Most Venerable Kiribathgoda Gnānānanda Thero is the founder of the Mahamevnawa Buddhist Monastic Order. He was born in Sri Lanka in 1961.

After a traditional Sri Lankan monastic education, while studying for the Sinhala Honours Degree at Sri Jayawardhanapura University, he had an unexpected opportunity to read the Buddha’s discourses in the Pāli Canon; because of this, he abandoned temple life and began to frequent forest monasteries and hermitages, offering his life to the Dhamma with a great desire to practice it.