A Place For Everyone: An Interview with Ayyā Soma
Ayyā Soma is cofounder, with Bhante (Ayya) Suddhāso, of Empty Cloud Monastery in New Jersey (USA). Ayyā Soma grew up in Italy and moved to New York for her career. While she had encountered the Buddha’s teachings previously, meeting Bhante Suddhāso became a turning point. As a lay woman she helped start Buddhist Insights in New York City and eventually followed her heart to ordain as a monastic. In recent years, family circumstances took her back to Italy part-time, where she discovered a hunger for the Dharma and the need for a monastery there, too. Ayyā Soma and others are now working to meet a June 2024 deadline to purchase an ancient forested property in southern Italy to create Empty Cloud Italia monastery.
AfB president Wren Withers interviewed Ayyā Soma in Spring 2024.
Alliance for Bhikkhunis (AfB): What initially brought you to New York City?
Ayyā Soma: I used to work in fashion and had lived in Milan and London. New York was a place I hadn’t yet been on the “fashion path,” so I moved there about 15 years ago. Back then I had already been introduced to the teachings of the Buddha, but I was still a “greed” type. I remember thinking, “Yes, there is suffering, but there are lots of good things. I’m sure I’ll be happy if I accomplish A-B-C…” Yet after a whole alphabet of accomplishments, I was still not satisfied, not fully happy.
There are two types of dukkha, or suffering: the dukkha of not getting what you want and the dukkha of getting what you want. I wanted to fall madly in love, and I did. I wanted to find my dream job, and I did. I wanted to live in a place that I really liked, and I did. But there was still a gap. This is what the Buddha calls taṇha, an endless thirst. It doesn’t matter how much we drink; we’re still not satisfied. That’s what happened with me.
So when I encountered Bhante Suddhāso teaching in New York, I was at a point in my life to fully understand what the Buddha was talking about with the First Noble Truth of dukkha—that everything is inherently unsatisfying. I was trying to find happiness in things that by their very nature couldn’t give me lasting happiness. I saw how unreliable those things were. Now, I’m very interested in cultivating happiness inside, an unconditional happiness rather than a conditional happiness.
AfB: So how exactly did you go from being a fashionista to a bhikkhuni?
Ayyā Soma: When I met Bhante Suddhāso in 2015, I became very eager to deepen my study of the Dharma with a monastic teacher. But it was very difficult in New York City to find a monastic who would teach there on a regular basis. Bhante Suddhāso soon agreed to move to New York, and within three months we formed a nonprofit organization, Buddhist Insights, to connect people with bhikkhus and bhikkhunis of all different traditions. In our first year, we rented a property, which we called Rockaway Summer House, as both a vihara and a retreat center. Bhante Suddhāso became the resident monastic, and other monastics came to visit. Every week we were offering retreats by monastics, all without a price tag.
I was also living at the center and essentially practicing as a monastic, but at first I was hesitant to take on that traditional form myself. I had been hearing about all the problems concerning women’s rights and women’s treatment in religious spaces. But as my practice deepened, I remember looking at myself and my shaved head in the mirror and thinking, “Okay, look, I live in a monastery like a monk; maybe I want to be a monk.” That’s when I stopped asking too many questions and decided to ordain. I went forth under Venerable Paññavatī, and we decided I would work on my training together with Bhante Suddhāso while I was still running Buddhist Insights.
AfB: From there, you eventually opened Empty Cloud in New Jersey, which you call a gender-inclusive monastery. I also notice that you use the word “monk” for both male and female monastics.
Ayyā Soma: I first learned that from our Zen sisters and brothers at Shasta Abbey in California. They use “monk” as a gender-neutral term. That makes sense to me, like “doctor” or “lawyer,” which aren’t male or female. “Monk” and “nun” terminology is also not terribly true to the Pāli language, in which “bhikkhu” and “bhikkhuni” have the same root. In Italian it’s similar: “monaco” and “monaca,” whereas “nonna” means grandmother. We found that saying “monk” and “nun” in English can create separation and difference, so we decided to use “monk” in general.
