THE recent cold snap led to some warm hearts when more than 20 people from the local Buddhist community gathered to hear the teachings of Buddhist monk Khempo Dhamchoe earlier this month.
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The weekend focused on taming and focusing the mind.
Khenpo, a monk from the Drogmi Institute in Sydney, translated a traditional Buddhist text into English..
'Knowing many things is useless without putting them to the test.'
- Peter Morgan
“The Eight Verses of Mind Training directed us to consider the best way of creating the causes of our own happiness. He explained that virtue based on Buddhism can lead to difficulties and that you could practice for 20 years without any progress. However, checking your motivation and ensuring you have a positive mind in the general sense should help you. The first of these verses identified the monkey mind which does not allow us to examine closely our own intention but instead is consumed by distraction,” Peter Morgan said.
Peter said the weekend answered and posed many questions including focussing the mind, thinking of yourself as less important in the company of others, remembering what is positive in times of agitation, giving victory to others and keeping compassion as protection, considering harm as a teaching tool, treating others as a mother and finding the middle path between hope and fear, praise and blame, gain and loss.
“A Letter to a Friend” emphasized that the basis of good meditation was ethical conduct. What I have taken most of all from the weekend is that working with people and all beings is where the practice begins and that knowing many things is useless without putting them to the test,” Peter said.
“Khenpo explained how we must use reason and daily discipline through meditation so that gradually our thoughts become more focussed. Although he has been studying Buddhist philosophy for many years, he understands about the difficult stumbling blocks and distractions which make training the mind an ongoing project for everyone,” Sherry Strumm said.
“He taught how to live a positive, ethical life on a daily basis. This valuable teaching has so much relevance today and teaches us how to be generous to all living things, how to watch that our speech is positive and that we are kind hearted and ethical in all our dealings with one another.”
Sherry said Khenpo had a deep effect and created extraordinary calm which affected everyone. She said it was a privilege to have such a teacher in Forster Tuncurry.
Khempo promised to add the area to his annual visiting list.
