For many Westerners, grappling with the concept of rebirth is an obstacle to Buddhist practice, but for the Italian-born monastic Ayya Soma, it had the opposite effect. “When I started believing in rebirth and understanding the implications of being reborn,” she told Tricycle, “I stopped practicing for the sake of happiness, and shifted to practicing for the sake of uprooting the cause of unhappiness: rebirth in samsara.”
Raised in a secular family, Ayya Soma grew up “pursuing happiness in worldly material things.” She succeeded, and had everything she wanted, but it wasn’t enough. Her professional life was in fashion, starting in Milan, proceeding to London and ending up in New York. Though the appearance-obsessed world of fashion may seem antithetical to the dharma, Ayya Soma found it to be a congenial on-ramp. “My experience in the fashion editorial world exposed me to a place of inclusivity and open-mindedness, allowing me to meet many different people from many different walks of life,” she said. “This indirectly taught me dispassion by letting me experience many sides of samsara, and gave me the gift of openness and ease with which to relate to all kinds of people.”
In New York, Ayya Soma became a devoted lay practitioner and founded the not-for-profit Buddhist Insights to help laypeople connect to and study with monastics. Under the tutelage of Bhante Suddhaso, a monastic who teaches both Theravada and Mahayana practices, she founded Rockaway Summer House as a city retreat center, and became a resident.
[Empty Cloud] is a regressive monastery: so backward that it is avant-garde.
Ayya Soma recognized that although early Buddhist texts teach that gender does not affect one’s ability to attain awakening, over the centuries Buddhist traditions have tended to develop rigid gender roles. This caused her to put off ordination for a time. “I was aware of the difficulties I was likely to encounter as a woman due to pervasive gender discrimination in religious environments,” she said. But, as she told Alliance for Bhikkhunis, a US-based not-for-profit organization dedicated to supporting Theravada Buddhist nuns, “As my practice deepened, I remember looking at myself and my shaved head in the mirror and thinking, ‘OK, look, I live in a monastery like a monk; maybe I want to be a monk.’” Ordination came in 2018 under the Ven. Pannavati.
In 2019, Ayya Soma and Bhante Suddhaso cofounded Empty Cloud Monastery, in West Orange, New Jersey, where she now resides and teaches. Empty Cloud’s teaching and practices are centered on early Buddhism and are offered free to all. The monastery is also gender-inclusive and nonsectarian. “Sometimes people think that Empty Cloud is a progressive monastery,” Ayya Soma said. “I like to say that it is a regressive monastery: so backward that it is avant-garde. That’s because the Buddha was so far ahead of not only his time but our time as well.”
“The principles behind Empty Cloud Monastery are very simple: a monastery where we can focus only on the dhamma instead of on the different body parts that we were born with,” she said. “This has made it an inclusive place in all possible ways: gender, age, ethnicity, race. We are therefore also an international monastery: respectful of the diversity of Buddhist traditions while not being bound to any one particular way of doing things.”
Ayya Soma is currently raising funds for another monastery, this time in her native Italy, where she sees great potential in attracting residents because of Italy’s Catholic past and its tradition of monasticism. Empty Cloud Italia would be the first gender-inclusive monastery in Europe, according to its website.
Ayya Soma’s monastery may be modern, but she takes inspiration from the bhikkhunis of old. “I found it very fruitful translating the Therigatha. There are many cases of inspiring independent women who, just like today, come from different backgrounds and entry points to the dhamma.” She related a story of Bhikkhuni Soma, from whom she takes her name: “While she is meditating, Mara comes to instill doubt in her based on the fact that she is a woman—blurting out stereotypes about the supposed inferiority of women. She is impermeable to this, as she is already fully awakened. She replies with a series of profound dhamma verses, highlighting the danger of attachment to any identity, not just gender.”
The True Person
It’s remarkable how many precepts we can actually break just with the mouth, just by saying something. It’s very interesting to think about how we are using our speech.
We know that right speech is one of the factors of the noble eightfold path that brings us out of suffering. There are ways through which we develop our speech: by not lying, not saying certain things, and aligning ourselves with the truth.
But sometimes things come out of our mouth and we’re not quite sure whether they’re wholesome or unwholesome, or how to do better. In the Sappurisa Sutta (AN 4.73) the Buddha gives us some directions that are very practical to help us enhance our practice of polishing the way that we talk.
The Buddha says a true person can be known by four qualities that have to do with speaking. First is, a true person doesn’t speak ill of another even when asked, let alone when not asked. If pressed by questions, they speak ill of another without giving the full details, leaving many things out. That’s how to know that this is a true person.
We can reflect on if we are practicing in accordance with the precepts. Are we practicing like a true person from day to day, or is there something that we need to tweak here and there?
Sometimes we can reflect on how we are very generous in sharing all the bad qualities of others, especially if our mind turns a little bit toward aversion. We can see we’re a little bit fault-finding. Even if we have a really great person that we’re meeting or that we know, we might say, “Oh yeah, they’re really great, except for X, Y, and Z!” We might have a very long list. The encouragement here is to develop a mind that refrains from speaking ill of others. We’re not just gratuitously sharing information that nobody even asked us about. Maybe we see our friend Paul, and we’re like, “Hey, how’s it going, Paul? Can I tell you about Mark? He has all of this misconduct that he’s done!” Even when asked, we should refrain from doing that. And if someone actually asks us further questions, then we can speak, the sutta says, without giving the full details, leaving many things out. Sometimes we’re very eager to overshare. Especially if we have a little bit of a beef with someone. Then we can spend hours and hours talking about all of the defilements and all the sorts of bad qualities of that person.
But sometimes it’s actually necessary to speak up, to share things with someone. So the Buddha’s encouragement there is to say just what is necessary, not going into too many details. Just understand why we’re communicating. If we’re trying to warn someone about the problematic characteristics of someone, we can just share what needs to be said. Do I have to actually talk about the history of this person, all of the ideas that I have in my head? Or can I keep quiet and silent as much as possible and then offer only the necessary advice?
Adapted from the dharma talk “How to speak well and listen better with Ayya Soma,” originally uploaded to the Buddhist Insights @ Empty Cloud YouTube channel.
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