Our Lineage

We acknowledge the Asian roots of the dhamma at the heart of our center. The causes and conditions leading to the manifestation of our community can be traced, through our teachers and their teachers, to Asian countries where Buddhism is practiced as well as to diasporic Asian Buddhist communities. 

Theravada: The School of the Elders

The historical Buddha was born in a part of South Asia currently known as Nepal; he lived in what we in the US now call India. His teachings were memorized by monastics, his disciples. According to Theravada tradition, during the first rainy season after the Buddha’s death the sangha of 500 monks gathered at the First Council, in what is now Sri Lanka, to write down the teachings they had memorized. The language they used was Pāli, a kind of hybrid of vernaculars in common use at that time. The body of teachings recorded at the First Council came to be known as the Pāli Canon, or the Tipiṭaka, which forms the foundational scriptures for Theravada Buddhism. They continue to be chanted wherever Theravada (translated as “School of the Elders”) Buddhism is practiced – in Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Thailand, primarily, as well as here in the US and other parts of the world. Modern expressions of the Theravada include the Burmese Vipassanā movement and the Thai Forest Tradition, both of which are foundational for our center and its lineage.