Fearless Mountain Newsletter
Winter 2010 Articles
Saranaloka: The Light of Refuge Other articles… Calendar View Archive
Left to right: Ajahn Metta, Sister Sumedha, Ajahn Anandabodhi, and Ajahn Santacitta at Montgomery Woods
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New Year’s Eve isn’t a holiday on the Theravadan calendar, but a gathering in San Francisco that day and into the night celebrates more than the passage of time. December 31st is the opening night of Āloka Vihāra, the first Thai Forest Tradition monastery for women in North America.
Ajahn Ānandabodhī, Ajahn Mettā and Ajahn Santacittā, three senior nuns from Amaravati Monastery, along with Anagārikā Santussikā, will be the vihāra’s first residents. They traveled to San Francisco from England in late fall, bearing abundant blessings and the gift of a Buddha rupa for the new monastery from Ajahn Sumedho and the Amaravati Sangha. After a stay at Abhayagiri, Ajahns Ānandabodhī and Mettā accompanied Ajahn Amaro to teach the Thanksgiving Retreat at Angela Center, before settling into the San Francisco house with Ajahn Santacittā and Anagārikā Santussikā.
The vihāra will be in the Sunset District, at 1632 48th Avenue, in the same house where the three ajahns lived in January and February of 2009, until Saranaloka Foundation, sponsor of the nuns’ trip here, can provide rural land for a permanent monastery, with room for lay women
and men to stay and for women to train and ordain.
It seems both auspicious and fitting that Āloka Vihāra’s opening is on the Full Moon Uposatha, an occasion for recommitment to the Triple Gem, and that that the celebration spans the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.
The new monastery has antecedents near in time and far. Perhaps its beginnings are in the time of the Buddha, who had many female monastic disciples, including many arahants. In ancient India, many nuns lived in independent women’s communities. Or, perhaps it began with the first eight-precept anagārikā ordination of women by Ajahn Sumedho at Chithurst Monastery in England 30 years ago. Eventually, the Sīladharā ordination, comprising ten precepts and more than 100 other training rules, was developed. Today there are two Sīladharā communities in England, living side-by-side with the monks’ communities at Chithurst and Amaravati.
Or perhaps it began with a conversation between vipassanā teacher Ruth Denison Page 2 of 5
and Jill Boone, now President of Saranaloka Foundation, at Dhamma Dena, Ruth’s center in Joshua Tree. Ruth and Jill shared a desire to see the nuns well-provided for and established in the United States, and they drafted plans for a non-profit to support them.
Thus, in 2004, Saranaloka Foundation was born. Saranaloka’s mission is to provide support for the teaching of the Dhamma by nuns in the Thai Forest lineage of Ajahn Chah, to act as financial steward for the nuns, and to support
the establishment of a permanent residential vihāra.
Since then, Saranaloka has brought nuns from Amaravati and Chithurst to the United States to lead retreats, daylongs and evening sitting groups. A devoted group of hundreds of supporters has grown around the country, including in the Bay Area, the Pacific Northwest, the Southwest, the Midwest, New York and New England.
But the Sīladharā had long been a familiar presence in the United States. Nuns have accompanied Luang Por Sumedho and Ajahn Amaro on almost all the retreats they have taught here since 1990, including those at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Angela Center in Santa Rosa, and the City Of Ten Thousand Buddhas, near Ukiah. Over the years, many individual nuns have visited, and some have come frequently, developing close and enduring relationships with many lay students and teachers and fellow monastics.
Meanwhile, as the Sīladharā communities at Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries have grown, more and more women have desired to enter the holy life. But living space is limited, and the waitlist to become a novice can be years. Clearly, women need more places to train in the Ajahn Chah lineage.
Also, as the Sīladharā community grew and developed, the nuns became interested in seeing how community life would unfold in a separate nuns’ community, just as separate monks’ communities have flourished around the world.
These trends in the United States and Europe converged about two years ago, when Jill Boone sent an e-mail to the nuns in England, reminding the senior nuns at Amaravati and Chithurst of Saranaloka’s interest in starting a Page 3 of 5
monastery for nuns in the United States.
