.Verses & Vows

Marin’s Meredith Heller & Ayya Santacitta

In the open spaces of Marin County, two remarkable women are weaving their life’s work into the regional tapestry.

Meredith Heller, celebrated poet and educator, and Ayya Santacitta, pioneering Buddhist nun and environmental advocate, embody a profound commitment to self-realization and collective wellbeing.

Their distinctive paths and their efforts to develop awareness that Earth is a living organism—a concept known as Gaia Theory—lay a foundation for a more compassionate and sustainable future.

Discovery Via Poetry

For Heller, writing is more than a creative art form—it’s medicine for healing and self-discovery. Her poetry and workshops explore personal experiences and promote emotional wellbeing. Heller’s books, Write a Poem, Save Your Life and Writing by Heart, are centered on her lived experience. “Poetry found me; I have to write,” she says, her eyes alive with passion.

“Our bodies hold all of the stories of our lives,” she says. “If we listen to our bodies, they usually tell us what we need to heal, so I do a guided journey for students to have better body awareness. I like people in workshops to write not from the thinking mind, but from felt experience.”

Heller’s workshops make a space for collective creativity and healing, fostering a sense of connection and trust that builds community. “The kind of writing we do is deep and vulnerable,” she says.

She uses this analogy of a shared garden: “I’m bringing the carrots, you’re bringing the potatoes, and someone else is bringing the celery and the onions, and we end up feeding each other through what each of us individually puts in the pot.” Participants awaken to the richness and meaning of their stories.

“Students come out of workshops saying, ‘I matter, my unique thread in this whole fabric of life matters,’” Heller says. She pauses. “Everybody is needed. We’re all in the emerging community of life, and it’s very alive.”

For someone new to writing, Heller advises, “Just start. Your writing doesn’t need to entertain or be perfect. Write in a way that you’re learning about yourself. Open one of my books to any page, and find an invitation that calls to you, and start writing for yourself.”

Mindfulness & Sustainability

Sitting on the patio near a lush fern, a plant ally named Coal (for coalition), Santacitta recalls the origin story of the Aloka Earth Room.

“The original idea came from my first teacher, Ajahn Buddhadasa, in Wat Suan Mokkh, Thailand, in the late 1980s. He had an art gallery in the middle of the forest he used for teaching. I came from a background in the arts, so I was very touched by that approach,” Santacitta says. “Over 30 years passed, and I trained as a nun in Thailand, India, Nepal and at Amaravati Monastery in England, and came to America in 2009. And I always thought when the right causes and conditions came, I would like to try something similar.”

After co-founding a 17-acre forest monastery in the Sierra foothills, the nuns sold the property after a fire in 2021, and Santacitta started the Aloka Earth Room. “I chose a small place at the end of a dead-end road in San Rafael, which is a little secluded. But if people want to find it, they can,” she says.

It began as a seedling in 2023, and now it’s a sapling, Santacitta notes. “When people step into the Earth Room, it’s a symbolic expression of our deep connectedness with the Earth,” she says. One goal is to affirm that “we have more access to the self-regenerating intelligence of the Earth herself” than we know. The experiment includes reviving a mindset that existed before colonialism, mass agriculture, capitalism, mineral extraction and other modern systems that now endanger the survival of many species, including humanity.

The room’s adobe walls are adorned with celestial patterns. And the space represents the soil to grow a community nourished by Buddhist meditations and Earth-based rituals that express gratitude for the natural world.

One guided meditation connects the elements—earth, air, water, fire and space—with the body, resulting in practitioners often reporting feeling grounded, clear and connected. “The body and the planet are made of the same stuff,” Santacitta observes. “We have a direct lifeline into the planet through our bodies.”

Santacitta’s environmental focus is integral to her Buddhist practice. She teaches eco-dharma at the Aloka Earth Room. Aloka means “light of awareness,” the name of the first nuns’ cottage near London, where she began her monastic training in the early ’90s. The name “keeps me connected to where I come from and where I’m going,” she says.

“I consider us to be inside the planet, and not on top of it. Like an earthworm inside the Earth, we are inside the atmosphere. We need to work with our minds so we don’t get stuck in a hall of mirrors,” she says. Her meditation series, “Earthworm Practice for the Anthropocene,” teaches that like earthworms turning waste into fertile soil, practitioners can transform life’s challenges into opportunities for growth and wisdom.

Shared Values

Despite their distinct paths, Heller and Santacitta are united by a vision of transformation. Their work intersects, each complementing the other to create a tapestry of mindfulness, creativity and sustainability.

Beyond her role at the Earth Room, Santacitta is a sought-after speaker and advocate for environmental justice, bringing Buddhism into conversations about sustainability and social responsibility. Her influence extends globally through workshops, retreats and collaborations with like-minded organizations. “I’m often the only monastic,” she observes with wonder.

“My niche is to help people to work with their minds and to connect with the more-than-human world. If we offer ourselves to that intelligence, we will be claimed and pushed and pulled in a certain direction to use our gifts,” she says.

Her approach fosters self-awareness and personal action. “My work is to help people ask for guidance and ask the right questions from inside the web of life—and then it’s up to individuals to find what works for them and what they’re good at,” Santacitta says.

Social Impact

Together, Heller and Santacitta weave a narrative of hope and possibility. Their collaborative efforts, whether through poetry workshops or environmental advocacy, resonate with people seeking meaning and connection in an increasingly complex world.

Heller’s workshops provide an avenue for personal discovery and community building, while Santacitta’s teachings offer a path toward mindfulness and ecological harmony. Both women encourage a revitalized connection to oneself and the environment, promoting a life that values and nurtures collective wellbeing.

For information on Meredith Heller’s writing workshops, books and poetry, visit meredithheller.com.

To learn about the Aloka Earth Room events, workshops and ecology resources, visit alokavihara.org/aloka-earth-room.