Bhante Henepola Gunaratana was ordained as a Buddhist monk at the age of twelve in Malandeniya, Sri Lanka. He's the author of Mindfulness in Plain English , Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness , and several more books--including his autobiography, Journey to Mindfulness . He currently lives at Bhavana Society Forest Monastery in West Virginia. Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi is an American Buddhist monk from New York City. After completing his PhD in philosophy he traveled to Sri Lanka, where he received full ordination in 1973, both under the leading Sri Lankan scholar-monk Ven. Balangoda Ananda Maitreya Mahanayaka Thera. From 1984 to 2002 he was the editor for the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, where he lived for ten years with the senior German monk Ven.

Nyanaponika Mahathera at the Forest Hermitage. He currently lives and teaches at Chuang Yen Monastery in Carmel, New York. Ven. Bodhi has many important publications to his credit, either as author, translator, or editor. These include The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha 1995, The Connected Discourses of the Buddha 2000, and The Numerical Discourses of the Buddha 2012. In 2008, together with several of his students, Ven. Bodhi founded Buddhist Global Relief, a nonprofit supporting hunger relief, sustainable agriculture, and education in countries suffering from chronic poverty and malnutrition.