Category Archives: Blogs
Happy New Year 2024 – Message from John B.
New Year 2024
A healthy mind is the greatest gain,
Contentment is the greatest wealth,
A trustworthy friend is the best of kin,
Unconditional freedom is the highest bliss.
The Buddha: Dhammapada V.204
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year 2024!
I trust that you had a pleasant Christmas and New Year period with some time for rest, relaxation and reflection.
Many people feel that the New Year doesn’t quite get underway until after Australia Day – the Friday 26th January, now passed.
The beginning of the New Year can...
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Summer Newsletter 2023
‘Meditations & Reflection –
Lessons & Learnings from the Year’
Dear Friends,
Another year in our Life is moving towards conclusion.
Another year ends as a calendar date, allowing a New Year to begin.
This is the process that occurs continually through the passage of time that we call our Life!
Whilst beginnings are very important; the beginning of a new life, the beginning of a new decade, year, month, season, week, day, hour, minute, and moment; yet the value and worth of the new...
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Vassa Retreat 2023 Ends
Dear Friends,
Trusting this note finds you well.
This Sunday just passed was the Full Moon of October.
This day marked the ending of the Vassa Retreat 2023. The Vassa is a period of 3 months from the Full Moon of July until the Full Moon of October; where the Buddha designated that as a retreat period for Buddhist monks, nuns and those lay people that so choose, to have a specified time of Retreat.
Certainly, this must be one of the longest...
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Spring Newsletter 2023
Dear Friends,
Welcome to Spring!
Yes, another Spring, yet always a new Spring, never quite like the last nor the same as the next!
Spring is only possible after a Winter, it is the natural and normal way of things. Certainly, Spring is a season much appreciated as a significant change from the season that was Winter, unlike Summer that tends to flow on from the warmth that is Spring.
Certainly, here in the Southern Hemisphere, Spring reminds us that we are beyond...
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Winter Newsletter 2023
Dear Friends
Welcome to Winter 2023.
Whilst Winter comes around each year, and certainly we have had many of them, each Winter is unique and special! Hopefully we are a little more mindful, kind-ful and wise-ful as each Winter comes to our life.
This is because Winter can be a time of more inner Meditation and Contemplation, more introspection and reflection; as we spend more time at home and inside.
Certainly Nature, flora-fauna and fungi, are quieter during the Winter period. As we...
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Autumn Newsletter 2023
Dear Friends
Welcome to Autumn 2023
Whilst we all love some Summers warmth and the end of the year with its holiday season; certainly Autumn is a wonderful season, appreciated by people and flora and fauna!
Whilst Autumn In Australia does not display the amazing Autumnal shades of colour that nature expresses in the Northern Hemisphere, it does still have its soft beauty and delight.
Autumn for us in Australia, is a season that designates getting on with the business of running our...
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Welcome to the New Year 2023
Dear Friends
Welcome to our New Year 2023.
I do hope that this past year of 2022 has ended well for you and that the New Year has been engaged with openness, anticipation and joy.
For many it may feel like we are still breathing out the old year and letting it go, which certainly needs to happen before we can fully feel into, open-up to and breath in the New Year.
Sometimes the first month of the New Year can be a...
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Summer Newsletter 2022
Dear Friends
SUMMER CAME TO OUR SHORE
Trusting that this note finds you well as we move towards the ending of this year.
Certainly with the arrival of Summer on December 1st here in the Southern Hemisphere,
we are reminded that our year is almost over.
Here, Summer connects one year with the next as we flow from December through to March when again Autumn begins.
The ending of yet another year in our life can be a good vantage point to pause and ponder,...
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I LOOKED TO THE TREES
Dear Friends
I recently attended a gathering of the 24th Annual Big Scrub Rainforest Day at Rocky Creek Dam.
Together with Venerable Pannyavaro from Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery, we had been invited by Lismore Council to give a presentation to participants on Mindfulness and Coming to Our Senses in the Forest. We spoke about Mindfully Being in Nature, Letting Go of the Ways of the World, Finding a piece of Peace in Nature and the Therapeutic Value of Spending Time in...
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OUR DAILY RECKONING
Dear Friends
One of the most precious things that we have is this very Life!
Given that, it becomes important, even imperative to live our life in the most conscious, mindful, wise and caring way we can.
Since our Life is but a matter of time; moments that become minutes, that become the hours of the day, that become the weeks, months, years, decades of our Life; it seems important to be considerate particularly in each day of our Life.
When I was...
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