When: March 28, 2025 from 6:30 - 8:00 pm | March 29, 2025 from 9:00 - 4:30 pm
Where: Open Door Meditation Community, 160 Presumpscot Street, 2D, Portland, ME
Topic: We are fortunate to have Ayya Santussika and Ayya Cittananda teach a day-long retreat for Open Door. They are bhikkhunis (nuns) practicing in the Thai Forest Tradition. Ayya Santussika is the founder of Karuna Buddhist Vihara in California.
Please contact Katy Kehoe, if you need overnight accommodations or have any questions. After March 21st please contact Adam Pepi.
Click HERE to register.
Ayya Santussika
Ayya Santussika is a bhikkuni (nun) practicing in the Thai Forest Tradition and founder of Karuna Buddhist Vihara where she lives in California. Her teachings are primarily based on the Pali Suttas.
Ayya Santussika was born in Illinois in 1954 and grew up on a farm in Indiana. As a single mother, she received BS and MS degrees in computer science and worked as a software designer and developer for 15 years in Silicon Valley. Her search for deeper meaning led her to train as an interfaith minister in a 4-year seminary program that culminated in a Masters of Divinity degree. She began traveling in Asia in 1999, learning from master teachers particularly in Thailand. It was these experiences, along with time spent at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California, that developed her faith to the point of choosing the life and practice of a Theravadan nun.
Ayya Santussika entered monastic life as an anagarika 8-precept nun in 2005, then ordained as a samaneri in 2010 and took full ordination as a bhikkhuni in 2012 at Dharma Vijaya Buddhist Vihara in Los Angeles. She has trained in large and small communities of nuns, including Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries of the Ajahn Chah tradition in England.
Ayya Cittananda
Ayya Cittananda has spent over ten years on the Buddhist path, after being inspired in 2005 by a college philosophy class to spend time practicing at monasteries. After completing a Bachelor’s of Science in Nursing and working at a hospital as a registered nurse in Texas, she lived as a monastic at a small Pure Land/Chan monastery in Florida for a year before moving to California. She spent two years living and working in Redwood Valley, made daily visits to Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery, and sat several long retreats at various monasteries and meditation centers.
Ayya Cittananda left Redwood Valley in 2013 in search of a place to ordain as a Theravadan nun, spending six months at the Ajahn Chah lineage monasteries in England and Scotland. She also spent seven months at Aloka Vihara in Placerville, helping the nuns settle into their new home and serving the 2015 Winter Retreat there. Ayya Cittananda took Anagarika precepts at Karuna Buddhist Vihara in March of 2015, Samaneri ordination in April of 2016, and Bhikkhuni ordination in May of 2018 at Buddhi Vihara in Santa Clara, California.