Sutta Study
Aspects of Mindfulness
Sutta Reading and discussion
with
Vens. Dhammānusārī, Dhammavarā, and Dhammavihārī.
Samyutta Nikaya 47.3
The Power of Love
The benefits of cultivating
loving kindness
The Good News,
the Bad News
and
the Truly Great News
How to make sense of this world
and to blossom here
Click here
Seeds
The Buddha's simile
in Samyutta Nikaya 22.54
Seeds of consciousness
planted in the earth of form
watered by desire
Laying Down the Burden
What is this burden?
How did it get here?
Who is carrying it?
. . .
How to put it down
Sutta Study
Anything that has a Beginning has an End
Sutta reflection for Magha Puja Day
recalling Sariputta's stream entry realisation
Mahakhandaka 1.14.
Far
From the
Madding Crowd
How to practice the Buddha's teachings on solitude and seclusion
Sutta Study
Anuruddha and
the Great Thoughts
Investigating the teachings
in Anguttara Nikaya 8.30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rYmFwCTQrKY
Wise Witnessing
How to witness reality to enable wisdom and free the heart from all suffering
Poisonous Privilege
Teachings from the Buddha
on the deathly danger
of praise
honour and renown
Entering
the Sacred Space
A 40 minute guided meditation
on breath awareness
Four Oceans of Tears
How Many Tears Have We Shed . . . ?
Patience is a Virtue
The noble virtue of patience, like a bridge over troubled waters
Simplicity in Diversity
January 2024
Dhamma Sharing
Dear Friend,
Greetings and good wishes to you. I hope that you are well and thriving.
I am well. I’m settling into life with my dear elderly parents in Wiltshire, UK. Opportunities to connect with the wider Sangha are arising. All thanks to being able to be online from wherever we are around the world.
I’m offering Dhamma teachings again with my beloved communities in the US - Dhammadharini monastery in CA and Empty Cloud monastery in NJ . . .
I’m co-teaching two sessions each Sunday in February with respected theri Ayya Sobhana and offering Dhamma on Wednesdays for the Empty Cloud Sangha led by Ayyas Suddhaso and Soma.
I’ve also been connecting with my dear old monastic Chan friend, Venerable Jin Ho, honorary chaplain at Bristol University. She is based at the vibrant Multifaith Chaplaincy in the heart of the city. To spend time with her is great Dhamma nourishment.
I am blessed to have the opportunity to offer teachings to her students and the wider sangha around her on Fridays in February.
Spiritual friendship, said the Buddha, is the whole of the holy life.
My greatest spiritual friend this lifetime is my dear 85 year old Mum, Theresa. She has determined to sit with me every evening, however weary, dedicating our efforts for peace and ceasefire in our troubled world.
We both know well that a ceasefire has first to come about within our own hearts and minds as our meditation practice makes space for healing and peace.
May all know the peace of harmlessness, of kindliness.
May we all know the happiness of letting go of self centred habits.
May all beings open to the joy of serving and supporting one another, in peace and friendship.
Upcoming retreats
12 - 16 June at Sunyata Ireland -
www.sunyatacentre.org
8 - 16 July Ekuthuleni rustic retreat -
www.ekuthuleni.org
** And a special announcement **
New monastery in Apulia, Italia
See www.emptycloud.it
for news and a chance to contribute
December 2023
Dhamma sharing
Greetings and good wishes for the New Year
Dear Friend,
I hope you are well, happy and peaceful. The festive season can be joyful, or it can be lonely and sad. We know that it may be a time of counting the blessings, warm and safe and surrounded by family and friends for many, while for others right now it is a time of great suffering, trauma and loss.
However it is for you, may the goodwill of this holiday manifest all around you and within you.
May we continue to develop tender hearts of compassion for the suffering in the world, rejoice in the goodness that is apparent and maintain loving kindness and peace as wise response to every situation.
