
Kathina & End of Retreat Celebration 2025
March 23 @ 9:00 am - 2:00 pm PDT

In-person and streamed on YouTube live
Sunday, March 23
In-person: 9 am – 2 pm
Online: 10 am

The Abbey community invites you to celebrate the end of our winter retreat with 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.
Join us for our our first big public event of 2025.
We welcome you to stay after lunch and join us for offering service!
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’ve posted a kathina wish list below.
All Abbey Dharma programs are offered freely, and your offering is welcomed. Make an offering here.
Registration information
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.
Joining Online
No need to register—just go to YouTube!
Kathina Wish List
We will keep updating this list until kathina. If you will be offering items from this list, we invite you to send a message to [email protected] so we can remove the item if we know we are receiving a sufficient quantity.
Food (and kitchen supplies)
Also see our general food wish list
- Unsalted nuts - peanuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans
- Raw unsalted seeds - pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, chia
- Unsweetened cocoa powder
- Ground flax meal
- Dried fruit
- Regular and gluten-free pasta - spaghetti, other fun shapes
- Soy Curls
- 9"x9" cotton dishcloths
- Plastic reusable spoons and forks
- Stainless steel dish scrubbers
- Corelle dinnerware 18 oz. bowls (this)
- Black Tea Bags (ideally tagless and not individually wrapped)
- Silicone baking mats that can withstand heat up to 480 degrees
- Ensure Nutritional Powder, 1 kg, Vanilla Flavor
- Non-stick 9x4x4 loaf pans (like this)
- Blue painters' tape (for labeling leftovers)
Shelter (and grounds)
- Twin mattress protector (non-waterproof) (like this)
- Large garden tub/bucket (like this)
- 40V Volt Lithium-ion 6.0 Ah High Capacity Ryobi Battery (Op40602)
- Vegetarian soil amendments (like composted manure)
- Small battery operated table clocks
- Wall clocks that do not tick
- Command strips
Medicine (and personal care)
- Unscented toilet paper (minimal packaging if possible)
- Alcohol-free fluoride mouth wash (like ACT)
- Emergen-C
- Mach 3 Razor Refills
- Fragrance free hand lotion
Buddha Hall
- Gift cards for Union Gospel Mission (thrift store), Goodwill, Home Depot, and Walmart
- Dusters for holy objects (vegan)
- Upright dustpans
- 45 gallon trash bags (unscented)
- Gift certificates from Blue Moon Nursery (call Terese Palaia to purchase gift certificate 509-747-4255 or email her at [email protected].)
- Gift certificates from Plants of the Wild
Library
- Label Maker Tape: 12mm 0.47" Laminated White TZe Tape TZe-231,1/2" Black on White (like this)
- 4 inch Scotch Brand Book Tape (this)
- Mylar covering for books (this—10" size)
Sharing the Dharma
- SSD external hard drives (2 Tb+)
Other
- Small metal display easels 3-4" (like this)