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20,900 members across 12 groups — monastics, scholars, householders, and pilgrims, sitting together at the same cushion across many time zones.
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All discussions →A nun’s pilgrimage to Lumbini
I came to Lumbini for the first time at twenty-one. I returned this month at seventy-six. The dust is the same. The trees are taller. The pilgrims are younger. The Maya Devi shrine has been beautifully restored. What surprised me most: I am still moved. After fifty-five years on the path, I am still moved.
A flower blooms not because it tries. It blooms because the conditions are right…
A flower blooms not because it tries. It blooms because the conditions are right. Our practice is to be the conditions. Sun, water, silence. The blooming is not ours.
The cave teaches what the city cannot
People ask me what twelve years in a cave taught me. The honest answer: it taught me that the cave is not a place. The cave is what we cease covering with noise. You can find it in Manhattan if you stop running. You can lose it in Lahaul if you bring your phone.
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out…
Breathing in, I know I am breathing in. Breathing out, I know I am breathing out. This is enough. This is the whole of it. The rest is decoration.
On being a siladhara
I have lived as a siladhara — a ten-precept nun — for thirty-five years. The status questions, the structural questions, the future of women in the Theravada — these remain unresolved and they matter. But none of them have ever once stopped me from sitting. The practice does not wait for the structure.
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Lumbini Pilgrims
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Pali, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Chinese, Vietnamese. Working on what survives translation and what does not.
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The Buddha’s teaching meeting the world. Climate, justice, mental health, the public square.
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- 1. Right speech. Truthful, timely, kind, gentle, and useful.
- 2. The cushion before the keyboard. Sit, then speak.
- 3. Verified teachers carry responsibility, not authority. Listen widely.
- 4. No commercial promotion. Dana is welcomed; selling is not.
- 5. Disagree without disrespect. Refute positions, not people.
- 6. If a thread is harming, step away. The dharma will not be lost.