Lineage Statement
Facing Harm in Our Buddhist Lineages: A Call for Collective Healing and Renewal
From Kittisaro & Thanissara
With deep reverence, we honor the journey that has brought us all here.
As founders of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat Centre in South Africa and Sacred Mountain Sangha in California, we have spent decades in devotion to the living transmission of the Dharma, a transmission received through the Chinese lineage of Master Hua and the Thai Forest lineage of Ajahn Chah and Ajahn Sumedho.
Now, as we enter elderhood, we are preparing to complete the offering entrusted to us: a transmission woven from ancient roots and the unfolding of our own hearts. In doing so, we take this opportunity to express our immeasurable gratitude for the extraordinary blessings we have received from our teachers and the lineage of teachers and practitioners whose dedication to upholding the Dharma has been an incalculable gift. The benefits and blessings of the transmission we received are immense, and our gratitude is timeless and unending.
At the same time, we feel pain and sorrow for the harm carried within our lineages, and sadly, within most Dharma lineages, which echo through millennia and persist today. Rooted in the overarching meta-system of patriarchy, a distortion of sacred relationship that tends to elevate dominance over mutuality, systems of exclusion have taken deep root in most of our Buddhist institutions and sanghas.
This distorted inheritance manifests through the grave and extensive harms of homophobia, misogyny, caste and class bias, racial supremacism, ableism, and many other forms of oppression and marginalization. These harmful views, often leading to alienating and damaging words, statements, and actions, have diminished the full participation of vast numbers of people, undermining faith and eclipsing access to deeper refuge in the Dharma. This unacknowledged and unhealed harm has, and continues to be, profoundly wounding, fracturing the sacred trust essential for true refuge.
In contrast, at the very heart of our faith and practice, the Dharma invites us into ever-deepening levels of refuge and belonging. In line with the centrality of safe refuge, it is our heartfelt commitment to continue freeing ourselves and our sangha spaces at Sacred Mountain Sangha from the wounding views and actions that perpetuate exclusion, judgment, and marginalization. Instead, we seek to cultivate a shared and conscious commitment: to undo internalized bias, to actively practice inclusion, and to co-create communities where all are welcomed in their full dignity and wholeness. This is not merely a gesture of kindness, which can too easily slip into tokenism or paternalism, but the essential ground of collective liberation. Without the full participation and honoring of every lived experience, awakening remains partial. But when we walk together, across difference, across harm, across history, the path becomes whole again.
At this critical time in our shared human story, as we face devastating forces of dehumanization, the ruinous weaponization of division, and the terrifying threat of extinction, we assert and avow that collective survival depends upon collective liberation. The old paradigms of hierarchy, dominance, exclusion, and supremacy must be left behind if we are to effectively meet the enormity of this moment with integrity and wisdom. More than ever, we are called to collective inclusion, not as a passing ideal, but as a sacred vow for the well-being of all.
The Dharma, born of compassion and clarity, calls us to dismantle the conditions that cause harm and obscure the bodhicitta heart. While personal and collective liberation may point beyond identity, healing often begins within it, particularly where harm has taken root. With this understanding, we honor identity as part of our lived experience, especially where it intersects with marginalization and exclusion. At the same time, while we hold true that refuge in the Dharma is not limited by identity, it is vast enough to include all expressions of self without being bound by them. In this way, true refuge opens the way to an inclusive belonging rooted in our shared humanity and the path of liberation.
Embodying a collective path of deep inclusion has its challenges, and we will not always get it right. We will inevitably misunderstand and fall short, both personally and as a sangha, but we welcome the opportunity to learn, recalibrate and begin again. We sincerely commit to deeper levels of inviting feedback, listening, and to the ongoing work of renewal, in ourselves and within Sacred Mountain Sangha. Ours is a dedication to a living Dharma that honors the dignity, sovereignty, and sacredness of every being. We aspire for Sacred Mountain Sangha to be an inclusive sangha space, rooted in justice, diversity, and equity, all of which enable a fertile ground from which true belonging, collective healing, and shared awakening can grow.
Again, we acknowledge profound gratitude for the transmission of the Dharma from countless teachers, monastics, ancestors, practitioners, and lineage holders in particular from Asia who have carried the Dharma across time and cultures, dedicating their lives to preserving and transmitting the way of liberation. We honor the courage, discipline, and compassion with which the Dharma has been upheld and shared. And we also acknowledge that all who carry the Dharma, including ourselves, are human. We are capable of wisdom and love, but also, at times, a lack of awareness, missteps, and harm. With humility, we recognize that our own hearts and actions are part of this continuum. If, through our teaching or presence, we have caused harm or contributed to exclusion, we ask for forgiveness and hold that weighty responsibility with sincere care.
May the puñña, the blessings, of this intention to reverse harm and clear a path of healing and renewal be offered in gratitude to all who have carried the Dharma across generations, that they too may be free from any previous harm that calls out for forgiveness, healing and reconciliation. May the Dharma flourish in multiple ways that honor the wholeness of life. May we walk this path with steadfastness, humility, and compassion, now, and always.