November 2023
Dhamma Sharing
I'm well and hope that you are also well in every way. I'm experiencing a profound sense of homecoming nowadays, as I am staying on with my parents in an open-ended way, in their lovely home and village in the UK.
It's a homecoming especially in the sense of deeply stilling and entering into the heart. Being with old age is a slowing down. An embracing of impermanence. A welcome to the truth of not knowing. A letting go.
It's beautiful to be here with my dear elderly Mum and Dad. A chance to repay some of the great love and care that I have received from them my whole life and to keep cultivating love, care and patience, opening to nature, to Dhamma.
A Contemplation
From The Greater Discourse of the Buddha on the Mass of Suffering
MN 13
". . . With sensual pleasures as the cause, sensual pleasures as the source, sensual pleasures as the basis, the cause being simply sensual pleasures - kings quarrel with kings, nobles with nobles, brahmins with brahmins, householders with householders, mother quarrels with child, child with mother, father with child, child with father; brother quarrels with brother, brother with sister, sister with brother, friend with friend.
.
And here in our quarrels, brawls and disputes we attack each other with fists, clods, sticks or knives, whereby we incur death or deadly suffering . . . We take swords and shields and buckle on bows and quivers, and we charge into battle massed in double array with arrows and spears flying and swords flashing; and there we are wounded by arrows and spears, and our heads are cut off by swords, whereby we incur death or deadly suffering. This too is a danger in the case of sensual pleasures . . . the cause being simply sensual pleasures.
. . . And we charge slippery bastions, and we are wounded by arrows and spears, splashed with boiling liquids and crushed under heavy weights . . . And we break into houses, plunder wealth, commit burglary . . .
Thus, we, people indulge in misconduct of body, speech and mind. Having done so, on the dissolution of the body, after death, we reappear in states of deprivation, an unhappy destination, in perdition, even in hell. This too is a danger in the case of sensual pleasures . . . the cause being simply sensual pleasures.
And what is the escape in the case of sensual pleasures?
It is the removal of desire and lust, the abandonment of desire and lust for sensual pleasures. This is the escape in the case of sensual pleasures
Healing Dhamma
A burning question for this time is, "How do we allow ourselves to open to the pain and grief of our sisters, our brothers, our children without bitterness? Without trauma? Without re-enacting and extending the pain, like a voracious fire that ravages everything in its path?
The trauma that we share in our human family is surely all of our work. It is our Dhamma duty to attend to it, the air that we breathe, the life and death we all share.
Can our collective grief and trauma bring us closer together? Can we recognise our inseparability?
For how can I be happy without you sharing my happiness? And how can you be in fear and pain without me being affected?
May the practice of meditation continue to help and guide us in healing the human world from within. May we have the possibility to stop, to sit and to feel. To breathe deeply. To allow and to open to the collective suffering and make peace within us.
No thought is required, no view, no solution. No side, no stance, no holding back, no other. We are surely all alive in this world to wake up. To heal and repent. To apologise. To mourn fully and release the pain that makes us feel separate and reactive. To see for what they are the projections of our unfinished healing onto the creations we call "other".
There is no other. We are us. All that happens in this world can be known, felt bone deep and understood. My body, my blood. One family, one land.
This is the invitation. From the broken hearted, the maimed and the defeated. From the unheard, the alone and the lost. "May we be seen! May we be heard! May we be held tenderly in consciousness. May our suffering be acknowledged, fully felt and owned. May we be welcomed warmly home. May we heal and know our true potential, the natural resting place that is love, compassion, joy and peace.
October 2023 News
We are told of heavenly messengers
or, in Pali, Devaduta
They are sickness, ageing and death. They remind us of the truth of our fragile existence.
Are are other heavenly messengers we could consider? War, famine, thirst . . . climate change?
The Buddha described the first three mentioned here - as well as the message of those who have renounced the world to follow the spiritual path, to search for truth.
Truth is elusive in our everyday life. Lies and distortions of reality are commonplace. It is difficult to know where we stand, to have any sense of common ground, or of any solid, secure foundation to rest upon. The Buddha told us that the whole world is shaking, unstable, inconstant. There is no refuge here for us.
