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Nuns leave; now in need of support
The following are letters from four individual nuns who left the communities or the monastic family associated with Amaravati and Chithurst Buddhist monasteries in 2010. They explain why they have left. There is more information about the situation under Nuns topics if you care to know more. As each of these sisters is leaving an established community and setting forth into uncharted territory, some remain in robes as nuns and some disrobing, each has a different way to contact her to be of support. Those details are included at the beginning of each letter.
Warm greetings!
Your loving support and generosity have enabled me to have a positive, comfortable, and easy transition to doing what is close to my heart.
After an empowering and inspiring experience of working in the hospice and hospital in London, I realised I would like to share, and practice the teachings more deeply with people in their spiritual awakening. My intention is to do the traditional retreat by going to India. As all of you know, taking care of ones citta is taking better care of others.
As some of you may know, it is my wish to set up a place of practice, not for monastic training but as a refuge. This process have started with the setting up of a web site: www.kalyanamitta.org.uk
I feel very sad about what has happened over the last years, especially regarding the 5 points and the consequences of this situation. Deep in my heart I cannot continue to support the community. I have decided to continue as a Theravada nun but not be part of the samvasa.
I want to make it clear that initially I did not leave the monastery because of this issue, I left, because of my own personal spiritual growth. But all that has happened since does effect me deeply.
I will always have deep gratitude and respect for the four fold Sangha and in particular to Luang Por Sumedho for his wisdom and vision, to be such an incredible pillar and enabling and allowing us to fulfil what we have come for to be in this world.
I will always share with you, your family and friends all the merits I have cultivated for many lives until now and will be in the future.
Wishing you deep peace, and an ocean of Blessings,
Sister Upekkha
Ajahn Kovida:
Dear All,
I hope you are all well and coping well enough.
I am writing sadly to share some more news....After much soul searching I have come to a place where I now feel the need to move on from our community. I have decided to leave in November when I go to Burma for a month. I still feel very committed in my heart to being a nun so do not intend to disrobe. I imagine this will not come as a complete surprise to you as some of you know I have been wavering.
The whole series of developments over the last 2 years has been very difficult and challenging for many of our whole community, lay and monastic. In my 15 years as a nun the idea of leaving these communities hadn't seriously occurred to me until last Vassa.
Since then I have inquired into that impulse to find what feels most true. Over these past months I have gradually come to a deeper sense of important areas personally and collectively which we struggle to address as a monastic community. The result of not addressing these areas feels like it to leads to a breakdown in communication and relationship which then makes clearing of misperceptions harder to achieve.
It feels essential to me to be receptive to what arises as best I can, and then listen and respond. Of course I don't always manage this as you well know, but it has been and still is what I most want to develop.
I feel very very sad but also clear in my heart about this step and I will miss you all very much and will definitely stay in touch.
I am deeply grateful for the Teaching and Training and what I have learned from living together within this vehicle which has so many blessings.
with much love and gratitude,
Sister Kovida
My dearest friends on the Path,
Warmest greetings from Thitamedha.
I would like to inform you about my new changes.
The last letter I sent you with my plans to be a tudong nun is now out of date, unfortunately.
Being in California for the last 3 months, as part of the Saranaloka project, and living with the sisters in Aloka vihara has been deeply nurturing and nourishing, and also revealing for me.
I have been very touched and moved to be part of this project and to help even a bit with establishing the independent nuns' community in the US.
As some of you might know, the events of last year and in particular
the introduction of the 5-points agreement to the sisters, was the most challenging and painful time in my monastic life.
My heart has been breaking after I agreed to it. The result of this painful process was shocking for me. While here in California, I realised I cannot any more continue to be a Theravada Buddhist nun.
I need to leave monastic life, and I will disrobe on 2nd of August at CBM and leave on the 4th.
I went through deep emotional trauma, which I have been able to attend to and be with during my stay in California, in the nourishing and nurturing environment where the Feminine is valued. I experienced a ground which deeply appreciates and welcomes women samanas.
I have been a monastic for almost 16 years and a siladhara for 14 years. It was the most transformative and wonderful part of my life. It enabled me to be who I am now and I am deeply grateful for having had this opportunity.
But, in this hierarchical structure one has to really be alert and align the Heart with Love and Compassion so as to relate to each individual, not in accordance with hierarchy, but as a fellow human Being, trying to resonate with the pains of others and cultivate ahimsa. Otherwise, one can easily get conditioned to relate to the world and fellow human beings from this position of hierarchy.
After living in monastic mixed communities for almost 16 years I have come to the understanding that in order to flourish and grow, monastic women have to live separately. This is mainly because of the lack of equality for the female samanas in the mixed communities.
Even though the majority of the monks on the personal level could be friendly and supportive - being real brothers - the Theravada monastic system itself, which is based on hierarchy and patriarchy (in its essence) is very undermining, and lacking in respect for the Feminine or female samana. I share this based on my personal experience.
The longer one is living in this system being a female samana the more one faces these challenges. On the individual level, one could practice with it for a while and keep letting go and keep releasing the pain/dukkha of it, but in the long term , in order to grow and unfold to our true beautiful human potential, we all need an environment which is nourishing and caring, based on mutual respect, Love and equality -- despite gender, years of monastic life, and the number of precepts one keeps.
