Buddha Land KBC Blog
To keep our monthly newsletter brief we have mainly kept to explaining upcoming courses and events. However, lots of other things happen every week and to keep you in touch with these developments we have created a blog. Browse here to learn about developments in the centre and see how the courses and events turned out. If you have attended one of our events and would like to make a contribution please send it to us by email.
May 2011
At the beginning of May we greatly appreciated Madhyamaka lending us their beautiful meditation rooms and tranquil surroundings for our annual weekend retreat. We hope to return next year as it was a wonderful experience giving the opportunity to explore meditation in greater depth and especially the meditations on emptiness that need that little extra thought. Maybe next year we can go twice?
Elsewhere the weekly classes have got to grips with our mind and how it effects our experience of our world. This includes a new monthly class that began this month in Grassington and went well so hopefully it will continue after the summer. On the Foundation Programme we are coming to the end of studying the book Understanding Your Mind which will be completed before the summer, meaning that we shall be starting a new book in the Autumn term. Workshops and Day Courses have also gone well this term exploring breathing meditation in greater depth and how to identify our own faults without being overwhelmed and to be more accepting of others.
Spring Festival is also now coming up. Its one of the major events of our traditions calendar when practitioners come from all over the globe to Manjushri KMC in Ulverston for teachings and meditations. There are daily web diaries with extracts of teachings, interviews and so on, these can be see at Kadampa.org the main web site for our tradition.
Posted by Paljin 27/05/2011
Secondary Glazing and Fundraising
We are hoping to fit secondary double glazing in the meditation room both to reduce outside noise and heat loss during the winter. At the moment there is just single glazing set in stone mullion windows. The stone work looks wonderful but acts as a cold bridge to the outside which make the meditation room difficult to keep warm in winter. A local joiner is able to make timber framed secondary glazing to add comfort and quiet to the beautiful meditation room. Its quite expensive though as the windows are so large, costing in the region of £5500. We will be doing some fundraising over the summer months to make this work possible beginning with a sponsored walk in June. If you have any other ideas for events please let us know.
Posted by Paljin 30/04/2011
Sponsored Walk
To raise funds towards the cost of the secondary glazing we are holding a sponsored walk on Snday 5 June. Starting from 9am we will be climbing Weets, Pendle and Boulsworth which are the three peaks of Pendle adding up about 15miles in total. Please support the walk by either joining us for one or more of the peaks or by sponsoring one of the entrants, you can do this on-line here.
Posted by Paljin 30/04/2011
Café Manager
We have a vacancy coming up for a café manager as Marta who has been running the café since its beginning is leaving in June. The role is a volunteer post but the centre can offer a monthly stipend as well as food and accommodation. It would suit someone looking to try something different in life and to cherish others.
Posted by Paljin 30/04/2011
New Term
Summer term will begin the week beginning 2 May. A new brochure will be available from the end of this week. Courses include Understand your Mind and Learning to Like Yourself and Others. The web site will be updated this week to show the new courses. Also coming up during the term are the Spring and Summer Festivals at Manjushri Centre in Ulverston.
Other new additions are a course of meditation classes held in August. Previously the classes have closed during the summer months but various people have asked if we could try running classes during this time. If these classes are successful we shall run them again next year.
Also we are starting Prayers for World Peace a free meditation class on a Saturday which begins from 14 May. This aims to bridge the gap between events such as Stop the Week and the current weekly meditation classes providing simple solutions for modern problems using the ancient wisdom of Buddha teachings.
Posted by Paljin 14/04/2011
Extra classes
An extra week of classes has been added to the Living in the Moment course in Keighley, Ilkley, and Burnley. These will be held the week following Easter.
Posted by Paljin 14/04/2011
New Office
The week has been spent moving furniture, computers and so on. For whatever reason the computers and internet have been particularly problematic, lucky the classes have been on patience! Hopefully we are all in the right place now, with a new office installed in the cellar for those seeking a quieter life.
Posted by Paljin 1/04/2011
Grand Opening
This event went very well with the kind help of Keighley's Mayor, Ian Wilson, who kindly cut the ribbon. The talk on Coffee and tasting was very well received and to tie in with this the cafe has launched a range of specialty cafetiere coffees including Java and Colombia.
Posted by Paljin 1/04/2011
Roof repairs
Having been delayed yet again on the 13th the work was finally done on the 27th. It turned out for the best as the extra hour of daylight was needed as the work wasn't completed until 8pm. Now we are just waiting for rain to see if it worked!
