{"id":122550,"date":"2022-02-04T15:52:53","date_gmt":"2022-02-04T22:52:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=122550"},"modified":"2022-02-04T15:52:53","modified_gmt":"2022-02-04T22:52:53","slug":"the-death-of-the-most-ven-homagama-kondanna-maha-thero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2022\/02\/04\/the-death-of-the-most-ven-homagama-kondanna-maha-thero\/","title":{"rendered":"The Death of the Most Ven. Homagama Kondanna Maha Thero"},"content":{"rendered":"

German Dharmaduta Society Colombo<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Most Ven. Homagama Kondanna Maha\nThero<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is with great sorrow that we\nconvey the sad news of the death of Most Ven. Homagama Kondanna Maha Thero, one\nof Sri Lanka\u2019s best-known monks for Buddhist missionary work overseas, and\nmentor and meditation teacher of several famous people including a former\nPresident of Argentina.  Bhante Kondanna passed away on the morning of\nThursday, February 03, 2022, at the Heathrow Athula Dassana International\nBuddhist Temple, London, UK. He was 82 years of age.    <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

VENERABLE BHANTE\nHOMAGAMA KONDANNA was a Forest Tradition monk in the style of Ajahn Chah and\nwas born on April 15, 1939, in Homagama, (20 kilometers from Colombo), Sri\nLanka. He was the first of a large family. He attended Royal Primary School and\nThurstan College, Colombo. He was sent by his parents to London to study and graduated\nin automotive engineering in 1962. He went to work for the company Rolls-Royce.\nAfter a\n16 – year professional career in London he began to see the futility of the\nthings that had attracted him as a layperson. He realized that life was a\ntransient temporary journey with no real meaning and no permanence and in\nmonkhood, he saw a better alternative to live his life and work out his answers\nfor the imponderables of life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was ordained in 1978 on a barge at high\ntide on the River Thames (ordination on the water is an alternative when a\nproperly bounded location is not available). Ajahn Dr<\/em>. Hammalawa Saddhatissa<\/em> Thero (Head of the UK Sangha) was the preceptor\nand Ajahn Sumedho was the acharya. Thereafter he spent about a year and a half\nat the Hampstead Vihara and was a member of the pioneer group that carried out\nthe huge renovation and reconstruction needed to revive the Monastery at Chithurst from 1978\/79. In\n1981 he was sent to be with Ajahn Chah in Ubon. He started off on his\npilgrimage around the world to disseminate his message of peace and spiritual\nconcentration in 1983.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From Thailand, he went to Vipassana\nMeditation Center in Moratuwa. He also served as a member of the Elders\nCommittee for 11 years. He was the spiritual advisor of the Sewa Lanka\nFoundation. Sewa Lanka enhances the capacity of rural communities to\ndemocratically identify and address their own development needs and provides\nservices that contribute to the economically viable, socially just, and\necologically sustainable development of Sri Lanka. He has traveled widely in\nNorth and South America, Europe, and Asia where he has led retreats for the\nlast 40 years<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He was\nthe director of the Siresena Meditation Centre of Moratuwa in Sri Lanka. While\nserving in this capacity he used to travel all over the world sharing his\nmessage of peace and spiritual concentration. He ran meditation retreats in\nLatin America and he delivered talks on Buddhism and Meditation all around the\nworld. Meditation is the only way to transform human beings, get them\naway from their bad habits, from their bad temper, from hate. We can change\njust by thinking, we can control our mind<\/em>\u201d, stated the monk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Sri\nLanka, Ven. Kondanna was a popular preacher of Bana Sermons at various Buddhist\nTemples and particularly at Meththaramaya,\nLauries Road, Colombo 04. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He has\nserved as the Anusasaka of the German Dharmaduta Society (founded by Asoka\nWeeraratna) for some time and delivered a Bana Sermon on the occasion of the\ncommemoration of the 50th<\/sup> anniversary of the founding of the German\nDharmaduta Society (1952 \u2013 2002) held in Colombo.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bhante\nHomagama Kondanna Thero was a frequent visitor to Das Buddhistische Haus\n(Berlin Buddhist Vihara) in Berlin – Frohnau, Germany. He has facilitated\nnumerous dhamma talks and retreats over the years at Das Buddhistische Haus.\nBhante Kondanna also spent a couple of months there at DBH once again at the\nend of 2021, before finally heading to the UK where he passed away. Bhante\nKondanna had highly recommended his disciple Bhante Pelane Dhamma Kusala for\nDhamma work at Das Buddhistische Haus in Berlin, and we are very grateful that\nthe latter has now become the current Resident monk at DBH (Berlin Vihara). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

German\nDharmaduta Society<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colombo<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

February\n05, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

German Dharmaduta Society Colombo Most Ven. Homagama Kondanna Maha Thero It is with great sorrow that we convey the sad news of the death of Most Ven. Homagama Kondanna Maha Thero, one of Sri Lanka\u2019s best-known monks for Buddhist missionary work overseas, and mentor and meditation teacher of several famous people including a former President […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[167],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-122550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}