This monthly event will be different each time. This month we'll have a "Sunday Unplug" Day: an opportunity to deepen our practice and unplug with teacher and sangha support.
Sangha Day is a time to have fun and celebrate that diversity. All members, their families and friends, and the public at large are invited to enjoy food, music and other fun activities at Ekoji.
The Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy (VICPP), Ekoji Buddhist Sangha of Richmond, and Williamsburg Buddhist Sangha invite dharma practitioners from across the Commonwealth (Buddhists, Hindus, and others) for a day of connection, reflection, and public presence.
We with gather at Richmond Hill, share in a vegetarian lunch, then take a silent, meditative walk down to the lawn near the Virginia General Assembly building. The route is about a mile each way. This is not a protest, but a peaceful expression of our shared values.
This monthly event will be different each time. This month we'll have a "Sunday Unplug" Day: an opportunity to deepen our practice and unplug with teacher and sangha support.
The Buddha provided the wanderer Bahiya with a profoundly direct and brief model that dislodged his familiar sense of self. Upon hearing this teaching, Bahiya instantly and fully realized the fundamentally awake, free nature of reality. Could we directly experience a hint of what Bahiya did? Could we open a thread in our practice that leads in this direction? We will explore this and more in this half-day retreat.
During this Daylong Retreat we will explore the practice of nurturing a kind and caring attitude toward our own heart-mind. In Pali, the language of the Buddhist scriptures, the word citta encompasses both "heart" and "mind," reflecting the deep connection between heart qualities, like kindness and compassion, and mental states. And we explore how, when we care for our citta, we also care for the world.
Do you sometimes find it difficult to manage stress and anxiety, or experience peace in a world of constant distractions? We will explore the foundational teachings on mindfulness in a 5-week course. The course will provide instructions for meditation to develop mindfulness while emphasizing application of these practices to challenges and problems in our daily lives.
In this four-month program we will be deepening our practice through studying and practicing with the teaching that liberated the Buddha: dependent arising (Paṭicca Samuppāda). This teaching helps us to clearly see: how does dukkha (unsatisfactoriness) arise, and how does dukkha cease, leading to happiness and freedom? We will learn practical ways to use the teaching on dependent arising in our day-to-day lives, as well as look at some of the deeper, potentially liberating, layers of this teaching.
During this hybrid non-residential weekend retreat we aim to cultivate relaxation, awareness, and insight. We will explore how open, relaxed awareness can naturally reveal the patterns and conditionings that shape our experience. By approaching our practice with relaxed interest, we create space for experience to unfold simply and naturally, allowing wisdom to emerge in its own time.
