Cindy Rasicot - Finding Venerable Mother: A Daughters Spiritual Quest to Thailand

Praise for
Finding Venerable Mother

I met Dhammananda personally decades ago and although our time together was short, the memory of her clarity and unshakable dedication and, above all her kindness, has stayed with me until now. Cindy Rasicots loving account of her own transformation through knowing her is a joy to read.

S YLVIA B OORSTEIN author of Happiness is an Inside Job

The journey to heal the mother wound is long and dark. What a blessing it was for Cindy Rasciot to find a woman spiritual leader who shines a light upon her path to help heal her heart. Cindy reveals her courageous adventure to find compassion and forgiveness in her memoir Finding the Venerable Mother.

L INDA J OY M YERS , President National Association of Memoir Writers, author of Journey of Memoir, Dont Call Me Mother, and Song of the Plains

A memoir of an American womans unexpected journey toward spiritual healing in Thailand.

K IRKUS R EVIEWS

Beautifully crafted, miraculously evocative, and continuously inspiring, Finding Venerable Mother is, at its essence, a story about an intelligent modern womans deeply felt spiritual quest.

J ASMIN D ARZNIK , PhD author of Song of a Captive Bird and the New York Times bestseller The Good Daughter

Copyright 2020 Cindy Rasicot

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, digital scanning, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, please address She Writes Press.

Published 2020

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN: 978-1-63152-702-9 pbk

ISBN: 978-1-63152-703-6 ebk

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918230

For information, address:

She Writes Press

1569 Solano Ave #546

Berkeley, CA 94707

She Writes Press is a division of SparkPoint Studio, LLC.

Interior design by Tabitha Lahr

All company and/or product names may be trade names, logos, trademarks, and/or registered trademarks and are the property of their respective owners.

Names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of certain individuals.

Everything Begins Here.in our Hearts
Venerable Dhammananda Bhikkhuni

T his is where my story began, in August of 2005. My husband, thirteen-year-old son, and I had just relocated from our home in Northern California to Bangkok, Thailand. My husband worked for a large oil company and had been transferred there for a three-year expat assignment. In the first three months, I was busy searching for housing and enrolling my son in school, but once that was done, I was in a position to choose what I wanted to do next. I considered volunteering for an organization dedicated to womens issues. Then it occurred to me that before wed left California, I had interviewed at the Global Fund for Women located in San Francisco. They focused on a feminist agendahelping women throughout the world. I wondered if their foundation might be funding any projects in Thailand that required volunteers. I logged into their website and, to my surprise, found an announcement for an upcoming conference in Bangkok in October, just a few weeks away, with a focus on women in developing countries. I felt a rush of excitement and a feeling of serendipity. I could network to meet other women and learn about volunteer opportunitiesall for a cause I cared deeply about. The universe was offering me a gift. I signed up, convinced that a new door was opening and I was about to walk through it.

On the morning of the conference, I set the alarm for six, earlier than usual. I couldnt wait to get up. Everything felt special. The coffee tasted richer and more flavorful. I put on a favorite linen blouse and long skirt, grabbed my purse, and headed out the door.

The conference was held at the Shangri-La Hotel, a luxury five-star hotel located right on the banks of the famed Chao Praya River. My driver dropped me off at the main entrance. Walking into the lobby was like entering a huge atrium covered in skylights and decorated with lush green plants, a babbling fountain, and displays of purple orchids. The space was three stories high with individual balconies on the second and third floors that overlooked the reception area. In the center was a gorgeous bamboo tree that grew so tall it touched the ceiling. It felt like an enchanted garden. I made my way to the concierge who directed me to the second-floor ballroom. Stepping off the elevator into the hallway, I noticed the mood was quiet, with not much activity going on.

I had expected there might be, at most, three hundred women in attendance. The fact that the event was being held in a grand ballroom should have tipped me off, but when I walked through the conference room doors, I caught my breath in surprise, overwhelmed by the huge number of women. There must have been one thousand people, an international gatheringAfrican, East Indian, Latina, Asianand a sprinkling of white women here and there. Everywhere I looked, women wore native dressbold African prints, flashes of orange and pink silk saris, Guatemalan shawls in a panorama of red, blue, yellow, and orange stripes. I had not been in a room with that many engaged feminists since my undergraduate studies, thirty years earlier. A roar of excitement filled the air. I glanced through the program and circled an afternoon workshop entitled, Faith, Feminism, and the Power of Love, an unlikely combination, I mused, mixing prayer and politics.

The morning session went by quickly. After lunch, I headed to the workshop. It looked like about fifty women had showed up and were waiting for the presentation to begin. There were eight panelistsfrom South America, Africa, Iraq, Myanmar, Indonesia, and Thailandseated in a half-circle facing the audience. A few of them wore earphones for translations.

The moderator led a discussion that centered on whether being a feminist or having feminist values was a contradiction with having faith or practicing ones faith. The moderator invited each panelist to speak. A quiet and diminutive woman from Bolivia, dressed in a black bowler hat and royal blue shawl, talked about her work in rural villages with poor women. I was a little sleepy after lunch and not really paying close attention until suddenly a tense debate broke out between two panelists, one from Iraq and the other from Indonesia. The woman from Iraq fired an angry comment at the Indonesian woman about how Islam was a means of oppressing women and keeping them subservient in a male-dominated religion. The Indonesian woman defended Islam as a source of personal strength and faith to poor women surviving under adverse conditions. It was like watching a hard-fought tennis match, the ball getting volleyed back and forth over the net. An uncomfortable silence followed their debate.

Thats when I first heard her speak. Seated at the edge of the semicircle was a tall, slender Thai woman dressed in saffron robes and flip-flops. Her head was a fuzzy crown of black shaven hair, and she wore thin, gold, wire-rimmed glasses. She spoke in a calm, quiet voice, soothing the waves of discontent.