Ajahns Ānandabodhī, Mettā and Santacittā began to consider the possibility. Having each lived in the Sangha for more than 15 years, they were interested in taking a new step. They shared their thoughts and dreams, sensed the potential, and began to form a vision: a place where women could train as anagārikās and Sīladharā together, in a community of
women removed from the immediate presence and support of monks.
Their sisters supported the idea, and Ajahn Sumedho rejoiced at the possibility of establishing a monastery for nuns in America, where Abhayagiri was thriving. Ajahn Amaro and Ajahn Pasanno warmly welcomed the addition of a ‘sister’ monastery and encouraged both the nuns and lay supporters to pursue their vision.
A series of supporters’ meetings began during Ajahn Mettā’s visit to California in 2007 to lead the Thanksgiving retreat with Ajahn Amaro. In the winter of 2008 Ajahn Ānandabodhī and Ajahn Santacittā spent two months traveling up and down the West Coast, visiting groups and meeting with supporters. It was clear that there was fertile ground for a new monastery. Both women and men appreciate women teachers, and women want female role models as well as the opportunity to undergo monastic training.
Until last year, the nuns had been fairly itinerant during their visits. In 2009, for the first time, Saranaloka leased a house and set up a temporary vihāra for January and February. With the nuns staying in one place for an extended time, more people could get to know them and experience the flavor of monastic life, built around silence, contemplation, renunciation, and devotion.
Ajahn Ānandabodhī, Ajahn Mettā, Ajahn Santacittā and Sister Sumedhā lived in the house in the Sunset District, keeping the monastic precepts, offering pūjā, meditation guidance and Dhamma talks for lay people, observing the Uposatha (moon days) and going on almsround in the busy commercial district around 22nd Avenue and Irving Street. Golden Gate Park would do for a forest, and Ocean Beach for long walks and bonfires.
An energetic group of lay supporters coordinated Page 4 of 5
rides and provided meals. So much dāna was offered that the extra was regularly passed on to local food banks. At evening pūjās and Dhamma talks, visitors from near and far overflowed the small shrine room.
Large numbers of people attended events outside the vihāra, too. More than 200 people attended a daylong at Spirit Rock on Valentine’s Day. The nuns were invited to visit sanghas around the Bay Area, including San Francisco Insight, Insight Meditation Center, Coastside Vipassana, Santa Cruz Vipassana Center and others.
The nuns also established friendships with other Buddhist monastics. Several Bhutanese monks, in town for a show of Bhutanese art at the Asian Art Museum, visited the vihāra, as did Thai monks who had lived in San Francisco for many years.
When the board of Saranaloka held its annual meeting at the vihāra in mid-February, it was clear that the time was ripe. The board invited Ajahn Ānandabodhī, Ajahn Mettā and Ajahn Santacittā to return to the United States at the end of the year to help Saranaloka fulfill its founding mission.
The nuns returned to England to seek final permission from their community and to request the blessing of the Elders’ Council, composed of the abbots, their assistants and the senior nuns of Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries. At their meeting in April 2009, the Elders agreed, and preparations for the opening of the vihāra at the cusp of the new year began.
A dedicated group of supporters went to work securing zafus, phone service and a lease for the vihāra, arranging the nuns’ schedules and travel, posting news on the Saranaloka website, and tending to visas and health insurance.
And all continue to hold the vision of a permanent Āloka Vihāra on beautiful rural land, large enough to accommodate a greater number of Sīladharā and anagārikās, with quarters for visiting lay men and women to live for short or longer stays. Although the proposed monastery will be in the Bay Area, donations for land have come in already from around the nation and the world.
The opening celebration Page 5 of 5
will begin with the meal offering at 11 a.m. on December 31st, followed by an afternoon retreat that continues through the night (bring a sleeping bag if you wish to stay over!). At 7 a.m. January 1st, there will be a communal breakfast.
Please visit the Saranaloka website, www.saranaloka.org, for more details of the December 31st vihāra opening, the vihāra daily and weekly schedule, and a calendar of events for the coming months. All are welcome. The website also has instructions for joining the Bay Area and national supporters’ e-mail lists.
