eNews October 2024

Oct 2, 2024 | eNews Etc., News

Dear Friends,

Fall is breezing in and it’s dark when we leave the Meditation Hall to the sound of crickets after evening meditation.

Our neighbor’s peacock and peahen have been frequenting Abbey grounds, and Tsundru the bull moose has wandered by the buildings a number of times. Perhaps they are drawn by the Buddha Hall, which nears closer to completion every day.

We’ve welcomed many guests, including our largest crowd of the year, attendees for the Labor Day weekend Concentration Retreat. A few days ago, a few of our wonderful Friends of Sravasti Abbey arrived from Singapore.

We’re so grateful for all the support that continues to flow to the Abbey from far and wide, and are inspired by everyone’s practice despite the many challenging conditions in the world.

See our most recent photo gallery on the Joys of Community Life and another gallery on Abbey Life in September.

Bhikshuni Thubten Chodron and the Sravasti Abbey Community

Concentration Retreat

Over Labor Day weekend, we had a full house for the three-day silent retreat on developing concentration in our meditation practice.

The course consisted of sitting meditation and teachings. In the session after lunch, people broke into three groups to do walking and sitting meditation outdoors, alternating between 15 minutes of each.

The first group walked slowly around the Buddha statue in the garden; the second group walked a little quicker around the entire garden; and the third group walked in the forest. This was a great activity for the session after lunch when some people feel drowsy.

New people sometimes think that they should just sit down, close their eyes, and empty their minds of all thoughts to develop concentration. But concentration isn’t about having a blank mind, and it doesn’t come easy to someone who lives a busy life with many activities. To cultivate concentration, we need to know the hindrances to it and how to develop the antidotes to those hindrances.

Ven. Chodron spoke about the five hindrances of sensual desire, malice, restlessness and remorse, lethargy and sleepiness, and deluded doubt. These are the principal mental factors that take us away from our object of meditation, so getting a handle on them is essential to stabilize the mind on one object. These five hindrances also cause problems that interfere with our daily life activities.

See photos from the retreat. Teachings from the retreat will be available soon on the Abbey’s YouTube channel.

The Buddha Hall

There’s been a lot of activity the last three weeks at the Buddha Hall:

  • Leveling the concrete floor surfaces and then laying the carpet.
  • Digging a huge hole for the six cistern tanks that will catch rainwater runoff from the Buddha Hall. The water will be used for irrigation. Photo at right.
  • Controlling erosion on the Buddha Hall site by building swales, laying down jute, and spraying hydroseed on it. See the Landscaping and Rain-scaping video clips.

The latter is a huge project because so much of the hillside where the Buddha Hall was constructed was torn up by the building process. Dust flies in every direction whenever a backhoe, truck, or other machinery drives on the roads connecting Abbey buildings. See the latest Buddha Hall photo gallery.

Arrival of Musical Instruments: The long-awaited traditional Chinese temple instruments finally arrived from Taiwan. Ven. Hongding, Monastery Manager of Fo En Si Temple, where five of our newest bhikshunis were recently ordained, sponsored some of the instruments along with her disciples.

See photos of their arrival and read a post about the instruments. You can also watch the following short videos on the Abbey’s YouTube channel:

More Holy Objects: Read a post about the arrival of a beautiful thangka of Indian Buddhist master Shantideva commissioned by Ven. Ngawang.

Well Work: As a separate project, we’ve had to re-drill the original well on the property, which was so old that the county didn’t even have a well drilling log for it.

Two enormous trucks sat on the grass in the garden decommissioning the old well and then drilling the new one. We’re thankful to have fresh water again!

Mantra Count: Since 2019, Abbey friends have been reciting Shakyamuni Buddha’s mantra—tayata om muni muni maha muniye soha—and dedicating the merit toward the Buddha Hall’s completion. Over 9.5 million recitations have been reported! You’re invited to add your practice and mantra recitations to help reach 10 million by Lhabub Duchen on November 22. See the Buddha Hall Mantra Recitation page to add your merit to this meritorious project!

Sharing the Dharma Day & Offering Service Saturday

For an incredible eight years, we’ve been going through An Open-hearted Life, reading and discussing a chapter during each monthly Sharing the Dharma Day.

In September, we focused on the penultimate chapter, “Bringing Compassion into Every Moment,” that shared numerous examples of how we can share compassion with the people we encounter in our daily lives.

Expressing our kind heart in whatever big or small way we can brings joy into our lives and the lives of those with whom we share planet Earth. Watch Ven. Chodron’s talk here and Ven. Sangye Khadro’s meditation on how compassion changes us.

Offering Service Saturday attracted a core group of Abbey volunteers to work on fire mitigation in the forest and roll mantras for the Buddha Hall statues. We’re incredibly grateful to our friends who devote one of their precious weekend days to offer service to the Abbey community and Three Jewels.