Posted by Paljin 1/04/2011
Work Day and Roof Repairs
Various obstacles have delayed the repairs to the roof above the meditation room. First it was too cold, then too wet and finally sickness prevented the work. We are hoping that the obstacles have been purified and have scheduled the work for the 13 March. The same day we are holding a work day to prepare for the Café's Grand opening with the Mayor on the 19 March. We are intending to give the centre a through clean and also need help directing pedestrians outside as work is done on the roof. The workday is from 1 to 3pm but help is also needed in the morning.
Posted by Paljin 6/03/2011
February
Our internet router broke at the start of Feb and one way and another has taken about a month to get sorted out. This has meant the blog been neglected for this time. It has been interesting to see how dependent we have become on the internet for information, emails, bookings etc. Fortunately the library is only across the road offering free internet access - it's a very popular and useful service as nowadays so much is conducted electronically. On the other hand the absence of internet seems to have freed up a lot more time! But with a new router our internet holiday is now over, so a quick summary of events here in the centre …
The weekend of the 12 and 13 Feb was busy here with a book sale on the Sat and Day course on the Sunday. The café sells second hand books that have been donated with a range of fiction and non-fiction works available. Helen our Admin Director arranged a book sale and publicised it around Keighley which led to one of the busiest days ever in the café. Then on the Sunday the course on Impermanence was very popular and really stimulated a lot of thought and discussion about how things exist and change constantly.
Otherwise in the month there were regular events such as: Stop the Week, an Italian night; daily pujas or chanted prayers; and the monthly Walk for World Peace went to the Salt and Pepper Pots above Cowling on the same weekend the snow came down so it was a bit cold but none the less uplifting!
Next month sees the STW with a Welsh Theme, a Workshop on maintaining a happy mind through meditation and the Walk for World Peace will be going up Pendle Hill.
Posted by Paljin 6/03/2011
Busy Week
We have had a busy week here in the centre. Today we had a meditation workshop in the morning and a Centre Cherishing afternoon. The workshop was called Learn to Meditate in Half a Day and with some last minute bookings turned out to be very popular. It is the first one with a new half day format finishing before lunch, giving those attending the chance to visit the café. It worked very well with everyone benefiting from the focusing on breathing meditations but going into greater depth with each session. Then in afternoon, there has been heavy lifting with the Centre Cherishing but many hands make light work of even big jobs, so we made some good progress to develop the facilities here. Elsewhere classes have gone well and we had a few school visits meaning about 60 children got to learn about the benefits of inner peace this week.
Coming up we have the day course on impermanence next weekend and for anyone happy to travel the weekend after there is a Medicine Buddha Empowerment at Manjushri KMC in Cumbria with Gen-la Dekyong the General Spiritual Director for our Tradition.
On our website there are a few new pages with details of our Walks for World Peace and a monthly schedule of all the events at the centre including our chanted prayers, or pujas. You can print the timetable off if you want a hard copy. Coming soon are new photo galleries for the courses with pictures of STW, the Workshops and Walks.
Posted by Paljin 5/02/2011
Café and Extra Meditation Classes
We are holding additional lunch time meditations to tie in with the opening days of our café. There are now lunch time classes on a Wednesday and Thursday as well as the previous Friday class. It's a nice time to pop into the centre whether you are working or not to gather and settle the mind. Maybe stay for lunch too. The soups are recommended!
The café is going very well, we must thank everyone for your support with it. If you haven't been yet there are additional opportunities coming up as the café will now also be open on Tuesdays from the 8 Feb.
Posted 23/01/2011
New Year - New Determination
While the meditation classes are focusing on a determination to seek inner development here on a slightly more mundane note comes a determination to keep our current news blog up to date. Some how a week drifted into a month and a month drifted into six. But with a new year comes a new determination!
Already quite a lot has happened at Buddha Land. New Year Weekend alone was a full weekend. On New Years Eve about 15 people came for our event which included a teaching on compassion, a meal and a candle lit prayer session to welcome in the New Year. Jane did a wonderful job of the cooking including but by no means limited to producing the finest croutons we have tasted. The soup they accompanied, pea and spinach, has now become a regular at our World Peace Café. New Years Day itself continued the theme of compassion with a guided retreat on taking and giving while the Sunday saw our second Walk for World Peace. Over 25 people came to take in the fresh air and scenery from Haworth to Top Withins stopping at the waterfalls for a guided meditation.
Since then we have held two one week retreats, the first on Lamrim - the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment - and the second on Vajrayogini Practice. Regular classes have also begun and we are due to hold the first Stop the Week of 2011 this coming Friday.
Posted by Paljin 23/01/2011
Pre 2011 archive
Turning over a new leaf we have archived all the blog entries from 2010 or before. They can still be seen here.
