Beloved Daughter by Alana Terry

“Beloved Daughter” is about how a fourteen-year-old girl became the Buddhist teacher, Dhammawati, and her adventures along the way.

“When I first met Venerable Dhammawati, what impressed me most was her deep humility. As a young girl, with extraordinary determination, Venerable Dhammawati risked everything to flee the constraints of an ordinary life and dedicate herself to the freedom of Nibbana. Her journey through the jungles of Assam and Nagaland to Burma was both exotic and harrowing, with elephants, pythons, tigers, and arrests. Weaving history and legend, both ancient and modern, (the story) reveals the precarious path this fortunate daughter embarked upon in order to realize her dreams.”
Karma Lekshe Tsomo, Sakyadhita International

Dhammawati is renowned as a teacher of Buddhism. As a teenager in 1950, she ran away from home in Kathmandu, determined to go study Theravada Buddhism in Burma (Myanmar). After studying for over a decade, she became both the first non-Burmese and the first Nepali to attain one of the highest degrees in the Burmese Buddhist education system.

In 1963, Dhammawati Guruma returned to Nepal to found Dharmakirti Vihara in the old city of Kathmandu where she dedicated herself to teaching Theravada Buddhism to lay Buddhists, helping the needy, and raising the status of women in Nepali society. When asked how many people have attended her teachings, she smiles. “Hundreds of thousands perhaps…”