Lots of Dharma Talks

Mind is the Source of Happiness and Pain

Ven. Chodron offered an online talk on Open Heart, Clear Mind for the Federal University of Pampa in Brazil. She introduced core Buddhist ideas about how, by training the mind, we create the causes for happiness and avoid creating the causes of suffering now and in the future.

This was the third event this year that Sravasti Abbey offered online for the university through the efforts of father-and-daughter team Rui and Maria Clara, who provided simultaneous interpretation into Brazilian Portuguese. We look forward to continuing that relationship with more online talks next year.

In the meantime, Ven. Damcho meets with a study group from the university once every two weeks. You can also watch Ven. Sangye Khadro’s talk for the group in April on What is Meditation?

Seven-Point Mind Training

At the request of Dharmakaya Buddhist Center in Reno, Nevada, Ven. Chodron offered two talks on the Seven-Point Mind Training, a text by Geshe Chekawa that contains essential advice for transforming whatever we encounter in life into our spiritual practice.

Ven. Chodron covered the first two points on the preliminary practices and the main practice of generating the two kinds of bodhicitta. She began teaching on the third point—transforming adverse circumstances into the path to awakening—but time ran out. We all look forward to her continuing these teachings in the future!

Open Heart, Clear Mind

Ven. Chodron spoke on her book Open Heart, Clear Mind at the request of Vajrayana Dharma Centre in Australia. Because so many people have questions about rebirth and karma, she focused on the chapters explaining those topics. In addition to the logical proof of rebirth based on causes producing results, she explained how Tibetan monks located the incarnation of the thirteenth Dalai Lama and shared stories of people she met and those she has read about who remember their previous lives.

Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds

In September, Ven. Sangye Khadro started a weekly online class on Shantideva’s Engaging in the Deeds of a Bodhisattvafor Tse Chen Ling Center in San Francisco. So far, they have completed the first two chapters on the amazing benefits of generating bodhicitta, making magnificent offerings to the Three Jewels, and confessing non-virtue to prepare the mind for developing bodhicitta.

How to Meditate

Ven. Sangye Khadro also started teaching a weekly class on How to Meditate for Thubten Norbu Ling center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Each week looks at different aspects of meditation—the purpose of meditation, how to set up a daily practice, what to do when encountering obstacles, and so on. She also leads practices in different types of meditation, experimenting with both placement (concentration) and analytical meditations.

Local Dharma Classes

Our weekly classes continued—Transform Your Troubles at the Create art center in Newport and Beginning Buddhism at the Souls Center in Spokane. Participants in both classes expressed gratitude for learning about meditation, mind-training, and techniques to reduce attachment. Ven. Semkye also spoke to the Sandpoint Sangha via Zoom on overcoming the self-centered tendency to “other” people outside of our immediate group.

Prison Dharma

Ven. Lamsel shared a poem by Al Ramos, who is incarcerated for life, with the Spokane Dharma class. Her article and his poem, which is embedded in it, discuss how our minds discriminate good people and bad people—the worthy and the unworthy—based on… well, read the article to find out!

Building Restorative Communities, an initiative of the Spokane NAACP, screened the documentary, Circle Up by Julie Mallozzi, which the Abbey’s prison team attended. It tells the story of Janet, whose son was murdered, and her path to forgiveness that involved the larger community in which the murder occurred.

The film shows what can happen when people sit in a circle and share their thoughts and feelings about an event and how it affected them. We saw how such honest, frank, and respectful exchanges help youth become aware of the effects of their actions on others and help grieving mothers find meaning in the loss of a child.

More News

Upcoming Events

Here’s what’s happening in October:

Oct. 2-Nov. 20, Wednesdays:
Beginning Buddhism, with Abbey monastics at Souls Center in Spokane

Oct. 2-Dec. 18, Wednesdays: Engaging in the Bodhisattva’s Deeds, with Ven. Sangye Khadro on Zoom, hosted by Tse Chen Ling

Oct. 5 & 19: Offering Service Saturdays, in-person at the Abbey

Oct. 5: Dependent Arising Every Day, with Ven. Thubten Chonyi on Zoom, hosted by Buddhist Society Hamburg

Oct. 6-Nov. 24, Sundays: Jeffrey Hopkins Legacy Series, with 11 Buddhist scholars on Zoom

Oct. 7-21, Mondays: How to Meditate, with Ven. Sangye Khadro on Zoom, hosted by Thubten Norbu Ling

Oct. 13: Sharing the Dharma Day, in-person at the Abbey and streamed live

Oct. 20: Medicine Buddha Puja, with Abbey monastics on Zoom

Oct. 22: Sandpoint Sangha, with Ven. Thubten Semkye on Zoom

Oct. 25-27: Cooling the Fires of Anger, with Ven. Sangye Khadro in-person & on Zoom

Plus weekly teachings online:

Check the Abbey’s Events Page for more talks, retreats & courses!