Empty Cloud is a gender-inclusive monastery, and we’re also nonsectarian. We are open to both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis who want to come for different periods of time. So far there are four Empty Cloud monks: myself and Bhante Suddhāso, plus Ayyā Brahmavara and Ayya Sumitta, who have part-time commitments. It’s a place where we can all come together and explore what it means to live in a nonsectarian, gender-inclusive way. At the same time, we’re international. It’s very interesting to live with different people—from Sri Lanka, Germany, Italy, and America. We also host visiting monastics from all over the world. And lay guests can come for periods of time and partake in the daily schedule with the monks.
Even though we’re a nonsectarian monastery, there is also a strong influence from the Thai Forest Tradition, in which Bhante Suddhāso trained. One of our core values is to study and practice the early teachings of the Buddha.
AfB: Issues around gender are certainly part of the practice in the Theravada tradition. Can you say more about your community’s explorations in that realm?
Ayyā Soma: For me, it has been very important to explore the distinction between the Dhamma and organized religion. I had a Catholic upbringing, with bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and all of that. In Buddhism, I found a very similar hierarchy. We have the Buddha’s original renunciant forms, bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, and in Asian Buddhist countries, we also have later ecclesiastical power forms. What we call an “abbot,” for example, is actually a very Christian word. We don’t have the figure of an abbot within the Vinaya [monastic rule]. So even though people have started calling Bhante Suddhāso and myself co-abbots of Empty Cloud monastery, it’s not a term we use for ourselves. It has been very interesting to try to understand how exactly the Buddha intended for us monastics to live. It’s still a kind of koan for us.
These days we’re being offered a version of Buddhism that obviously contains the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, as well as different structures and elements that are not exactly the teachings of the Buddha. Some structures are supportive and completely aligned with Dhamma. Others can be very obstructive towards awakening, what you might call “Adhamma,” the opposite of Dhamma. Those have more to do with the hierarchies of power in any kind of organization, whether it’s religious or secular.
Having a female body in a power hierarchy can have its challenges. When one takes on the form of a bhikkhuni, ideally it’s for the sake of awakening. Then, when we encounter those power structures, even though they are not actually the teachings of the Buddha, we might become very disappointed and lose faith. When it comes to the training, one really has to look at the effects on the heart and the mind. Is taking on a certain form bringing us closer to awakening, or is it bringing us closer to not-awakening—to more anxiety, more fear, more insecurity, more feelings of inferiority? When we actually see that in our experience, then we can be a little bit wiser with what we take on—or don’t take on.
It can be very tricky to follow the Bhikkhuni Vinaya. Some folks say that trying to do so is a drawback. I think it’s a real plus, because then we have to really investigate what we’re doing and see how it’s in line with the Dhamma. Instead of following rites and rituals with the mistaken belief they will bring us to awakening, what the Buddha called sīlabatta-parāmāsa, we can ask ourselves, Why does holding the precepts in this way produce this effect in my mind? And if we hold it in this other way, what is the effect? Navigating this path has been helpful for me—while always asking senior bhikkhunis for their advice and guidance while doing this type of work, of course.
AfB: So how can we lay people support monastics, especially bhikkhunis?
Ayyā Soma: That’s been another interesting question for me. At the very beginning, I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to be a burden.” And now, I’m feeling, “Wow, what a really incredible opportunity one gives by living on alms.” For example, I walked on almsrounds just this morning while visiting my brother here in Rome. When I got back, he asked me: “Why did you do that? We have a kitchen, and I could have offered you a meal.” But the reality is that whenever we go for alms—I was out there for two hours—it was just such a beautiful opportunity for people to make offerings and think about someone else. That’s part of the beauty of holding the Vinaya, not handling money or not doing certain things. It’s a big act of compassion.
So how can lay people support monastics? They can ask themselves: “What would this monastic need?” and take that as a practice. Sometimes a monastic needs shelter, sometimes food, sometimes medicine, sometimes other requisites. I see this right now with my mom. She suffers from dementia, so she has a hard time communicating. That means I’m always asking, “What could she need?” It’s beautiful to cultivate that sentiment of the heart, really looking to do something nice for someone.