My previous plans and letter about the tudong/pilgrimage was very uplifting for me as it was for many of you. Almost every one of you were very kind and supportive and encouraging when I announced my plans in January to go and be a tudong nun. And now I've realized how deeply I was affected by the 5 points and events of the last few years, resulting in my decision.
It is strange, but despite the pain of last year, I am basically very well - clear and strong and steady. Deeply well in the core of my Being. I am fully committed to The Path Of Awakening through Cultivation of the Heart, through Love and Compassion. And I will continue my Spiritual Path as a lay practitioner.
In regards to my future plans, I would still like to be a wandering yogi-practitioner, a pilgrim for a couple of years. And after that I do not know. The Path is wide Open.
Well, my dear Sisters and Brothers on The Path, I want to thank you all of from the depth of my heart for all your love, support and encouragement all these years. I will keep you all in my heart and prayers,
Much love and an ocean of blessings,
Thitamedha
Sr. Sumdeha: Contact Saranaloka Foundation: www.saranaloka.org
Dear Venerable Sisters, Brothers and friends,
Having lived in the communities of Amaravati and Chithurst for 12 years, I am writing to let you know of my intention to leave the Siladhara training. I will go to Aloka Vihara in San Francisco until mid-November and disrobe after my return to the UK at the end of the year.
This decision comes with sadness. Many of you are aware that there is a spate of sisters either disrobing or stepping outside the Siladhara order (wishing to continue to live as nuns outside of our current structural framework).
My own decision to leave is very much related to my sense of practice and that the the ethos of our community as it has been evolving is not one I can align myself with.
What I have learnt as a Siladhara includes a lot about focus and discipline and I do v much appreciate having a container that encourages the reflective heart. Meditation and the teachings and friendships I have received have helped me to access a sense of inner spaciousness that is indeed precious and a ground from which reflection and wisdom can arise.
I have always practiced with Luang Por Sumedho's teaching of embracing what arises and trusting that awareness will bring a sound spaciousness or response - what is truly liberating - in each situation. What I recognise through this is that the inner space I find in my own heart is not one that simply withdraws from the world. Even if our world is a monastic world, we all belong to one; we all have conditions in which to cultivate spaciousness and presence, or not.
What I recognise now - and what inspires me - is that the inner space we can each find has a capacity to respond and relate beyond the patterns of the purely conditioned mind. This for me is the beauty of practice. Connecting with our innate spaciousness we can transform and liberate ourselves through the material of our conditioned lives - how we relate internally and externally. Both, in my own sense, are part of awakening.
This is what has worked so far for me, and what I want to continue to cultivate. I am truly, deeply grateful for this learning and want it to continue.
The actions and responses (or non responses) of our community in the past couple of years - and the way these have been supported with reference to Dhamma Vinaya - have been deeply painful.
The encouragement to reflect on the suffering one creates in ones own mind is valuable, but, as I have said above, for me it is not where our responsibility (or the liberative quality) of practice ends. There is also the aspect of bringing the spaciousness into our lives - opening the heart to responses in the present - new ground in ourselves and in each other, the willingness to trust and inquire and free ourselves and each other from identities.
This is not what I have experienced in the process with the 5 points, nor what I hear encouraged. The relational is tending to be seen as more' worldly' than as a valid ground for supporting each other in awakening.
With this model of practice what I experience is the hierarchical system as we have inherited it can stay in place without reflection, processes such as that with the 5 points can happen, and in my sense, a lot of unnecessary fear and power identities can be preserved. I don't want to judge, but if I really look into what inspires me as a vehicle for awakening - my heart no longer sits within this.
The crux of the matter, it seems clear to me, is the integration of the feminine. The whole aspect that respects the relational as a field of inquiry and awakening has been clearly discounted in our own tradition especially in the past couple of years. There has been a kind of closing ranks. With this movement not only is a more masculine model reiterated but this model is able to hold up the male institution without a clear need for reflection. If the field of awakening is only that which arises in ones own mind there is no need to inquire, for example, into how we are holding our model of vinaya, or how we are living in relation to each other. This level of inquiry is frightening and uncertain (for everyone) - and so, as I experience it -the feminine, and women, are once again pushed to the edges, and what is 'safe' is preserved.
What is sad is the lack of trust, inner and outer. Such an inquiry would not necessarily remove the structures - but it would ask an aliveness and presence which is challenging for every human being.
Personally I feel this is worthwhile - how structure and aliveness work together seems to me one of the greatest jewels monastic life can highlight. It can encourage exploration and courage outwardly and inwardly so we find freedom also with our own inner structures.
It is because of the closing down to this level structurally that I feel concerned - and why, in my own sense of practice there is a need to move on.
I have sat with this process over a long period because I feel this tradition has such a wonderful pearl at its core; because I love community life and have wished to support it, and continue to learn, in all ways that I can. And because I profoundly appreciate the friendships and teachings, monastic and lay, that nourish and sustain ongoing opening and inquiry and deepening of spiritual practice.
I still feel connected on this level.
May all beings awaken,
with love
Sr Sumedha
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