Career
Born in 1947, Ajahn Candasiri was raised as a Christian in Edinburgh, Scotland. She worked as an occupational therapist in the United Kingdom after graduation from university. In 1979, the monastery was little more than an abandoned, dilapidated house.
After the group turned it into a functional residence, the nuns moved to a small house nearby and fixed it up.
They called it Āloka Cottage and eventually founded the siladhara ordination community there. In 1983, Candasiri took siladhara ordination (brown robes and 10 precepts).
lieutenant consisted of a unique set of 137 rules and a new version of the Patimokkha recitation created by Ajahn Sumedho so that the women monastics could be trained in Ajahn Chah"s lineage. Ajahn Candasiri was one of the pioneer siladhara monastics who were trained by bhikkhus (fully ordained monks), in parts of the Suttavibhanga and a version of the Vinaya Patimokkha.
Some of the siladhara sisters became skilled Sangha members, capable of keeping the patimokkha, living in harmony and maintaining their community with very few resources.
Foreign years, Ajahn Candasiri and the other siladharas remained at the Chithurst monastery despite the siladharas being subordinated to monastic mentor Though the siladhara community grew over the years, some began leaving to seek full Vinaya training. Ajahn Candasiri had stayed in the siladhara community which shrank to three nuns at one point.
She is one of the siladhara who has been allowed to teach and lead retreats.
As of 2015, she is one of the most senior monastics in the Amaravati Sangha.