Another way to help is in supporting new monasteries. I don’t want to seem biased with this suggestion, because I’m starting a new monastery now myself. But this is definitely a big problem. For female monastics, finding a place to stay can be their main issue. If I were a male monk here in Rome, for example, there are three temples where I could go to be with a sangha and live in a conducive place. As a female monastic, there’s no option in Rome. It’s the same in Naples, the same in Milan, the same everywhere in my home country.
It’s also a fact that there is no place in Italy—and many other countries—where people can ordain. This is why we are trying to set up this opportunity here. In the past couple of years, I’ve met so many women who’ve expressed that aspiration but who found it difficult simply to meet a bhikkhuni or who were told that they bhikkhunis didn’t even exist. It was a little heartbreaking for me to say to them, “There’s no monastery in Italy where you can visit or ordain.” They could maybe go to Germany, but they’d need to learn German. Or potentially go to the UK, but that’s not exactly easy either since it now requires a visa as a non-EU country. There are so many challenges simply to take on the monastic form, and even once you’ve done so, then you often don’t have a place to live and practice as a sangha.
AfB: Do you have any thoughts about how support for bhikkhunis could gain a more equal footing to support for bhikkhus? What could be done to dispel the fear and doubt that people might have about supporting nuns?
Ayyā Soma: That’s been the story of my monastic life in a way! To overcome this disparity, my own belief is that “separate is not equal.” That’s why we have a gender-inclusive monastery. It creates a different status quo. People start perceiving the sangha as one sangha, not as the sangha of bhikkhus and the sangha of bhikkhunis. This leads to relating to the sangha as a whole rather than focusing too much on gender. Ultimately, we take this form to transcend and let go of every single thing, including gender.
Trying to remove all of this, for me, has been a little bit of a frustration. Paradoxically, when I got into the robes was the first time I became so aware that I was a woman. Everybody constantly told me, in one way or another, that you’re different when you’re a woman. I never had any problem with this identity of woman, but then all of a sudden, it became something else. I wondered, “How is it possible that, since I’ve ordained, I’m being overwhelmed by all these ideas and implications of having a female body when the Buddha taught about anatta, non-self, that the body is just the body?”
Of course, in order to transcend gender, to transcend everything, we need to understand what it means before we toss it away. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of spiritual bypassing. At least for myself, by being in a gender-inclusive environment, I started identifying and understanding certain things that I had thought were part of my personality but were actually gender-dependent because I’d been socialized or treated in particular ways growing up. When I start noticing that, it became easier to let it go.
As bhikkhunis, or as a Sangha in general, what can happen because of the current hierarchy in religious settings is that bhikkhunis can start developing a conceit of inferiority. This is an obstacle on the path. It is reflected in how people can start perceiving us as well. Some people might start donating to us just because we are “poor victims” who are not supported. That doesn’t really feel that great. I guess what I’m trying to say is that perspective feeds into a terrible loop and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of “poor bhikkhunis.” All these stereotypes can become real because we’re not removing the conditions that created those stereotypes in the first place.
AfB: This sounds evolutionary and basic at the same time. And when it comes to creating new monasteries, I’ve come to accept that things don’t always go the way you think. I was involved with Ayyā Santacitta and Ayyā Anandabodhi in starting Aloka Vihara bhikkhuni monastery in California. But as conditions changed, the vision of a training monastery didn’t come together as we anticipated.
Ayyā Soma: Ayyā Santacitta and Ayyā Anandabodhi are such great bhikkhunis and role models for me. They’ve definitely had a harder predicament than our younger generation. I’m very grateful for all their pioneering work, together with all the others who have made it possible for us not to have to worry so much about ordination, especially in the United States. I’ve come to realize how privileged I was in my own aspiration to ordain.
Here in Europe, it’s a bit different. There are even fewer opportunities to ordain. The situation in Italy is probably like it was 20 years ago in the United States, maybe because of the language barrier. But in Italy, because of its Catholic past, there is actually a strong vocation in people to go forth as monastics. People may have less overall faith in the Catholic Church than in past years, but there is still faith in the samana form, and Buddhism seems to speak to them in the right language. I’m a good example of this.
