Along with Venerable Pannadipa (deceased 2022), Venerable Pannavati established Embracing Simplicity Contemplative Order in 2004 to provide residential training for monastics, chaplains, ministers, and dharma teachers. Accomplishments include:
- providing housing and certified job training to homeless youths and teen mothers in Western North Carolina
- building wells and toilets and refurbishing schools for the Dalits (Untouchables) in southern India;
- ordination of fifty (50) Bhikkhunis in Thailand, the first female monastics to be ordained on Thai soil;
- ordination of more than one hundred (100) Buddhist lay ministers and dharmachaya in the United States;
- ordination of the first Dalit nun and the second Cambodian Bhikkhuni.
In 2016, Venerable Pannavati and Venerable Pannadipa acquired a 30 room mansion built in 1905 with 60 additional courtyard rooms. The intention was to provide a center that could accommodate Buddhist teachers and retreats in the south. The center became Heartwood Refuge, which was incorporated in 2017 and functioned until 2022 when the residents relocated to the current location.
