Brother Mayadhiish

 

Brother Mayadhiish, Matt Oppenheim, 72, passed away on June 8, 2025 from complications due to his Type 1 Diabetes. He took LFT training in Toronto, Canada in 1979. After that he managed the printing press in the Ananda Marga Sectorial Office in Denver, Colorado. He became a Wholetimer in 1983 and served in New Zealand and Australia. There he brought the local community together to create the Ananda Marga River School in Maleny, Australia. He had personal contact and numerous reporting sessions with Baba. He published a young adult novel, To Color a Warrior. Due to his health complications, in 1995 after 12 years he left his acaryaship.

He then earned a PhD in Transformative Learning and Change from the California Institute of Integral Studies. His PhD thesis was "Using Prout to Evaluate and Support a Community Samaja Movement: The Maya of Panimatzalam, Guatemala", a seminal study that was excerpted in After Capitalism: Economic Democracy in Action. Mayadhiish taught anthropology for 23 years and became a Fellow with the Society of Applied Anthropology. He was the founding coordinator for Service Learning at California State University, Channel Islands. He was Service learning trainer and coordinator, Adopt -A- Watershed, Los Angeles Unified School District and Albuquerque Public Schools. He was Native American Education Committee and Diversity Training facilitator, and coordinator for Parent, Family and Community Involvement in Albuquerque Public Schools. He was facilitator of Los Angeles Urban Funders.

He married Kanako from Japan. They moved from Albuquerque to Asheville in 2018. He became an advisor of the Prout Research Institute. In 2024 he published Watershed Worlds: Eight Indigenous Models for Planetary Survival and Resilience.