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20 EASTERN HORIZON | TEACHINGS

Santacitta Bhikkhuni was born in Austria and did her graduate studies
in Cultural Anthropology, focusing on dance, theatre and ritual. She
also worked in avant-garde dance theatre as a performer and costume
designer. In 1988 she met Ajahn Buddhadasa in southern Thailand,
who sparked her interest in Buddhist monastic life. She trained as a
nun in England and Asia from 1993 until 2009, primarily in the lineage
of Ajahn Chah. Since 2002, she has also received teachings in the
lineage of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.

Santacitta Bhikkhuni co-founded Aloka Vihara in 2009 and received
Bhikkhuni Ordination in 2011. She is committed to Gaia as a living being
and resides at Aloka Earth Room, currently located in San Rafael, CA.

Eco vs. Ego: The Planet and Us

By Bhikkhunī Santacittā

Teaching at Spirit Rock MeditaEon Center, Both photos above: Karuna Buddhist Vihara, Sunny Vale, CA, April 2023, meeEng with Anya
Woodacre, CA with Thanissara Mary Weinberg Santussika, Ayya CiMananda, Anagarika Sarana, Anagarika Bethany.
and Pawan Baraja, October 2022

AS MONASTICS, we are taught to If we can learn to hold our whole We grow, we age, we die, and we
contemplate old age, sickness, and life within the big picture of old return back to the planet again—
death every day. Reflecting on these age, sickness, and death, everything one chapter closes, another opens.
truths gives our practice a sense of cools down, and we develop a sense Through our meditation practice,
urgency, as we come to understand of perspective from which to make we come to see ourselves as waves
that we are all together in this—that better choices. rising and falling on the surface of
nobody is exempt from that fate. We a great ocean. We see that death
need to remind ourselves regularly When we look more closely, it isn’t really the end, and birth wasn’t
that, while we don’t know when we becomes apparent that it can’t be really the beginning, either.
are going to die, it is certain that we any other way. Death is the opposite
will die—that death is inevitable. of birth, not the opposite of life. If a wave rises out of the water,
For many people, death ideally There is no birth without death, it must eventually fall back into
would never happen. But dying isn’t and there is no death without birth. the water, and then other waves
a defeat or the result of a mistake. Our bodies arise out of the planet. will follow. Through the practice