November 10. 2025 Cuba is a gem in the Caribbean. History has shown that little gems like Cuba have been pilfered and bantered about like toys by powerful forces of greed and hatred fueled by delusion. The history is as old as dirt. It’s a history humans seem immune to learn.

Those who most love this gem as their homeland witness an increasing country-wide collapse including, very visibly, entire buildings reduced to rubble due to a lack of supplies and recourse to maintenance and repair.  Widespread shortages, notably fuel and medicine are daily encounters. Food scarcity is a misnomer. There is only scarcity for those who can’t afford it due to a severely imbalanced wage versus inflation equation. The sanitation department can’t comply with garbage pickup due to fuel costs and availability. There are tall piles of garbage on many street corners (we see elderly rummaging through the refuse). The garbage feeds a growing population of rodents and mosquitoes. Crumbling infrastructure causes water quality issues (we boil then filter drinking and cooking water). Prolonged, announced and unannounced, electrical power outages create food spoilage. This past visit the gas plant supplying cooking fuel experienced a shutdown. Four mosquito-borne viruses: dengue, zika, oropouche and chikungunya wreak havoc on mentality and materiality, over and over.

In this environment a young community, Theravada Cuba, has emerged as a resilient island of Dhamma instruction. Our latest visit, the sixth in just over a year and a half, was met with bright and earnest enthusiasm. Since our first visit in March 2024, there has been a marked economic decline and our core group has decreased in number as members understandably emigrate for fair economic opportunity. But new members arrive and word spreads of our presence. We walked to the Malecón on mornings our schedule and weather permitted raising eyebrows and raising hope. We gave Dhamma desanas at our sibling community Kosen Dojo, a long-established Soto Zen community in Havana and surrounding provinces. We met with a graduate class in Oriental Philosophy sharing Dhamma and meditation instruction. We gave Ten Precept ordinations to our long-time members Akiñcano and Sīvālī and Eight Renunciant Precepts to our long-time member Beatriz (who is also the co-director of TC). And we found an apartment in Central Havana to rent so our young community has the established space for the Dhamma instruction they desire.

Sanditthiko- A Theravada Space in Havana, Cuba

In one of our daily conversations, we discussed the Catholic Saint, Francis of Assisi. He has been a personal role model since I first learned of him (probably in Catholic elementary school). The conversation started from something Sīvālī mentioned. She said, [in translation] “money is ugly”. I agree it is an ugly necessity but its ugliness depends on its use. As monastics we take the precept to not handle “gold and silver” but we are supported by the gold and silver of others.  Generosity to the Sangha is “the incomparable field of merit for the world”. Without this support, our primary role of studying and practicing the instruction of the Blessed One can’t be accomplished. We wouldn’t have the opportunity to realize the Dhamma in order to teach. The Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path to the cessation of suffering, would quickly vanish.

 The conversation turned to our vision for TC and how we planned to live. In the midst of the economic scarcity, we agreed we would live as simply and modestly as the means of our lay community permitted, in simplicity, putting our energy into the study and practice and realization of the Dhamma which is the really, realizable benefit for Cuba and Spanish-speaking America here and now. Saint Francis of Assisi renounced worldly ways including the money his family had amassed as merchants. He said: “It is no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.”

 One of the very first eye-opening readings when I first started a Buddhist practice was the Gotami Sutta (AN 8.53):

"…As for the qualities of which you may know, 'These qualities lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to modesty, not to self-aggrandizement; to contentment, not to discontent; to seclusion, not to entanglement; to aroused persistence, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome': You may categorically hold, 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction...” (translation by Ajahn Thanissaro)

This quality of simplicity, to being unburdensome and content is also highlighted in the Karaniyamettasutta (KP9)

“…Let them be able and upright,
Straightforward and gentle in speech,
Humble and not conceited,
Contented and easily satisfied,
Unburdened with duties and frugal in their ways.
Peaceful and calm and wise and skillful,
Not proud or demanding in nature.
Let them not do the slightest thing
That the wise would later reprove.
Wishing: In gladness and in safety,
May all beings be at ease…” (translation by the Amaravati Sangha)

This is our vision for Casa Sanditthiko: to be simple to support in line with the Vinaya, accepting what we are offered in line with the Vinaya, to give more in Dhamma than we receive and to live as our own community of lay practitioners lives in line with the Vinaya. Our Vihara will be our space offering to the Spanish-speaking world. This is our Dhamma ground. As we mature, we will find a property suitable for bhikkhus and bhikkhunis and retreat offerings both in Spanish and in English.

 Our growth is enabled by the kind and generous financial support of those who understand the Dhamma sees no political, philosophical or geographical boundaries. Dhamma is everywhere visible and ever-present, everywhere verifiable, everywhere possible to be realized by those who put in the persistent effort to see. It is for everyone. Our work is for this to be experienced in Cuba and Latin America. Our purpose is not to put band-aids on open wounds but to give the “Dhamma medicine” the Incomparable Doctor wrote the script for. Welcome to join us. Welcome to Theravada Cuba. (Mārajinā Bhikkhunī)