Even so, what I’ve been seeing is that many women who want to go forth are being turned away and encouraged to practice as laypeople. It’s very, very sad. Especially these days, when the world has so many problems around overconsumption, it’s crazy that, instead of encouraging people to go forth, we are actually impeding them to become renunciants. So creating monasteries where training is possible, where living as a renunciate is possible, is really beautiful.
AfB: That’s a wonderful segue into hearing more about your inspiration to create Empty Cloud Italia. How did that come about?
Ayyā Soma: A kind of hurricane hit for me after COVID. My parents got very sick and isolated, and so I came regularly to visit them in Italy. I was also connecting with other folks around the Dharma. My enthusiasm for speaking about the Dharma and doing so in Italian is a very rare combination. Not many monastics speak Italian.
This past fall, when my dad passed away, we brought his body to the family tomb in Acquaviva delle Fonti in the province of Bari. After his funeral, I found this beautiful forest, and we started sharing the Dharma here. The land is really special because it’s one of the last forests in the area. There are caves where St. Elijah used to spend time 1,000 years ago, so it was already a meditative site. Before St. Elijah, it was the Temple of Zeus. It has been a spiritual place ever since Neolithic times. I decided to go through with this new project because the place is so unique.
AfB: Wow! I’m curious—have you been in the cave?
Ayyā Soma: Yes, absolutely. It’s incredible. It’s full of devas. We also discovered that there are about five more caves yet to be uncovered. We figure it will cost about 5,000 euros to open each one of them, and then we’ll have five meditation kutis! It’s just magical to feel the layers of spiritual practice that have accumulated there.
Then, in the center of the property is a masseria, basically, a huge farmhouse. As soon as I saw it, I thought, “Wow, this is the perfect retreat center! Here’s the kitchen, here are the dorms, here are two meditation halls. It’s been such a confluence of conditions with this property. Now we’re hoping to set up a monastery for the betterment of all beings and to create the right conditions for a monk to live with spiritual companions. At the same time, I can be close to my mom, and also to other mothers and other fathers who have been left behind.
But it’s not just me, there are lots of different folks putting all of these conditions together. I’m just facilitating and encouraging it. We are still in the process of fundraising to purchase the land. The owners, three children whose father recently died, had nearly sold the land in January, but when they heard we were interested, they decided to cancel that deal and wait for us to fundraise to get it. They felt that their father would have been much happier for the land to remain this way instead of becoming a land speculation.
So far, our fundraising has been very grassroots, with many “micro” donations. We should reach one third of the 300,000 euro price by the end of this month [April], and the owners gave us an extension until June 10 to raise the rest. Supporters are also trying to recruit a major donor. And there are pledges for reforestation and building renovations once the land has been purchased. To find 135 acres of land close to one of the main cities in Italy is nearly impossible at this price.
I also want to thank the Alliance of Bhikkhunis for supporting our vision and for the amazing work you’ve been doing for so long. It’s delightful to know that there are so many people who have come together to support the four forms the Buddha created for us: bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, upāsikās, and upāsakas. It’s so important for people to understand the value of the bhikkhuni form and not to pretend that practicing as an upāsikā is good enough if you have a female body. We should stay true to the legacy of the Buddha.
To view a short video about the Empty Cloud Italia monastery project, go to: ACQUA VIVA: A Buddhist Forest Monastery in Southern Italy.
To donate toward the Empty Cloud Italia property purchase:
Worldwide, visit the Empty Cloud Italia website: https://emptyclouditalia.org/en/dona/
In the United States:
Donate online via Empty Cloud (USA) through their PayPal Giving Fund at: https://www.paypal.com/US/fundraiser/charity/206581 (Please also send an email to finance@emptycloud.org to specify that your donation is for Empty Cloud Italia.)
Donate online via Buddhist Insights through the Donorbox app at: www.buddhistinsights.org/donate (Specify in the comments that your donation is for Empty Cloud Italia.)
Send checks to:
Buddhist Insights Meditation Inc., 29 Ridgeway Ave., West Orange, NJ 07052
Photo credits: All photos provided by Empty Cloud.
