Ceremony and ritual realign us with the Way, with the Dharma, with health and well-being. They help to clear what is accumulated, generating toxicity, pain, and suffering. In the Bodhisattva Way, what’s personal or collective doesn’t really matter. Personally there is a lot of psychological spiritual work around defining boundaries—what belongs where. But ultimately, when there’s suffering, we attend to it where it arises, whether it’s ours or wherever it came from. And sometimes we can’t, and we just leave it there, but we can still offer compassion. Even that adds a drop to the stream, helping to dissolve what came before.
Thanissara, MA
Residential Retreat Teacher
Thanissara is a Dharma teacher, author, poet, activist, and former Buddhist monastic. Her life and work sit at the meeting place of contemplative practice, ecological awareness, collective healing, and cultural transformation. Her activism has been shaped by efforts to undo patriarchy within Buddhist systems, deep engagement in rural post-Apartheid South Africa, and an ongoing exploration of collective liberation in times marked by ecocide, genocide, and the rise of fascism.
She trained for twelve years as a monastic in the the Thai Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah, and has practiced Kuan Yin Dharmas through the transmission of Master Hua for many decades. She is also informed by over a decade of ceremonial work within Indigenous lineages in South America, including sustained traditional dieta practice, working with plant teachers, shifts in consciousness, somatic healing, and pathways toward collective and systemic transformation.
Together with her partner, Kittisaro, she co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat Center in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, while also cofounding and supporting a number of rural development projects in the Southern Drakensberg. In 2017, they went on to co-found the California-based non-profit Sacred Mountain Sangha.
Thanissara's Upcoming Programs
Short Program | Online
Sunday, October 25 | 10:00 AM - 3:30 PM
Intimacy with a Living World: Reclaiming Sacred Relationship in a Time of Profound Unraveling
What happens when we experience ourselves not as separate observers of the world, but as participants within a living, sacred web? In a time of climate breakdown, ecocide, genocide, and rising authoritarianism, we will explore a Dharma of radical intimacy. Drawing on Kuan Yin and the teachings of emptiness, meditation, prayer, and ceremony, we will reclaim relationship with an ensouled world—and explore compassionate resistance as an expression of belonging, protection, and love.
Thanissara
Dharma Library
Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Thanissara through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses.