Adbhutaja

My name, Adbhutaja, means “he who is born from what is wonderful”. It was kindly given to me by my teacher and private preceptor, Dharmachari Paramabandhu. I was ordained in 2023 at Guhyaloka, becoming the first Ukrainian to be ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order. My journey with Triratna and Buddhism began in 2011 in West London, when I was searching—desperately, at the time—for a meditation or Buddhism class that could help me find answers to the pressing existential questions of birth and death. I have not yet found those answers, but I have found a path that leads toward them.

Over the years, I have been involved in activities at the West London Buddhist Centre, the London Buddhist Centre, in Vancouver during my six years living in Canada, and now at the Auckland Buddhist Centre.

Outside of Buddhism, my greatest passion is languages. In my experience, language is one of the finest vehicles for deep communication—communication that, at its highest, transcends words and points to the profound unity of all sentient life. In addition to my mother tongue, Ukrainian, I am fluent in Mandarin Chinese, French, and several other languages. My latest project in this area is Hindi—though I still have a long way to go before fluency.