A Place For Everyone: An Interview with Ayyā Soma
Ayyā Soma is cofounder, with Bhante (Ayya) Suddhāso, of Empty Cloud Monastery in New Jersey (USA). Ayyā Soma grew up in Italy and moved to New York for her career. While she had encountered the Buddha’s teachings previously, meeting Bhante Suddhāso became a turning point. As a lay woman she helped start Buddhist Insights in New York City and eventually followed her heart to ordain as a monastic. In recent years, family circumstances took her back to Italy part-time, where she discovered a hunger for the Dharma and the need for a monastery there, too. Ayyā Soma and others are now working to meet a June 2024 deadline to purchase an ancient forested property in southern Italy to create Empty Cloud Italia monastery.
AfB president Wren Withers interviewed Ayyā Soma in Spring 2024.
Alliance for Bhikkhunis (AfB): What initially brought you to New York City?
Ayyā Soma: I used to work in fashion and had lived in Milan and London. New York was a place I hadn’t yet been on the “fashion path,” so I moved there about 15 years ago. Back then I had already been introduced to the teachings of the Buddha, but I was still a “greed” type. I remember thinking, “Yes, there is suffering, but there are lots of good things. I’m sure I’ll be happy if I accomplish A-B-C…” Yet after a whole alphabet of accomplishments, I was still not satisfied, not fully happy.
There are two types of dukkha, or suffering: the dukkha of not getting what you want and the dukkha of getting what you want. I wanted to fall madly in love, and I did. I wanted to find my dream job, and I did. I wanted to live in a place that I really liked, and I did. But there was still a gap. This is what the Buddha calls taṇha, an endless thirst. It doesn’t matter how much we drink; we’re still not satisfied. That’s what happened with me.
So when I encountered Bhante Suddhāso teaching in New York, I was at a point in my life to fully understand what the Buddha was talking about with the First Noble Truth of dukkha—that everything is inherently unsatisfying. I was trying to find happiness in things that by their very nature couldn’t give me lasting happiness. I saw how unreliable those things were. Now, I’m very interested in cultivating happiness inside, an unconditional happiness rather than a conditional happiness.
AfB: So how exactly did you go from being a fashionista to a bhikkhuni?
Ayyā Soma: When I met Bhante Suddhāso in 2015, I became very eager to deepen my study of the Dharma with a monastic teacher. But it was very difficult in New York City to find a monastic who would teach there on a regular basis. Bhante Suddhāso soon agreed to move to New York, and within three months we formed a nonprofit organization, Buddhist Insights, to connect people with bhikkhus and bhikkhunis of all different traditions. In our first year, we rented a property, which we called Rockaway Summer House, as both a vihara and a retreat center. Bhante Suddhāso became the resident monastic, and other monastics came to visit. Every week we were offering retreats by monastics, all without a price tag.
I was also living at the center and essentially practicing as a monastic, but at first I was hesitant to take on that traditional form myself. I had been hearing about all the problems concerning women’s rights and women’s treatment in religious spaces. But as my practice deepened, I remember looking at myself and my shaved head in the mirror and thinking, “Okay, look, I live in a monastery like a monk; maybe I want to be a monk.” That’s when I stopped asking too many questions and decided to ordain. I went forth under Venerable Paññavatī, and we decided I would work on my training together with Bhante Suddhāso while I was still running Buddhist Insights.
AfB: From there, you eventually opened Empty Cloud in New Jersey, which you call a gender-inclusive monastery. I also notice that you use the word “monk” for both male and female monastics.
Ayyā Soma: I first learned that from our Zen sisters and brothers at Shasta Abbey in California. They use “monk” as a gender-neutral term. That makes sense to me, like “doctor” or “lawyer,” which aren’t male or female. “Monk” and “nun” terminology is also not terribly true to the Pāli language, in which “bhikkhu” and “bhikkhuni” have the same root. In Italian it’s similar: “monaco” and “monaca,” whereas “nonna” means grandmother. We found that saying “monk” and “nun” in English can create separation and difference, so we decided to use “monk” in general.
