Forest Sangha newsletter-75index

April 2006 2549 Number 75
The Forest Sangha is a world-wide Buddhist community
in the Thai Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah

Tudong in Wales

Excerpts from talks by Sister Anandabodhi and Sister Thitamedha after their two month pilgrimage in Wales.

Sister Anandabodhi: I was born in Wales and grew up in Pembrokeshire, at the foot of the Preseli Hills in West Wales. Our tudong began in those hills. We also visited my mum and the house I had grown up in and a few key people who had helped me onto the spiritual path. In part, then, the tudong was a pilgrimage through my life, an unravelling of my identity.
Sister Thitamedha: Tudong is translated as “shaking off”; shaking off old habits, shaking off what is unnecessary...

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The Chapter of Octads

The Atthaka Vagga, the fourth chapter of the Sutta Nipata, is translated here (the first six poems)by Tahn Varado, and dedicated to its previous translators including K.R.Norman, E.M. Hare, Ven.H.Saddhatissa, Thanissaro Bhikkhu, and Paññobhaso Bhikkhu and also to the editors of the Pali Text Society Pali-English Dictionary, T.W. Rhys Davids and William Stede.

1: Discourse on Sensual Pleasure

If a person longing for sensual pleasure achieves it,
He’s delighted, yes,
The mortal who gets what he wants.
But that person, longing, desiring,
If his pleasures diminish,
He suffers as if pierced with an arrow.
...

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ROCANA VIHARA PROJECT

On 22nd June 1979 the monks arrived at Chithurst House, and ‘Cittaviveka Monastery’ was established. Soon thereafter, with the blessing of Luang Por Chah, women joined the monastic community. The nuns’ residence, Aloka Cottage, a ten minute walk from the main house, was purchased in 1980.
Recently, the property beside Aloka Cottage became available. Given its location and the nuns’ need for more accommodation, the English Sangha Trust bought it, naming the purchase the Rocana Vihara Project. Part of this Project is also to build a shrine room for the nuns as their existing shrine room is small and structurally unsound. ...

Donations:
Financial donations can be made to ‘The English Sangha Trust’ at either Amaravati or Cittaviveka. For further information,
contact Medhina: Tel: (01273) 483006 or
email: rocanaproject @amaravati.org.

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