The only shelter from the storms, the only real refuge is Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha. Simply put - awareness, truth and community. Or we could say, The Buddha, the Teachings and Those who have realised the way out of suffering by understanding the Teachings.
May we stand firmly in this Way of practice and be guided and nourished by the timeless Dhamma taught by the Buddha in northern India 2,700 years ago - that which is always apparent, universally applicable, freely offered to everybody everywhere.
May all beings
be free from suffering
and its causes
The Palestinian people of Gaza and beyond
are living with thirst, hunger, homelessness, destruction, fear, trauma and grief. They surely have a clearer sense of change, of loss and of impending death than most. They are living and manifesting now more than ever the vulnerability, the defencelessness of our human state. The heavenly messengers are all around for us to see.
May the sacrifice and immense suffering of the women, men and children in Gaza today be a source of liberation of hearts and minds so that this genocide can have some meaning, some purpose even as their immense suffering unfolds at this terrible time.
Free Palestine.
from A Walk In The Woods by Ven. Khantipalo
All compounds break down
All made things fall into pieces
All conditioned things pass away
With the passing away of those conditions
Everything and everybody
(That includes you and me)
Deteriorates, ages, decays
Breaks up and passes away
And we,
Living in the forest of desires
Are entirely composed of the impermanent
Yet our desire tells us to not see this
Though impermanence stares us in the face
From every single thing around us
And it confronts us when we look within
Mind and body Arising and passing away
So don't turn on the TV, go to the pictures, read a book seek some food
Or 100 other distractions Just to avoid seeing this
This is the one thing really worth seeing
For one who fully sees it in themselves is free.
September 2023 News
Dear Friends,
Warm greetings and good wishes to you from early autumn breezes, reddening maple leaves, cloudy skies and chill morning air on a mountain ridge monastery in New Jersey.
The Vassa at Empty Cloud is coming to a close. It has been a precious time of communal harmony, shared Vinaya studies, walks in nature and Dhamma explorations over cups of green tea poured by our Venerable Abbot and brother Ayya Suddhaso.
I'm full of gratitude for fellow monastics Ayyas Suvijjana, Suddhaso, Sanathavihara, Soma and our inspiring teenage brother Samanera Vaddha for this time together.
I will be saying goodbye and returning to Europe in a few days, to spend time with family and friends in Ireland, Scotland and England for the month of October.
May I wish you all well in these times of great upheaval for brothers and sisters in so many parts of the world, where wild weather has been a cause of devastating loss of loved ones as well as homes and whole communities.
May our deepening understanding and practise of the Buddha's teachings in our lives bring inner safety and strength of heart, for self and others.
With Metta and appreciation, Ayya Brahmavara
Monk Chat 19.09.23
Dhamma conversation with an assortment of great questions
from the Empty Cloud online community
Monk Chat
Questions and answers
covering a broad range of Dhamma topics
from Empty Cloud monastery
Vassa 2023
August 2023 News
Dear Friends,
Thank you for subscribing to my website and/or supporting my life as a bhikkhuni.
I am in the midst of the Vassa, or annual three months' 'rains retreat', at Empty Cloud monastery in New Jersey. We are a happy community of six monastics. This week we are focusing on meditation practice. Other times we give time and energy to Vinaya studies. It is good to learn from one another and to sit together.
We are offering teachings mostly in house, on weekends. These are not recorded. However there are also online Dhamma sharings a few times each week
- https://www.youtube.com/@BuddhistInsights/streams
This summer has felt to me to be the best of times to consider uncertainty, this aspect of anicca, as the climate has been changing even more rapidly than expected. We're all witnessing unprecedented ice cap melt, forest fires, floods and record breaking temperatures on both hemispheres of our beautiful planet.
With these events unfolding, I've been contemplating the Buddha's teachings on dependent co-arising, cause and effect. Recognising how nothing happens without reason. This great way of seeing gives perspective and even though the process is painful, leads to peace and understanding.