Empty Cloud is a gender-inclusive monastery, and we’re also nonsectarian. We are open to both bhikkhus and bhikkhunis who want to come for different periods of time. So far there are four Empty Cloud monks: myself and Bhante Suddhāso, plus Ayyā Brahmavara and Ayya Sumitta, who have part-time commitments. It’s a place where we can all come together and explore what it means to live in a nonsectarian, gender-inclusive way. At the same time, we’re international. It’s very interesting to live with different people—from Sri Lanka, Germany, Italy, and America. We also host visiting monastics from all over the world. And lay guests can come for periods of time and partake in the daily schedule with the monks.
Even though we’re a nonsectarian monastery, there is also a strong influence from the Thai Forest Tradition, in which Bhante Suddhāso trained. One of our core values is to study and practice the early teachings of the Buddha.
AfB: Issues around gender are certainly part of the practice in the Theravada tradition. Can you say more about your community’s explorations in that realm?
Ayyā Soma: For me, it has been very important to explore the distinction between the Dhamma and organized religion. I had a Catholic upbringing, with bishops, archbishops, cardinals, and all of that. In Buddhism, I found a very similar hierarchy. We have the Buddha’s original renunciant forms, bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, and in Asian Buddhist countries, we also have later ecclesiastical power forms. What we call an “abbot,” for example, is actually a very Christian word. We don’t have the figure of an abbot within the Vinaya [monastic rule]. So even though people have started calling Bhante Suddhāso and myself co-abbots of Empty Cloud monastery, it’s not a term we use for ourselves. It has been very interesting to try to understand how exactly the Buddha intended for us monastics to live. It’s still a kind of koan for us.
These days we’re being offered a version of Buddhism that obviously contains the Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, as well as different structures and elements that are not exactly the teachings of the Buddha. Some structures are supportive and completely aligned with Dhamma. Others can be very obstructive towards awakening, what you might call “Adhamma,” the opposite of Dhamma. Those have more to do with the hierarchies of power in any kind of organization, whether it’s religious or secular.
Having a female body in a power hierarchy can have its challenges. When one takes on the form of a bhikkhuni, ideally it’s for the sake of awakening. Then, when we encounter those power structures, even though they are not actually the teachings of the Buddha, we might become very disappointed and lose faith. When it comes to the training, one really has to look at the effects on the heart and the mind. Is taking on a certain form bringing us closer to awakening, or is it bringing us closer to not-awakening—to more anxiety, more fear, more insecurity, more feelings of inferiority? When we actually see that in our experience, then we can be a little bit wiser with what we take on—or don’t take on.
It can be very tricky to follow the Bhikkhuni Vinaya. Some folks say that trying to do so is a drawback. I think it’s a real plus, because then we have to really investigate what we’re doing and see how it’s in line with the Dhamma. Instead of following rites and rituals with the mistaken belief they will bring us to awakening, what the Buddha called sīlabatta-parāmāsa, we can ask ourselves, Why does holding the precepts in this way produce this effect in my mind? And if we hold it in this other way, what is the effect? Navigating this path has been helpful for me—while always asking senior bhikkhunis for their advice and guidance while doing this type of work, of course.
AfB: So how can we lay people support monastics, especially bhikkhunis?
Ayyā Soma: That’s been another interesting question for me. At the very beginning, I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to be a burden.” And now, I’m feeling, “Wow, what a really incredible opportunity one gives by living on alms.” For example, I walked on almsrounds just this morning while visiting my brother here in Rome. When I got back, he asked me: “Why did you do that? We have a kitchen, and I could have offered you a meal.” But the reality is that whenever we go for alms—I was out there for two hours—it was just such a beautiful opportunity for people to make offerings and think about someone else. That’s part of the beauty of holding the Vinaya, not handling money or not doing certain things. It’s a big act of compassion.
So how can lay people support monastics? They can ask themselves: “What would this monastic need?” and take that as a practice. Sometimes a monastic needs shelter, sometimes food, sometimes medicine, sometimes other requisites. I see this right now with my mom. She suffers from dementia, so she has a hard time communicating. That means I’m always asking, “What could she need?” It’s beautiful to cultivate that sentiment of the heart, really looking to do something nice for someone.
