Ep 30 - Liberation from Mental Suffering with Buddhist Female Monk Ven Pannavati

Sicco Rood interviews meditation teachers of various wisdom traditions

Sep 08 2015

Ep 30 - Liberation from Mental Suffering with Buddhist Female Monk Ven Pannavati

This is a summary of the podcast interview, not a full word-for-word transcript.

Ven. Dr. Pannavati, a former Christian pastor, is co-founder and co-Abbot of Embracing-Simplicity Hermitage in Hendersonville, NC. A black, female Buddhist monk ordained in the Theravada and Mahayana traditions with Vajrayana empowerments and transmission from Roshi Bernie Glassman of Zen Peacemakers, she is both contemplative and empowered for compassionate service.

An international teacher, she advocates on behalf of disempowered women and youth globally, and insists on equality and respect in Buddhist life for both female monastics and lay sangha. She was a 2008 recipient of the Outstanding Buddhist Women's Award.

In 2009, she received a special commendation from the Princess of Thailand for Humanitarian Acts and she ordained Thai Bhikkhunis, on Thai soil with Thai monks as witnesses.

In May 2010 she convened a platform of Bhikkhunis to ordain the first 10 Cambodian Samaneris in a Cambodian temple, witnessed by Cambodian abbots including Maha Thera Ven. Dhammathero Sao Khon, President of the Community of Khmer Buddhist Monks of the USA.

Ven. Pannavati continues to visit Thailand each year, ordaining, training, offering support for the nuns and assisting in their projects. In 2013 she arranged for 500 books to be sent to both elementary and secondary schools in Rayong. She is also raising funds to improve security at the compounds, as this is an utmost concern in some areas of Thailand.

Pannavati is a founding circle director of Sisters of Compassionate Wisdom, a 21st century trans-lineage Buddhist Order and Sisterhood formed by Ani Drubgyuma in 2006.

In 2011, Venerable adopted 10 “untouchable” villages in India, vowing to help them establish an egalitarian community based on Buddhist principles of conduct and livelihood, providing wells, books, teachers and micro-loans for women. Approximately 30,000 people live in these villages. She has sent funds to complete their first educational center.

Ven. Pannavati founded My Place, Inc. in Hendersonville, NC, which has housed more than 75 homeless youth between the ages of 17 and 23 over the past 4 years. That effort has evolved into a separate 501(c)(3) which has its own academic platform, jobs training program, residential program and social enterprise, My Gluten Free Bread Company.

She remains committed to advocacy for the homeless, sick and disenfranchised, those who are marginalized, abused, neglected and unloved. She loves the Dhamma, lives the Dhamma and teaches the Dhamma internationally.

Interview with Ven. Pannavati

What brought you to where you are today?

She's asked that question a lot since she used to be a Christian pastor. There didn't used to be much meditation in Christian practice, but now there is some contemplative time in the Christian diaspora. She didn't have a problem with God or Jesus, but she did have a problem with you.

She found a disconnect between the heart and her mind.

There were modes of being that she wanted to abandon.

The short version is that she began to pray and ask for guidance on what she needed to do. And the answer she got, was that she needed to look outside of Christianity. That there was another way to find or come into a place that she was seeking.

It took her some 15 years, before she found the Dharma. She loved the reading.

She needed to rely on herself to come into the fullness of who she is. If she did this work, then she could transform and do what she wanted to do. Learning meditation was easy for Pannavati. But she used to sit in silence waiting for an answer from the Lord, but now she could become aware in silence of pure presence.

With presence she found a certain wisdom comes with that. She learned that she could enter into a space where everything becomes clear. There is a settledness and clarity of heart. She could just simply see. And in that seeing she's informed, what's happening, and what her role is in it, and what's required.

So its' in the doing of meditation that it becomes clear and it becomes apparent. There's a settling down that occurs, there's a stilling of thought. And in that stillness there is a certain vastness of consciousness. An expansion of insight, understanding, and awareness. And if you immerse yourself in it, you come out with a different view.

It's like the scientists who are trying to find a solution to a problem, and after laying down, and wake up, and they get it. Meditation is like that for wisdom.

Tuition is information coming from the outside, but there is also intuition, that which rises from the inside. But we have to go there to tap and access that faculty to be better and more present.

What do you think of the difference between waiting and being present?

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