Dear Friends, Mitras and Order Members

I’m writing to let you know that our brother Abhayakirti, “He who is renowned for fearlessness” has passed away. He died at 11:20pm on Tuesday the 25th June 2024 in the St Barnabas House Hospice on the edge of Worthing, on the south coast of England. He was 69 and had been hoping to reach his 70th birthday, but the end of September proved to be too far off.

He was ordained at Guhyaloka in June 1990. His Private Preceptor was Suvajra and his Public Preceptor was Subhuti. He was given the Buddha Amoghasiddhi as his yidam.

He was born on the 30th of September 1954, in Jamaica were he grew up with his parents and older sister Jane and younger brother Michael. Eventually due to his somewhat wild and reckless nature as a teenager he was sent to the U.K. to live with one of his aunts and uncles at around the age of 16/17 to finish his education and complete his studies. It was here in the U.K. he got his degree in engineering and took a job at British Gas, and ended up in Manchester with his Jamaican wife Nada.

In Manchester he made contact with the centre there and Suvajra, who later became his Private Preceptor. Off and on he spent several decades working for Windhorse Trading and was something of the grandfather of Evolution shops.

After his ordination he decided to set up a centre in Nottingham with a few close friends and was its founding chairman (which is where I met him 28 years ago). Having stepped down after some 7 or so years he returned to working for Windhorse. After Windhorse closed in 2015 he moved to Brighton and took over running the last Evolution shop and then amalgamated it with Evolution Arts which was situated in the same building in Brighton.

He finally, post pandemic arranged to move the base of Evolution Arts from its building on Western Road to a base within the Brighton Buddhist Centre where he had become a trustee, regular study leader and meditation class teacher.

He spent the last few years living in his flat in Littlehampton just two or three blocks from the sea. I joined him there last year in June to either help him recover or to help him die from the cancer diagnosis he’d received. I have been deeply lucky, as I know many of you have too to have met this fine man and spent so much time with him. He has been my oldest and dearest friend from the very inception of my Buddhist life. He answered the door when I came knocking at the Nottingham Buddhist Centre, at the tender age of 17. And since that time he has been my greatest benefactor and Kalyanamitra.

My heart is full of gratitude, and I will miss his constant presence dearly.

The times and details of his funeral are still to be finalised, however the service will take place at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre, and he will have a woodland burial in the same site as Vidyasiddhi in Cambridgeshire.

With much metta,

Sthanashraddha