About Achalamayi

My birth name is Mervyn. I was born and currently live in Sri Lanka. I represent the Dharmadatu Sangha in this country. I originally worked in the field of aviation and took up meditation in the 1980’s and began devoting all my time and energies to Buddhist study and teaching meditation and the Dharma. I was associated for a considerable length of time with a Buddhist movement based in the United Kingdom and spent time going on meditation retreats there. It was my connection with this group that first brought me into contact with Paul Beard and his approach to the Dharma. I have also spent time on solitary retreats at meditation centres and forest hermitages in Sri Lanka.

​I have had the privilege during my time as a meditation teacher of teaching meditation to a former President of my country, to insurgents in rehabilitation camps, trainees in a project of the U.N. Association of Sri Lanka, and to foreigners in tourist hotels. I am also a free-lance writer. My work has been published in Sri Lankan newspapers and I have been on the editorials of two Sri Lankan English journals. I have also written the memoirs of a colourful, eminent Sri Lankan personality. My current writing is aimed at the redemption of Buddhist values in a land which has strayed far away from them. I continue to teach meditation. I was ordained into the Dharmadatu Buddhist Order in Sri Lanka by Paul Beard on 13th June 2014.

---