Gotamī: A life Rewritten by the Dhamma is an upcoming book of an up-and-coming female monastic. She could possibly be a leader among women and men in the Theravada world, one whose potential is, in my view, considerable. This soon-to-be-published book is the spiritual autobiography of an extraordinary young lady, formerly known as Martina. The book is a powerful and touching blend of unrelentingly honest retelling with inspiring reflections on the nature of the human desire for meaning, and how misfortune is often the key ingredient for happier things further down the line. The journey from Martina to Saddhamuni to Gotami is marked by an existential misalignment that is felt keenly and viscerally early on in the girl’s life, family ruptures, and misunderstandings on part of family members that would infuriate, perhaps even break, lesser women or men who sought to leave the household to become monastics.

Martina was born in 1999 in the beautiful Italian town of Catania, and took the name of Gotami on 9 December 2022, under her preceptor Ashin Nayaka, a US-based monk in the Burmese tradition. It was her second time ordaining in the same year. On her first ordination—the stakes of which she outlines in engrossing detail—she had taken monastic vows under Ashin Nyanadeepa, the abbot of Magghapala Vihara, near Yangon. This was a transformative experience that gave form to her very self-identity. She had taken the monastic name of Ven. Saddhamuni then, but her ordination was only temporary as per the Burmese tradition. The ephemeral nature of that ordination, crucial yet heartbreaking, led her to ordain again under Ashin Nayaka. The most famous bearer of the religious name she eventually assumed was Mahaprajapati Gautami, the Buddha’s stepmother who paved the path for women through the ages to enter the women’s order. Gotami is also similar to her heroine for the fact that she is also a torchbearer, a pioneer to inspire future women and men alike.

“To my last breath, I will regard Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī as the most remarkable example for women, symbolising both endurance and wisdom, both in ancient times and today,” she states in her extraordinary book. This is her first paperback publication, for she has traditionally been more at home being a social media presence. Her Facebook page, as of my writing this in November, has over 85,000 followers. A single post will usually have more than 1,000 likes, a reel or story, usually double or triple that amount. This Facebook page was in fact called “Gotami” and why she was initially discovered as such by Ashin Nyanadeepa, who would bestow on her that first ordination.

She is what one could call a Buddhist influencer in the most positive sense, and certainly that those of us who could be lumped into the relative “old guard”—rooted in traditional religion journalism—could endorse wholeheartedly. Throughout her book she also describes how she has rapidly over the past several years expanded into teaching and preaching—in the US, then in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, and now Australia. A fluent Sinhalese, Chinese, Italian, and English speaker, she is attuned with the social media habits of young people and communicates in a way that truly feels young, while not losing the essence of timeless Dharma truths.

She is currently based in Melbourne, and even though her heart longs for Asian cultures and contexts, I would argue—as an Australian-Chinese—that Australia itself is a Pacific nature bound to Asia by geography, demography, and necessity. Her aims are ultimately quite simple: to spread Buddha-dharma not in a specific country or region, but, in her own words, “. . . a school, a temple, a spiritual training centre where everyone—regardless of age or gender—can study, meditate, ordain, and grow in the practice of the Dhamma. But above all, I want to help women who are still too often sidelined in traditional religious life.”

Even though her social media is now unambiguous about her monastic identity, her growth and interest in promoting the Dharma began before she was a nun, and she was already gaining in popularity before her formal ordination. But her decision to be true to herself, to take the plunge and answer the call within her heart, brought transformation, or more accurately, a return to her true home. “Real rebirth happens when we let go of everything we never truly were—and embrace everything we’ve always been, deep inside. True freedom is the courage to become who you’re meant to be. To walk the path, even when it’s scary,” she writes.

In an autobiography, the author is obviously the protagonist. But she recognizes that an autobiography cannot be coherent or sympathetic without acknowledging the karmic bonds of other people’s roles and contributions in shaping her spiritual life’s trajectory. Gotami’s mother goes through her own compelling, deeply moving arc throughout the book. From disdaining and scorning Gotami’s aspirations to forgiving her for her bold journey to Myanmar and then the US, where her pastoral journey as a teacher really began. Eventually, she became one of her daughter’s greatest supporters, mirroring how the Buddha’s own family came back together in healing and shared practice. Gotami’s mother is an example of embodied Dharma. This is especially poignant when considering her mental health issues and cultural biases, which she eventually transcended for her daughter, along with many personal obstacles and tragedies that life threw in her way.  

This book is, in the tradition of spiritual autobiographies like Saint Augustine, about a self-reckoning. This young lady, once called Martina and now a female monastic in the tradition of holy women of the Buddhist order, has only just embarked on her spiritual journey. But her potential to grow into a future leader of a Theravada Buddhist community—perhaps even a global online version of such—is considerable. When she manages to become such a leader, the seeds of her maturity and progression will have been detailed in this snapshot of her religious life. This is the seed of a beautiful, mighty bodhi tree.

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