Picture of Thanissara

Thanissara

Thanissara (she/her) started Buddhist practice in the Burmese school in 1975. She was inspired to ordain after meeting Ajahn Chah and spent 12 years as a Buddhist monastic as a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. She has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for the last 30 years and has an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University & the Karuna Institute in the UK. With Kittisaro, she co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and helped initiate and support a number of HIV/Aids response projects in South Africa. Together, they also co-founded Sacred Mountain Sangha in California.  She has written several books, including two poetry books and Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth.
Practice
Practice

Background Resource

If you wish to learn the history and practice key components of the ceremony before participating, start here.

Cultivating the Conditions for Transformation

In this second session, we will especially make space for difficult emotions, especially fear, grief, and rage. We can investigate the narratives that support these emotions and how they might be loosened, meeting our habitual defensive responses not only with kindness but with clarity, courage, and determination. This is an ambitious journey, one that requires not only safety and compassion, but also a certain boldness. We are challenging massive forces and patterns; Mara doesn’t go down easy (and gets back up). So we can also purposefully discover and nourish our wholesome ambition.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
As wildfire threatens to engulf her home, and as the world faces disaster following on disaster, Thanissara draws courage from the extraordinary spirit of solidarity she encountered at Standing Rock.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Throughout the pandemic, the slaughterhouse has been a hotbed of virus transmission among its workers. But our compassion can't stop there. We are called to confront and remedy the horrific treatment of animals raised to feed us.
Creative
Creative
Dharma teacher, author, and activist Thanissara takes us on a shaman’s journey to face the ferocious gaze of the corona god who has emerged from the netherworld and thrown us into the in-between.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Climate science predicts that as temperatures rise, atmospheric stability falters. So with our politics and even sense of person steadiness, Thanissara, invites us to discover the touchstone that can see us through.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

A Brutal Year Ends as Extinction Rebellion Rise

In this intensely personal piece, Thanissara reflects on the events of 2018 and the unprecedented challenges to humanity they represent. She invites us to perceive their deep roots in the domination mindset and how we can, out of sheer necessity, respond with a fierce clarity of heart.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

Report from Standing Rock

"What one is bequeathed through the gift of Standing Rock is a clarified, strong, heart, burning with a light of commitment and hope in the face of incalculable odds."
EcoDharma
EcoDharma
Donald Trump will soon hold significant power in the US and indeed around the world and for many of us, that is truly ominous. But his is only a certain kind of power and, from the perspective of the Dharma, not the most important.
EcoDharma
EcoDharma

An Interview with Thanissara - Part 2

"The sacred feminine" is a convenient term, yet "all distinctions are transcended in our own minds and hearts." We may draw on the “collaborative energy of the feminine," to transform our current environmental crisis.