From this resourced vantage point, it seems clear that the call is for compassion, for kindness and for calm amidst the storms.
How may I help? Can I engage in rightful action to support myself and others?
Here are some reflections on this theme - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXh6PCz8- . . . the Dhamma talk follows a 30 minute guided meditation.
May we all be guided in this enquiry by the Buddha's ever helpful, timeless Dhamma teachings
With an abundance of gratitude, good wishes and loving kindness for us all and for the Buddha Dhamma, our greatest treasure.
A whole host
of Dhamma questions
Monk Chat at Empty Cloud monastery is an invitation for all those random Dhamma questions that may pop up to be answered.
Here's Bhante Suddhaso and myself taking the opportunity to speak on Dhamma
thanks to these great Qs
Monk Chat
from Empty Cloud
A far ranging discussion on Dhamma
with Ayya Soma and Samanera Vaddha
with thanks to all the great Dhamma questions from our lay friends
The Good News
of Thai bhikkhunis
With thanks to Venerable Ayya Khemavamsi
A Conversation about Samadhi
Sharing of experience of Samadhi practice
with fellow samanas Ayya Sudhasso and Ayya Khemavamsi
The Many Forms
of Conceit
A conversation on Mána
with Ayya Khemavamsi Bhikkhuni
Simplicity
and
Renunciation
with Bhante Suddhaso
Back to the monastery
7 July 2023
Settling in at Empty Cloud monastery, it's a joy to see Ayyas Suvijjana and Soma along with Bhantes Suddhaso and Mettiko again.
I have the honour too of meeting two Venerable bhikkhunis from Thailand who are staying with us for two weeks - Ayya Punnyasiri and Ayya Khemavamsi
Last but not least, it's a joy to meet Samanera Vaddho, aged 19 from Ohio, a most inspiring younger brother who completes our happy monastic group of eight.
Here is a conversation with our esteemed visiting Thai Venerables -
Auspicious time
1 July 2023
As I travel to the US and Empty Cloud monastery today, I am feeling the blessings of this auspicious time . . .
First European bhikkhuni ordinations are happening today at Aneñja Vihāra in Germany - http://anenja-vihara.org/
Recently, the 80th birthday of most respected bhikkhuni Elder, Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo - https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQfTnGpIJDBQi8GIUtqcmIHdz4GuUhdij&fbclid=IwAR0mV4aMSn7v-wpVOBwKusgm4h05OdZoxIBLy34VSm3OPK0UseLBToAcw5g
40th Anniversary Celebrations today at Wat Buddhanusorn in California, dear Luang Por Ajahn Maha Prasert's 77th Birthday and his promotion by royal decree as a leading senior monk to "Chaokhun Thep." - https://www.watbuddha.org/
And tomorrow is Asalha Puja, the Full moon Uposatha Day and start of Vassa 2023 for many in the Theravada Buddhist world.
I'll be spending the Vassa at Empty Cloud - click the link below for the monastery website . . . so grateful to be able to practise with the Sangha there 🙏🏾
Dealing with Anger
An interview with friend Kim Mulligan
on how to relate to anger
The Pacific Coast
27 March 2023
Scenes from our community day out in nature last week.
Meditating on the sea . . . opening the mind wide to aniccasañña, with the only constant the ebb and flow of the waves . . .
Currently in Sonoma County, CA
9 March 2023
Staying at Dhammadhārinī monastery with bhikkhunis, samaneras, anagarikas and lay friends.
Grateful for practice in community, the opportunity to support respected senior bhikkhunis as they are in secluded retreat - Ayya Tathaloka here at Dhammadharini monastery and Ayya Sobhana at Aranya Bodhi, our redwood forest hermitage near the coast
Peaceful winter retreat time for the Sangha here, with occasional uplifting visitations from good Sangha friends.
Donations towards Ayya's requisites
of food, shelter, medicine and travel
gratefully received
here
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