Bodhi Avasa was born in Wales in 1947 to an English/French mother and a German/Indian father, and grew up as a country boy. Much of what later became his way of sharing came from his contact with nature and from what he learned from his surroundings in those early childhood days.
On his ninth birthday he was seized, night after night for almost ten months, by an overwhelming fear of death. With no one to turn to, there was no choice but to stay with the feeling. Years later he would recognise it as a preparation for what was to come.
At fifteen he left home and went off to see the world with the British merchant navy, already aware that he was seeking something that could not be found in anything he had experienced.
After a number of glimpses of Oneness during his youth, at the age of twenty-three awakening took place, in a small Christian community in Blockley, England. In a single night the fear of death returned, and with it the seeing that what he is cannot die: the room, and the sense of being someone separate from it, dissolved into light, and the light into nothing. There had been no spiritual practice, no method, no guru. Life was the path, if there was one at all. The sharing began that same day, as people were naturally drawn to him.
Only some years later did he come across the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and find a word for what had happened. In the years that followed, three communities arose around him in which there was a conscious living from Oneness.
For more than forty years he shared this message in talks and retreats across Europe, wherever he was invited, and especially in Italy. He always said very clearly that enlightenment is NOT spiritual, but ordinary and nothing special. This is what made his message so simple and available: it allowed others to see that what was true for him was already true of themselves.
“We are all already and always have been One Being.”
He never accepted the usual guru/disciple relationship, which in his eyes only deepened the sense of separation between people. He was directly Advaita in his sharing: immediate, to the point, and full of humour. Every question and every attitude was welcome, sometimes answered at length and sometimes with a short joke that brought the seeker straight back to the truth of the moment. His talks and retreats were filled with the joy and laughter of friends who had recognised the same thing and delighted in sharing it.
When he was not with friends he lived simply and close to nature.
He died in 2016.
His words remain on this website, in writings, audio and video recordings. Avasa often pointed out that when a master dies the message easily turns into a religion, and that what is shared must come through a living form: “The master is dead, it belongs to the past. And this is a living sharing.” And he also said: “The master never goes anywhere. The master is the source, the emptiness that never comes or goes. And the master can appear anywhere, anytime, and frequently does in other forms.”
“This can only be truly shared in Friendship.”
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What arrives THROUGH this form is not FROM this form.
It is a direct expression of Emptiness and, whether or not this is realized to be so,
it is directly TO Emptiness.
Avasa