Aggācāra International Education and Meditation Centre (Aggācāra International College): History of Aggacāra

Aggācāra comes from Agga + Cala, the founders and chief nuns of this centre. They are Sayagyi Aggavati and Sayagyi Cālā Therī.

In 2013, both sayagyis wanted to setup a centre that both of them could do own activities. Sayagyi Aggavati liked the ideas of meditation and a place for old folk to stay, whereas Sayagyi Cala liked education and activities for young people. That was why the email for this centre was setup in the year 2013.

Previously, while staying in own building in other meditation centres, we could not run our activities as we wished.

Hence, in the year 2014, with some fund donated by devotees, especially from Malaysia, we bought a piece of land about 45 feet width and 200 feet length, it was 5 pieces of small land combined together.

When starting this centre, it was difficult as there is no proper road and no electricity. The first thing for us to do was installing a pipe water pump connected to underground water so that we had access to clean water at all times.

We asked the contractor to build the very first building a small building now it is used as the kitchen. At that time, the water needed to pump up manually. Hence, washing, cooking, etc. took time and effort. In addition, food like rice and vegetable had to be cooked by charcoal.

After we had installed electricity, we could cook rice by rice cooker. But the electricity was sufficient only at night time so we had to cook the rice in advance at the night before. Normally, people did not offer cooked food to sayalays, (unlike monastery), so we had to prepare and cook the food ourselves.

Nevertheless, life was very peaceful, our centre was in the middle of ex-paddy field so we could see ever green land and blue sky, the view as super beautiful in the dawn and dusk time.

In the year 2017, we had converted our single floor Dhamma hall to double storey and this main building was sufficient for all activities like meditation, children education. Upstairs was for dwelling and downstairs was activities place.

In these few years, we had many children activities going on. So we invited some foreigners who wanted to teach children and get cultural exchange.

The next year, we built up a building in the middle of the centre. It has three foor, the first floor is kitchen and guest room, the second floor is where we stayed and it will be computer room in the future, the third floor is a private meditation place.

Then, after we acquired a piece of land just in front of us, we built up an education building. So far, we have used the classrooms for library, English and Japanese class.

Currently, we have run various education projects like English, Japanese, Chinese, Dhamma and children class.

In year 2020 and 2021, we also acquired some land (60 x 200) adjacent to the existing land. So from the narrow 45 X 200 land, our centre has the total area of 105 width and 200 length. So it becomes more spacious and we are now planting many trees like mango, jackfruit, guava and so on. We also raised up the land by putting more soil so that it could be free from yearly flood due to raining season.

In the future, we like to open a college to provide better education to the youths. We hope our good wishes and noble practice will be realized. By the way, Agga + cāra means Noble Practice. Every second every minute every hour of every day, we hope to practice Noble Practice (Aggācāra).

16 October 2022

After receiving the approval from the chief monk of Hmawbi township, we have decided to create online courses under the name of Aggacara International College. Now, it is still in the initial stage so we will do online teaching to devotees and interested students. We have started online Pali course in Mandarin and English. In 2023, we started basic and intermediate Pali classes.

Dec 2022 to Mac 2023

The upper storey of the Dhamma hall have been rebuilt as the smartboard walls were leaking with water especially during the raining season.