, [perceiving] 'Space is boundless' arrive at the base of consciousness of Boundless Space; this is the fifth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of the base of Boundless Space, [perceiving] 'Consciousness is boundless' arrive at the base Boundless Consciousness; this is the sixth station of consciousness. There are beings who, with the complete transcending of the base Boundless Consciousness [perceiving,] 'There is nothing [or no-thing],' arrive at the base of Nothingness (the Void); this is the seventh station of consciousness. The base of non-percipient beings and, second, the base of Neither-perception-nor non-perception; these are the two spheres (Maha-nidana Suttanta, DN 15).

10. "The right view of one beyond training (asekha), the right intention (non greed, non harming, non wrath) of one beyond training, the right speech of one beyond training, the right action of one beyond training, the right livelihood of one beyond training, the right effort of one beyond training, the right mindfulness of one beyond training, the right concentration of one beyond training, the right wisdom of one beyond training, the right release (liberation) of one beyond training" (AN 10.112). 

Tyler, 9, dad, and Sherpa scale tallest peak

Pat Macpherson, CC Liu, Pfc. Sandoval, Wisdom Quarterly; KPCC FM (SCPR.org)

(BBC) No Sherpa means no success on mountain: The Sherpa's Story (2013 documentary)

Aconcagua (Daniel Garcia/AFP/Getty Images) and Tyler Armstrong (Kevin Armstrong/AP)

  

Our hero Buddha Boy (dharmasangha.info)

A 9-year-old boy from Orange County has become the youngest person in recorded history to reach the summit of Argentina's Aconcagua mountain, which is the tallest peak in the Western and Southern hemispheres.

Tyler Armstrong of Yorba Linda reached the summit on Christmas Eve (Dec. 24th) with his father Kevin and a Tibetan Buddhist Sherpa, Lhawang Dhondup, who has climbed Mt. Everest multiple times.

I challenge you to karate, Tyler!

"That really hit my heart because me and my dad [and my Sherpa] did it together," Tyler said. "Most 9-year-olds...usually play video games, so they don't expect a 9-year-old to climb a 22,841 foot mountain."

 

They were in fine spirits Friday as they left Aconcagua, whose sheer precipices and bitter cold have claimed more than 100 climbers' lives.

"You can really see the world's atmosphere up there. All the clouds are under you, and it's really cold," Tyler said, describing the summit to The Associated Press. "It doesn't look anything like a kid's drawing of a mountain. It's probably as big as a house at the summit, and then it's a sheer drop."

(Journeyman Pictures) Climbing Mt. Everest with Nepal's Sherpas

 

Palestine-Israel at peace

Only 30 percent of the 7,000 people who obtain permits to climb Aconcagua each year make the summit, said Nicolas Garcia, who handled their logistics from down below. No one under 14 is usually allowed, so the family had to persuade an Argentine judge that Tyler could safely accomplish the feat. In their case, they took the "Polish Glacier" route, which doesn't require climbing, and roped themselves together only when crossing steep ice-covered slopes.

 

"Any kid can really do this, all they have to do is try. And set their mind to the goal," said Tyler, who worked out twice a day for a year and a half to prepare for the climb. He also held fundraisers...

Aconcagua's previous record-holder was Matthew Moniz of Boulder, Colorado, who was 10 when he reached the summit in 2008.

7-y.o. Incan mummy (AcEx)

There was one younger boy who climbed the lower slopes of Aconcagua, Garcia noted: An Inca boy was sacrificed some 500 years ago at 16,400 feet on Piramide ("Pyramid"), one of the mountain's lower peaks. Scientific tests on the mummy, recovered in 1985, put his age at about 7.

Tyler had already climbed the 19,341-foot Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania at the age of 8, and with Aconcagua conquered, is determined to reach all "seven summits," the highest mountains on each of the seven continents. More

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