Greetings everyone,
I am vihara-sitting for Ayya Suddhamma in North Carolina at the Charlotte Buddhist Vihara. As such Ayya and I have tried our best to merge our sessions in such a way so that I’m not too overburdened with taking on 7-8 Dhamma teachings a week for the next five weeks.
I am going to attempt to use both Ayya’s Zoom, and my youtube as much as I can for the same session, so the people used to the medium (zoom, youtube, insight timer, etc) they like can continue to use it, but testing will show what adjustments we may need to take.
Firstly, its important for those of you in the Maggasekha community who don’t attend Ayya’s sessions, to know that she organizes everything over the website Meetup, so its best to bookmark this and find the zoom links etc there : https://www.meetup.com/Meditate-with-Monk-Buddhism-in-Charlotte/
For those of you who are coming to my page and not familiar with my sessions, best thing to do is keep this website bookmarked for news, or put your email in the box to the right to receive email notifications.
This is what the Schedule of Events currently looks like, subject to change if need be, both in time/date/medium.
Bhante J’s Schedule of Events while at Charlotte Buddhist Vihara :
(All Events can be In Person at the Vihara if you wish to come in person- Subject to Change if it’s too much for Bhante)
- Morning Monastery Experience(MME) : Monday – Friday 8am on my Youtube(+zoom on wednesday)
- 6:00pm Tuesdays ( Merges with Dhammapalooza, 2 hour session, on Zoom and Youtube)
- 8am Wednesdays (not 10:30am, merged session, We will be doing the normal 1/2 hour MME plus meditation after on zoom)
- 6:00pm Thursdays (this is Ayya’s normal session, Bhante J does not have a personal session on this day, so nothing to merge)
- 3:00pm Saturdays (not 2:00pm, merged session on Zoom & Insight Timer)
Im away on a short trip so I dont have the time or equipment to do it.
Dhammapalooza will also be moving to Tuesdays for the next month or so as Ill be merging it with a session of Ayya Suddhamma’s when I look after her place starting next week.
15 years ago this Vesak, I became a Buddhist.
Vesak 2008, at Bodhi Monastery in northern New Jersey. I was 340lbs, and knelt painfully for a half hour during a ceremony done in only Chinese, although I knew what I was undertaking as I had been studying Buddhism for a year and a half or so by that point.
On that day I took the refuge and precepts and my journey down the Noble Eightfold Path officially began.
I had been a meditator three years by that point, and as I often say, I became a meditator not thinking I’d become a Buddhist, and I became a Buddhist not thinking I’d become a monastic, but that is how the path unfolded.
now that im back from my month long travels, we’ll get back into the normal stream and event schedule.
Dhammapalooza tonight 8pm NYt
The view from the front door of the Thai Wat I’ve been staying at. Thats Pikes Peak in the distance, 14,000 feet.
I was told there is a really nice forest ,called the black forest , at the foot of the mountain that would be a good spot for a forest monastery.
Its been a very productive visit to Colorado so far, much more then i expected, especially meeting new people who seem willing to help Maggasekha in Colorado become a possibility. Ill have multiple temples and more people to meet before my flight on Sunday.
Maggasekha in Colorado continues to look promising, but its early days yet, and Im open to the possibility of setting root in another place, but ideally i’d still like to be in the middle of the country by the Rockies somewhere.
Im attempting to put together a group of lay people living here together so we can brainstorm and organize how to meet goals and growth for the future. Its slowly growing.
California friends, you may be unaware of a great endeavor currently going on in your state by a monastic. I am sharing this with you all in hopes it may bring benefit to Tahn Jagaro as he is in the middle of attempting an almost 1000 mile tudong (monastic wandering) from LA to just below San Franciso.
I had the honor of coincidentally staying in the same place as Tahn the last few months, and went out on multi-mile pindapats in two different states with him(thats us in Maryland in the pics).
I learned a bunch from the experience and he told me about the tudong he was training and planning for. He is from California and knows it pretty well, is planning to as much as possible walk along the coasts.
We spoke about many places in the middle of his journey and how it may be hard to find towns and places for pindapat, and I thought maybe i could make his journey known to those who may be in those out of the way places in California and might follow his journey blog and find him along the road somewhere with some dana 😉
this is the website where he is posting updates about his journey, i’ll be checking in on him and I encourage anyone interested to do likewise.
Off to California and Colorado for the month. Spending time at Karuna Buddhist Vihara and Abhayagiri, then a week in Colorado Springs.
all live streams and online activities put on hold until im back at Empty Cloud in May.
