Biography of Ashin Jotika Dhammasara

Biography of Ashin Jotika Dhammasara
Ashin Jotika Dhammasara was born in England in 1943.
He went to school and university in South Africa,
before leaving in the late 1960s to continue his search
for an understanding of life. He spent two years
traveling slowly through Africa and a year in England
and Europe before deciding to go back to university to
study religious philosophy and psychology in the hope
of finding the Dhamma in one of the worlds major
religions. In 1972 he started practicing meditation and
learning the Buddha’s teachings at a small centre in
London named Dhammapadipa. The following year he
was invited to live in the meditation center, to work, practice and look after the resident
monk and Dhamma teacher, Nanasobano bhikkhu.
He was the attendant there during the visit by Luang Ta Maha Boowa in the summer of
1974. Mid 1975 after returning from South Africa where he had spent nine months
looking after his parents he married his long time friend and fellow yogi, Virginia Ann
Perkins. In 1977 he met Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho, practicing under them at
Oakenholt near Oxford in 1978. In 1979 he took temporary ordination under the Ven
Mahasi Sayadaw with Ven Chanmyay Sayadaw as instructor, practicing under them
during their stay in England. The following year he practiced under them again for three
months.
Over the years he has practiced with other teachers from Burma, Thailand, Korea, Sri
Lanka, America and England. Once their children were finished university and
independent, his wife happily re-immersed in a career in math, he ordained under
Chanmyay Sayadaw in Yangon in 2006. In 2007 Chanmyay Sayadaw requested him to
supervise and provide guidance to the foreign meditators at his Yangon meditation
center in his absence.
When he was invited to Thailand in 2008, Chanmyay Sayadaw gave his blessing. He
visited many of the Thai forest tradition teachers, spending the vassa on his own in the
mountain forests of central Thailand at Dhammammolee a center administered by his
patron Ven Phra Phrommolee. After the vassa he taught both at Dhammammolee and
at Chanmyay Sayadaw's meditation center Dhammodaya near Nakhon Pathom.
During 2009 he spent six months teaching in the US before returning to Thailand to
practice under Luang Pu Uthai at Wat Khao Yai and Wat Tumphra Phu Wua. On his
return to the US in May 2010 he spent two months as 'monk in residence' at CooperRiis
a healing farm community for those suffering from mental illness, before coming to
Springfield to assist Chanmyay Sayadaw.