Winnie's Whereabouts

Australia - monastery visit

Hallo !

Here's a gist of my 2 weeks in a monastery in oz-land :)

I arrived in sydney, and just the next day took a train to a forest monastery about 2 hours away.
It was winter season, and i was anticipating fog & rain.. similar to british weather. What a surprise when i got to the mountains, it was chilly.. but sunny! And the parrots were out, e peacock & even wombat were frolicking!
The Monastery is situated on the edge of a bush forest and overlooks Kangaroo valley. There is a project in progress to build a pagoda, which will house many relics of the buddha & holy beings.

At Sunnataram monastery, e ladies dormitory was a comfortable converted farm shed(shaped like a log cake) which had pine panels, brilliant blue doubledecks & a fireplace. There were also numerous kutis, most of which had no electricity but plenty of privacy.

It was a lovely 2 weeks. A typical day:
Wake up : 5am
Chanting & morning meditation: 530-7am
Breakfast & washup: 7-830am
RR : 830-930
Pagoda construction: 930-4pm (lunch 1130-130)
Chanting & meditation: 730-9pm

Over one of the weekends, there was a big group of students from the university on retreat. That was fun! We had lots of company, and a big campfire with dharma talk & round-fire discussions.

There was regular dharma talk on wednesday nights, which was well attended by local residents of that area.

Two fellow singaporean friends whom i went on the tibet trip were also there at the same period, so i had plenty of 'local' company. The sangha was friendly and very fun, i recall with fondness the monks and nuns at the monastery.
What i learnt :
* Observing the worthy conduct of the abbot, and his interaction with folks, very inspiring and a lesson in itself.

* The explaination of the suttara in layman's terms, the 'fire discourse' and 'manggala sutra'. It could have hardly been explained any better!

* Mixing cement, grouting cracks, making a straight line mark using thread, using a pneumatic powered scraper to remove stray cement ~ simple construction work ! heheh.. didnt get to learn drive the forklift though.

* Advanced my meditation by a teeny little bit, just being able to count 2 more breathes.

* How to chop wood with an axe (takes me ages though) and get a fire going in the fireplace.

* Unfounded fear is very real.. i am reminded of it each time walking alone in the dark, even if to the toilet just 5min from the dorm! ;)

* Wonderful cooking is a matter of simple creativity, human warmth & familiarity with e kitchen! (i still didnt learn to cook, but got to eat lots of superb thai vegetarian)

* The meaning of Blessings.

More on melbourne travels .. in the next post.

posted by cloudz1 @ 11:49 AM