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Kathina & End of Retreat Celebration 2024
March 24 @ 9:00 am - 4:00 pm PDT
In-person and streamed on YouTube live
Sunday, March 24
9 am – 4 pm
The Abbey community invites you to celebrate the end of our winter retreat and join us for the Kathina Celebration—a day of reunion and sharing the Dharma.
The Kathina (pronounced ka-tee-na) is widely celebrated in the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia.
It’s a time when monastics and lay practitioners reunite after the monastics’ long varsa or “rains (or snows) retreat” to enact the ancient kathina ritual.
We’ll also thank our wonderful volunteers and share a vegetarian potluck lunch.
In the afternoon, take a guided tour of the Buddha Hall! Followed by a chance for offering service—outside, weather permitting, and/or rolling mantra for the Buddha Hall statues.
Join us for our our first public event of 2024.
Registration for in-person attendance is required.
What is it?
Dating to the Buddha’s time, it’s traditionally an occasion when lay friends make offerings of the four requisites—food, clothing, shelter, and medicine—to replenish the monks’ and nuns’ supplies after the three-month monastic retreat. The monastics accept these offerings, and ceremonially offer a “robe of merit” to a worthy monastic
The ceremony includes a procession, chanting, and a short Dharma talk. Together we’ll rejoice in the interdependent relationship of sangha and the lay community.
By request of our lay friends, we’ll post a kathina wish list closer to the date.
All Abbey Dharma programs are offered freely, and your offering is welcomed. Make an offering here.
Registration information
You can also watch it live on YouTube Live beginning at 9:30 Pacific Time.
Access slides of the chants and recitations here.
If you have any of these symptoms, please re-schedule your visit: Fever or chills, cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing, fatigue, muscle or body aches, headache, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, congestion or runny nose, nausea or vomiting, diarrhea.
General Schedule
| Sunday March 24 |
|
| 8:45 am | Arrive and greet |
| 9:00 | Kathina ceremony Dharma talk Thank volunteers & dedicate merit |
| 12:00 | Vegetarian potluck lunch & clean up |
| 1:30 | Buddha Hall tours Offering service: forest work, rolling mantra — weather permitting. We’ll stop about 4:00 |
