Samita ASBL

Can a Woman Become a Buddha?

There are a few passages in the Pali canon talking about different inabilities of women. These include being a Perfectly Enlightened Buddha, being a Universal Wheel-turning Monarch, being the King of Gods (Sakka), the King of Death (Māra) or Brahma….
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A Retreat With Ajahn Brahmali

When I first heard that Ajahn Brahmali is conducting sutta retreats I was not particularly interested in the first place. I had just started to discover how meditation is working, and that it actually can work even for me, so…
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Dark Matter

A reflection on the Hamburg Conference 2007 By Bhikkhu Sujato Originally published on 22/8/2007 On the final morning of the First International Congress on Buddhist Women’s Role in the Sangha, the representative of the Chancellor of Hamburg University read out…
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The Palm Tree with the Rock

A Story after a Legend from the Sahara Desert It was late afternoon, and there was a wind stroking gently over your hair and giving an ida of coolness to your face. It was the time of the day enticing…
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Bhikkhuni ordination and Burmese politics

The former Burmese Bhikkhuni Saccavadi, who was ordained as a Bhikkhuni in Sri Lanka in 2003, was accused and jailed in Burma some years ago. Some observers feel convinced that her later disrobing came as a direct response to the…
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The Art of Fighting

(by Silvie Weißkircher) First published 2014 in the magazine “Gegenwart” of the German Association for the Blind and Visually Disabled. Being blind, I feel like I live in a vacuum between two worlds. The one I cannot let go of…
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How to Grow a Nun

By Bhikkhu Sujato Originally published in May 2010 What do I know about growing nuns? Well, not much, actually, but I’m trying to learn. I use this metaphor because I want to emphasize the organic, complex, contextual nature of what this…
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Anything new about the new monastery?

Twenty months ago, in March 2015, we started out with just a handful of people (actually, exactly three… ) to found Samita ASBL. Our starting point we knew, but where it would lead us to was completely uncertain. It is…
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