Page 193 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

Lise Weil

Listening to Natural Law: Interview with Ayya Santacitta

Ayya Santacitta and Ayya Anandabodhi are two

Buddhist nuns who came to the U.S. from England in

2009 in order to found a residential monastic nuns’

community in the style of the Theravada Forest

Tradition. Two years after they arrived, they broke with

the order in which they had trained so as to pursue full

Bhikkhuni (nun’s) ordination, which, until a recent

worldwide revival, had not been available in the

Theravada tradition for almost 1,000 years. They

received ordination on October 17, 2011 at Spirit Rock

Meditation Center in Northern California. In 2012, they

were joined by Anagarika Maria, who received

bhikkhuni ordination at their community, Aloka Vihara,

Ayya Santacita
on November 1, 2014.

As both an ardent feminist and a practitioner of one form of Buddhism or another for close to thirty

years, I was inspired by their story. I liked the idea of nuns in leadership roles with no master! And I

liked what I read about them on their website http://saranaloka.org/about/videos/(emphases mine):

“They are dedicated to practicing the Buddha’s teaching in the style of the Theravada Forest Tradition.

Their practice emphasizes simplicity, renunciation, service and an orientation towards learning from the

natural world, all held within the context of the Buddha’s teachings. The sisters are committed to

embracing and integrating the realities and challenges of contemporary society into their practice.”

I became even more curious about these nuns when a friend directed me to talks in which they take on

the issue of our ongoing destruction of the biosphere with a directness and a passion that, as far as I

have been able to tell, is rare in Buddhist communities. http://saranaloka.org/teaching/eco-dhamma/ As

I read through their teachings and listened to their talks, I was moved by their obvious commitment to

living in truth—or in Ayya Santacitta’s words, “To live a life that is congruent with what we know to be

true.” Their website includes a long list of resources on climate action. In fact, Ayya Santacitta, the

subject of this interview, traveled across the country on the climate train in September 2014 to

participate in the Climate March, of which she said: “It was not just a dead serious march—but a

celebration of becoming a channel for the Earth and to speak on behalf of Nature.” Recently, she co-

organized an interfaith climate march in Sacramento (a photo gallery).

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