​Key Info

• ​​​This offering will be on Sunday 21 Dec from 9:30 - 11.30am PT

• ​​​This is a fundraising event for Sacred Mountain Sangha and will be facilitated over Zoom.

• ​​​This offering is shared mirroring the tiered based contribution scale that SMS generally uses. This enables you to choose what level of support is possible for you, including $0. There will be an additional opportunity to offer dana if you wish to at the end of the offering. All offerings from this event will go to support Sacred Mountain Sangha.

• ​​​This offering will be recorded and recordings will be shared with registered participants.

​​​Offering Description

​​​Return the Light: Intertwining Our Journey through Shadow, Light, and the Luminous Dark

​A Solstice Fundraiser for Sacred Mountain Sangha
December 21, 2025, 9.30 am - 11.30 am PT

​As the Solstice approaches, we gather at the still point between worlds where the light turns again, and the great cycle begins anew. In the northern hemisphere, the light’s return promises renewal. In the south, summer already leans toward the coming dark. Everywhere, the Earth reminds us that endings and beginnings are inseparable, that even in the darkest hour, light is gestating.

​In these uncertain times, when our planetary systems tremble and our collective future hangs in the balance, Sacred Mountain Sangha continues to serve as a sanctuary for awakening and wise response. Our work is rooted in the Dharma, yet alive to the crises and possibilities of our age: climate breakdown, widening injustice, and the urgent need to re-weave the fabric of belonging and interbeing.

​Return the Light invites us to enter the Luminous Dark, that fertile mystery where shadow and light meet, to reclaim the radiance that arises when we face what we most fear with courage and compassion. Through Dharma, meditation, and shared reflection, we’ll explore what it means to awaken within the storm, to find stillness without denial, and to embody the vow of care that our world so desperately needs.

​With

​Thanissara, Kittisaro, and Deborah Eden Tull

​Together, we’ll offer teachings, meditative guidance, and embodied practices that honor both the personal and planetary dimensions of transformation. The event will include time for contemplation, sharing, and a simple closing ritual celebration to mark the turning of the year.

​Sacred Mountain Sangha: Awakening in Evolutionary Times

​Sacred Mountain Sangha is entering a new phase, deepening its work of integrating inner liberation with collective transformation. Through Liberation Spirituality training, Ministry pathways, and our Monastery Without Walls programs, we weave contemplative depth with systems awareness and creative activism. Your support sustains this living Dharma field, helping us expand our teachings, trainings, and community offerings. Every contribution, especially monthly gifts, strengthens the web of care that keeps this shared work alive.

​Thanissara & Kittisaro

​​​Facilitators

​​

​​Kittisaro (he/him) is originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee. He graduated from Princeton as a Rhodes Scholar and went on to Oxford before going to Thailand to ordain with Ajahn Chah in 1976. He helped found Chithurst Monastery and Devon Vihara in the UK, before disrobing in 1991. He is a co-founder of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and Sacred Mountain Sangha. He has studied and practiced Chan and Pure Land for 40 years, informed by the Chinese school of Master Hua, and has completed two year-long silent self-retreats. Kittisaro has an MA in Buddhist Classics from Dharma Realm Buddhist University, California. Kittisaro co-authored, with Thanissara, Listening to the Heart, A Contemplative Journey to Engaged Buddhism. 

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​​Thanissara (she/her) is Anglo-Irish and is originally from London. She began her Buddhist practice in the Burmese U Ba Khin lineage. Inspired by meeting Ajahn Chah in Thailand and the UK, she took robes as a Buddhist monastic for 12 years in the Thai Forest Tradition. She was a founding member of Chithurst Monastery and Amaravati Buddhist Monastery in the UK. Thanissara has facilitated meditation retreats internationally for over 30 years and holds an MA in Mindfulness-Based Psychotherapy Practice from Middlesex University and the Karuna Institute in the UK. With Kittisaro, she co-founded Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat and helped initiate and support several rural development projects in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. She is an author and poet, co-writing Listening to the Heart with Kittisaro. She was commissioned to write “Time to Stand Up: An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth” for the North Atlantic Books series on Sacred Activism 

​​Deborah Eden Tull (she/her) is the founder of Mindful Living Revolution, a Zen meditation teacher, author, and spiritual activist. She spent seven years as a monastic at a silent Zen Monastery, and has been immersed in sustainable communities for 25 years. Eden’s teaching style is grounded in compassionate awareness, non-duality, mindful inquiry, somatic awareness & movement, conscious dance, and an unwavering commitment to personal & collective transformation. She teaches dharma intertwined with post-patriarchal thought and practices, resting upon a lived knowledge of our unity with the more than human world. Eden also facilitates The Work That Reconnects, as created by Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy.