Today I begin “my vassa”. The Vassa period is a monastic tradition of staying in one place during the seasons of the rains(vassana) in India at the time of the Buddha. Monastics can travel during vassa for a variety of reasons(teach dhamma, sick parents etc) but are not supposed to be gone longer then 7 days. It’s still practiced today, but in the west the traditional vassa period of July-October makes literally ZERO sense, as this is among the most active times for dhamma events and retreats.
My true Vassa begins today and ends March 1st. Bhavana has one more month before it essentially shuts down all official activities and goes into seclusion( if you’d like to come stay at Bhavana during that time, the minimum stay is a week and you support the monastery in seclusion, its a very quite and meditative time).
From here on in I will be almost totally offline and will start to build up into more and more seclusion. I still need to be online for Bhavana Business, which still has two more weeks of public retreat in December, and doing sessions on my discord community, but my online scope will be drastically reduced.
I will not be responding to questions and emails during this period unless very serious or an emergency. I may post a video or some kind of dhamma(I’m actually due for a 3 year as a monk video that i’ve been pushing bacK), but not much. This culminates in February where I get to go totally off grid in seclusion and be by myself for the whole month as I do every year, but December and January are a quasi-seclusion period. It’s been a very busy and exhausting year, its time for a little rest and relaxation vacation ,Vassa.