Dayachitta was born Marian Monas in 1953 in Melbourne, Australia, daughter of Dutch migrants. Her father was Jewish, her mother Protestant; her mother's family sheltered her father from the Gestapo. After the break-up of her parents' marriage and a financially impoverished childhood in Tasmania, she dropped out of higher education and came to the UK. She developed skin cancer in her 20s, and gradually discovered that the way of Buddhism was right for her. Now living in a small house in Cambridge which she shares with other women associated with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, she teaches Buddhism and leads retreats, and works part-time at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre and part-time as an acupuncturist.
"I felt that the world was a malevolent place, where people could be murdered for having the wrong identity. I thought the world might be out to get me. My inward struggle has been against that, towards a sense of trust."
"You acknowledge that you get things wrong, and you or someone else got clobbered by that, so you forgive yourself for your ignorance and you forgive the other person too. It takes away the blame. It's a middle way between naiveté and cynicism. You need to have experienced betrayal to understand that. You have to come out of the Garden of Eden."