Vassa Retreat for 2024 – ends.
Dear Friends
The Eight-Fold Path,
Is the most honourable way.
The Four Noble Truths,
The most honourable utterance.
Freedom from craving,
The most honourable state.
And the all-seeing Buddha,
The most honourable being.
The Buddha: Dhammapada V. 273
Trusting this note finds you well as we move further into our season of Spring with the weather warming towards Summer.
As many of you will be well aware, we have now finished the Vassa Retreat for 2024!
This wonderful retreat period of 3 months (12 weeks) from the Full Moon of July to the Full Moon of October, which the Buddha designated as a special retreat period, particularly for monastics to stay in one place and develop and deepen their Meditation Practice and understanding of the Mind through Buddhist Wisdom.
In keeping with this 2,600 year tradition, which is probable one of the oldest ongoing yearly retreats in human history; each year I offer a ‘non-residential’ Vassa Retreat period for those that are interested.
Here at Ratanagiri Retreat Garden – Farrants Hill NSW, our Vassa Retreat involved determining to engage in extra practice of Meditation, Mindfulness and Buddhist Wisdom – study and learning over the three month period. We had monthly Sunday Retreat Days (July, August, September and October).
Each of these Retreat Days was well attended and we spent the day in periods of Meditation – sitting and walking, with time for Teachings, Questions and Discussion.
The theme for our Vassa Retreat 2024 was – Meditations and Reflections on Early Buddhism.
I offered reflections for the four Retreat Days as:
- What is ‘Early Buddhism’ and why is it significant?
- What Meditation practice did the Buddha practice and teach (Samma Samadhi – Jhana)?
- The Buddha’s Primary Teaching of the ‘Four Noble Truths’.
- The Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta and the ‘Noble Eight-Fold Path’.
Between these monthly sessions I sent out to participants extensive notes, PDF, web links, Youtube clips all related to our theme.
This topic I feel was well received by people, but certainly needs more exploration and appreciation.
I find that the period of 3 months provides a good opportunity to develop helpful practices and healthy habits which we can ideally continue to develop and especially maintain into the rest of the year and into the New Year 2025; even up until the next Vassa Retreat period.
Certainly, the Buddha spoke about the importance of both Developing and Maintaining – Right Effort, which is also one of the Path and Practice Factors of the ‘Noble Eight-Fold Path’.
In many ways the Vassa Retreat, provides both a practice and a template for living our life mindfully and consciously. Our Vassa Retreat period at Ratanagiri , also provides the opportunity to continue to engage with our usual work and home life activities but with the mind-set of being on a Retreat.
This approach helps us to continue to live, learn and integrate – helpful practices into our regular daily life.
In many ways the whole of the Buddha’s Teachings and Way of Practice, especially the ‘Noble Eight-Fold Path’ is a template for living in a mindful and wise way. In fact if we align and live in this way we would be living as an Enlightened Person would live. That is living with Right or Correct – View, Thought, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness and Meditation.
Most of our stress and distress, issues and problems happen because we are not living aligned to this wonderful wisdom template of the Noble Eight-Fold Path.
Next time we feel upset or distressed, have a look at which of the Path Factors are we not aligned with; is it not having the correct View, or being too caught up in negative thinking or maybe wrong speech?
I find it wonderful that we have a Path of Practice through the Noble Eight-Fold Path, to live and learn from, which is still as applicable and apply-able and approachable now in the 21st Century as it was 2,600 years ago!
Such great wisdom!
LAST RETREAT FOR 2024
So, we still have one last Retreat Day for the year here at Ratanagiri – Farrants Hill.
This will be on Sunday 1st December 2024 from 9.30am to 1.00pm NSW time.
The theme for our Retreat will be: ‘Meditations and Reflections on Beginnings and Endings’ a theme that we can all relate to and find meaning and learnings.
As the last Retreat Day for the year – you are invited to bring a plate of food to share as a shared lunch with everyone on that day.
We can have our shared lunch at 1.00pm and then you can leave when you are ready.
This will be a good opportunity to connect in a mindful way at the ending of our year, especially for those of you that have not connected much or at all this year with a Retreat Day.
So, we hope to see you especially if you are new or have not been for a while.
LAST MEDITATION GROUP FOR 2024
Our Thursday Night Meditation Group – will finish on Thursday 19th December 2024 and resume on Thursday 16th January 2025.
Thank you for being part of our Meditation Group and Retreat Day sessions for this year. We very much appreciate your ongoing support through attending these sessions.
I do hope to see you for our next Sunday Retreat Day and or the Thursday Night Meditation Group.
Please register your interest to attend the Retreat Day at: info@wellawareness.com.au
For those that might be interested, I just came across the video below – on the Buddha Bodhivanna Monastery website (and Youtube).
The Abbot is Ajahn Kalyano who was a couple of years junior to me as a monk in Thailand, I remember him well.
He now has an amazing monastery. https://www.buddhabodhivana.org/
A well-presented video for 1 hour 34 minutes talks shows the monastery and some of the monastics – its quite inspiring!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2n5Sv29Dxm4&t=5638s
Metta Regards
John and the Team
