The Pluralism Project at Harvard University

This article is one of several reports on Sravasti Abbey. The other reports include Daily Life at Sravasti Abbey, Generosity in Action: Dana at Sravasti Abbey, and Supporters of Sravasti Abbey.

Sravasti Abbey is a monastic community in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition that seeks to create a place for westerners to live and study the Buddha’s teachings. The abbey is located in Newport, WA, approximately one hour north of Spokane. Sravasti Abbey is located on 240 acres of land; the current buildings and meditation hall are on one 40-acre parcel, and the rest of the property consists of forests and trails. The property was purchased in 2003, and the founder and abbess, Ven. Thubten Chodron, moved there in October of 2003.

Significance of the Name

In a 1998 meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Ven. Chodron submitted to him a list of names for the monastic community she had envisioned. The Dalai Lama chose “Sravasti Abbey,” which was a place during the Buddha’s time that had flourishing communities of both nuns and monks.

Founder

Sravasti Abbey was founded by Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron in 2002. Ven. Chodron was ordained a Buddhist nun in 1977 by Kyabje Ling Rinpoche, the Senior Tutor of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and received full (bhikshuni) ordination in 1986 in China. After receiving ordination in 1977, she lived at Kopan monastery in Nepal for a few years, and also spent three years at Dorje Pamo, a now-defunct nunnery in France. (A more detailed biography of Ven. Chodron can be found at http://www.sravastiabbey.org/founder.html). The experience of living among other monastics was a moving experience for Ven. Chodron, and it has been her wish for a long time to found a monastic community in the west that would train westerners. Speaking to a group of students in August of 2005, she explained that “I found my time living in monastic communities so valuable. The opportunity to study and practice around other monastics allowed us to support each other in our practice.”

Role of Community in Monasticism

Since the time of the Buddha, communal living has been an important aspect of monastic training. Individuals go forth, leaving behind their homeland and jobs to enter a monastic community. A common metaphor used by the tradition states that by placing rough rocks into a tumbler and having them wear against each other, all of them become smooth in the process. In the same way, monks and nuns who ordain in order to devote their lives to the dharma begin to smooth out their rough edges by living closely in community with each other, learning to communicate skillfully, offer and accept feedback, and practice and live among people whom them might not otherwise ever live with.

Monasticism in America

As Buddhism has come to America, monasticism has received less attention and support than it has traditionally received in Asia. Many dharma centers cater to lay students, and certain traditions that have taken root in America do not emphasize monasticism to a great extent at all. The traditions that do emphasize monasticism (such as the Tibetan Gelugpa) will often have Tibetan monks and teachers who are supported at their dharma centers, but do not necessarily provide support in the same way for western monastics. In fact, there is no place for communal monastic living in the Tibetan tradition in America, although such places do exist in Canada, France, and Australia.

For all of these reasons, Ven. Chodron wanted to found a place where western women and men who endeavored to study and practice the Buddha’s teachings—especially the Vinaya, or monastic discipline—could live and be supported in their efforts. Sravasti Abbey is this place.

One unique feature of Sravasti Abbey is that both men and women will train as monastics there. They will be housed separately, in accord with the Vinaya, but they will practice and study together as equals. Explaining her decision to create a place for both men and women, Ven. Chodron said, “I didn’t want to abandon half of my students [by creating a place where only women could reside].”

History of Sravasti Abbey

Describing her hope for a monastic community in America to the Interfaculty Working Group at the Pluralism Project in April 2004, Ven. Chodron said, “I had this strong feeling that we needed to establish a monastery, and I realized in the early 1990s in a meeting with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and some western Buddhist teachers that to wait for the Tibetans to establish a monastery for us westerners, we would be waiting a long time.” Indeed, the primary focus of the Tibetans—and rightly so—has been the preservation of their own culture in exile. As a result, it would be incumbent upon a westerner to take the first steps in establishing a Buddhist monastery in American for westerners.

At a meeting of Western dharma teachers in the late 1990s, Ven. Chodron met Bhikku Santikaro, a Theravada monk who also envisioned a monastic community in America, known as Liberation Park. Ven. Chodron and Bhikku Santikaro decided to work together to create a monastic community that bore the name “Sravasti Abbey at Liberation Park.” However, after some time working together, Ven. Chodron and Bhikku Santikaro realized they had different goals, and decided in friendship to pursue their projects separately.

In 2003, Ven. Chodron moved to Boise, Idaho, where some of her students offered to support her while she looked for property for the abbey. After two unsuccessful bids on land, she found a place in eastern Washington that seemed extremely promising: it had a large main building, a barn, and smaller outbuildings that could be remodeled. However, the asking price was $200,000 more than Ven. Chodron had!

In the course of time, however, the prior owners of the property agreed to carry the mortgage, and Ven. Chodron was able to raise money from her network of supporters around the world to pay off the mortgage within one year. Yet this was done without any major benefactors; as Ven. Chodron noted in a 2005 talk at the Pluralism Project, “We don’t have any big benefactors. This all happened because many people gave a little bit. Because of many people giving a little bit, we were able to pay off the mortgage....To me, the beauty is that so many people were able to get in touch with their deeper spiritual values and were able to put their resources behind their spiritual values.”

Moving In

Ven. Chodron moved to Sravasti Abbey in October of 2003. During her first few months there, a nun and former student of hers, Ven. Tenzin Tsepel lived there as well, although Ven. Tsepel eventually left the abbey to continue her studies at a monastic community in Australia. In June of 2004, Nanc Nesbitt, a lay student from the Seattle area, moved to Sravasti Abbey full time, and has resided there since then. She is responsible for helping to procure the Four Requisities, the traditional four needs of Buddhist monastics: food, clothing, shelter, and medicine.

Activities and Schedule

From January-April 2005, Sravasti Abbey hosted its first three-month retreat. Seven students came and spent three months in silence while Ven. Chodron conducted her own private retreat in a meditation cabin on the Abbey land. Another landmark in the history of the Abbey occurred in August of 2005, when eleven students gathered for a three-week course entitled “Exploring Monastic Life.” This course was for people who were interested in exploring the possibilities of ordaining in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and provided the clearest example yet of what a monastic community might look like at Sravasti Abbey.

The Abbey also holds weekend retreats and teachings for residents in the area. Examples of this are the upcoming “Rejoicing and Giving Thanks” retreat over the Thanksgiving weekend, and a weekend on forest stewardship. The abbey also hosts all-day practice events with teachings, lunch, discussion groups, and offering service once a month.

Looking Ahead

As of this writing in October of 2005, Ven. Chodron is still the only monastic at Sravasti Abbey. One more woman moved to the Abbey in the summer of 2005, and a fourth woman spends a great deal of her time there. Although no one has yet to take the leap into ordination, there is a great deal of momentum from the Exploring Monastic Life program, and a number of students from that course have also signed up for a three-month retreat at the abbey which begins in December, 2005.