Another way to help is in supporting new monasteries. I don’t want to seem biased with this suggestion, because I’m starting a new monastery now myself. But this is definitely a big problem. For female monastics, finding a place to stay can be their main issue. If I were a male monk here in Rome, for example, there are three temples where I could go to be with a sangha and live in a conducive place. As a female monastic, there’s no option in Rome. It’s the same in Naples, the same in Milan, the same everywhere in my home country.
It’s also a fact that there is no place in Italy—and many other countries—where people can ordain. This is why we are trying to set up this opportunity here. In the past couple of years, I’ve met so many women who’ve expressed that aspiration but who found it difficult simply to meet a bhikkhuni or who were told that they bhikkhunis didn’t even exist. It was a little heartbreaking for me to say to them, “There’s no monastery in Italy where you can visit or ordain.” They could maybe go to Germany, but they’d need to learn German. Or potentially go to the UK, but that’s not exactly easy either since it now requires a visa as a non-EU country. There are so many challenges simply to take on the monastic form, and even once you’ve done so, then you often don’t have a place to live and practice as a sangha.
AfB: Do you have any thoughts about how support for bhikkhunis could gain a more equal footing to support for bhikkhus? What could be done to dispel the fear and doubt that people might have about supporting nuns?
Ayyā Soma: That’s been the story of my monastic life in a way! To overcome this disparity, my own belief is that “separate is not equal.” That’s why we have a gender-inclusive monastery. It creates a different status quo. People start perceiving the sangha as one sangha, not as the sangha of bhikkhus and the sangha of bhikkhunis. This leads to relating to the sangha as a whole rather than focusing too much on gender. Ultimately, we take this form to transcend and let go of every single thing, including gender.
Trying to remove all of this, for me, has been a little bit of a frustration. Paradoxically, when I got into the robes was the first time I became so aware that I was a woman. Everybody constantly told me, in one way or another, that you’re different when you’re a woman. I never had any problem with this identity of woman, but then all of a sudden, it became something else. I wondered, “How is it possible that, since I’ve ordained, I’m being overwhelmed by all these ideas and implications of having a female body when the Buddha taught about anatta, non-self, that the body is just the body?”
Of course, in order to transcend gender, to transcend everything, we need to understand what it means before we toss it away. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of spiritual bypassing. At least for myself, by being in a gender-inclusive environment, I started identifying and understanding certain things that I had thought were part of my personality but were actually gender-dependent because I’d been socialized or treated in particular ways growing up. When I start noticing that, it became easier to let it go.
As bhikkhunis, or as a Sangha in general, what can happen because of the current hierarchy in religious settings is that bhikkhunis can start developing a conceit of inferiority. This is an obstacle on the path. It is reflected in how people can start perceiving us as well. Some people might start donating to us just because we are “poor victims” who are not supported. That doesn’t really feel that great. I guess what I’m trying to say is that perspective feeds into a terrible loop and can become a self-fulfilling prophecy of “poor bhikkhunis.” All these stereotypes can become real because we’re not removing the conditions that created those stereotypes in the first place.
AfB: This sounds evolutionary and basic at the same time. And when it comes to creating new monasteries, I’ve come to accept that things don’t always go the way you think. I was involved with Ayyā Santacitta and Ayyā Anandabodhi in starting Aloka Vihara bhikkhuni monastery in California. But as conditions changed, the vision of a training monastery didn’t come together as we anticipated.
Ayyā Soma: Ayyā Santacitta and Ayyā Anandabodhi are such great bhikkhunis and role models for me. They’ve definitely had a harder predicament than our younger generation. I’m very grateful for all their pioneering work, together with all the others who have made it possible for us not to have to worry so much about ordination, especially in the United States. I’ve come to realize how privileged I was in my own aspiration to ordain.
Here in Europe, it’s a bit different. There are even fewer opportunities to ordain. The situation in Italy is probably like it was 20 years ago in the United States, maybe because of the language barrier. But in Italy, because of its Catholic past, there is actually a strong vocation in people to go forth as monastics. People may have less overall faith in the Catholic Church than in past years, but there is still faith in the samana form, and Buddhism seems to speak to them in the right language. I’m a good example of this.
Even so, what I’ve been seeing is that many women who want to go forth are being turned away and encouraged to practice as laypeople. It’s very, very sad. Especially these days, when the world has so many problems around overconsumption, it’s crazy that, instead of encouraging people to go forth, we are actually impeding them to become renunciants. So creating monasteries where training is possible, where living as a renunciate is possible, is really beautiful.
AfB: That’s a wonderful segue into hearing more about your inspiration to create Empty Cloud Italia. How did that come about?
Ayyā Soma: A kind of hurricane hit for me after COVID. My parents got very sick and isolated, and so I came regularly to visit them in Italy. I was also connecting with other folks around the Dharma. My enthusiasm for speaking about the Dharma and doing so in Italian is a very rare combination. Not many monastics speak Italian.
This past fall, when my dad passed away, we brought his body to the family tomb in Acquaviva delle Fonti in the province of Bari. After his funeral, I found this beautiful forest, and we started sharing the Dharma here. The land is really special because it’s one of the last forests in the area. There are caves where St. Elijah used to spend time 1,000 years ago, so it was already a meditative site. Before St. Elijah, it was the Temple of Zeus. It has been a spiritual place ever since Neolithic times. I decided to go through with this new project because the place is so unique.
AfB: Wow! I’m curious—have you been in the cave?
Ayyā Soma: Yes, absolutely. It’s incredible. It’s full of devas. We also discovered that there are about five more caves yet to be uncovered. We figure it will cost about 5,000 euros to open each one of them, and then we’ll have five meditation kutis! It’s just magical to feel the layers of spiritual practice that have accumulated there.
Then, in the center of the property is a masseria, basically, a huge farmhouse. As soon as I saw it, I thought, “Wow, this is the perfect retreat center! Here’s the kitchen, here are the dorms, here are two meditation halls. It’s been such a confluence of conditions with this property. Now we’re hoping to set up a monastery for the betterment of all beings and to create the right conditions for a monk to live with spiritual companions. At the same time, I can be close to my mom, and also to other mothers and other fathers who have been left behind.
But it’s not just me, there are lots of different folks putting all of these conditions together. I’m just facilitating and encouraging it. We are still in the process of fundraising to purchase the land. The owners, three children whose father recently died, had nearly sold the land in January, but when they heard we were interested, they decided to cancel that deal and wait for us to fundraise to get it. They felt that their father would have been much happier for the land to remain this way instead of becoming a land speculation.
So far, our fundraising has been very grassroots, with many “micro” donations. We should reach one third of the 300,000 euro price by the end of this month [April], and the owners gave us an extension until June 10 to raise the rest. Supporters are also trying to recruit a major donor. And there are pledges for reforestation and building renovations once the land has been purchased. To find 135 acres of land close to one of the main cities in Italy is nearly impossible at this price.
I also want to thank the Alliance of Bhikkhunis for supporting our vision and for the amazing work you’ve been doing for so long. It’s delightful to know that there are so many people who have come together to support the four forms the Buddha created for us: bhikkhus, bhikkhunis, upāsikās, and upāsakas. It’s so important for people to understand the value of the bhikkhuni form and not to pretend that practicing as an upāsikā is good enough if you have a female body. We should stay true to the legacy of the Buddha.
To view a short video about the Empty Cloud Italia monastery project, go to: ACQUA VIVA: A Buddhist Forest Monastery in Southern Italy.
To donate toward the Empty Cloud Italia property purchase:
Worldwide, visit the Empty Cloud Italia website: https://emptyclouditalia.org/en/dona/
In the United States:
Donate online via Empty Cloud (USA) through their PayPal Giving Fund at: https://www.paypal.com/US/fundraiser/charity/206581 (Please also send an email to finance@emptycloud.org to specify that your donation is for Empty Cloud Italia.)
Donate online via Buddhist Insights through the Donorbox app at: www.buddhistinsights.org/donate (Specify in the comments that your donation is for Empty Cloud Italia.)
Send checks to:
Buddhist Insights Meditation Inc., 29 Ridgeway Ave., West Orange, NJ 07052
Photo credits: All photos provided by Empty Cloud.