Who would like to live and work at the Buddhist Retreat Centre?
We often reach a cross-road in our life when we need a change of direction. The Buddhist Retreat Centre provides such an opportunity for visitors to do so. And occasionally, an opportunity arises when one can join our resident staff and live in a beautiful country environment.
Staff manage our administration, maintain our buildings and extensive gardens and oversee our vegetarian kitchen. The applicant must be mature and sociable, a non-smoker, able and willing to get along with people, enjoy living in the rural environment of the Ixopo hills and be sympathetic to Buddhist philosophy. Staff have the opportunity to meet an array of interesting people, participate in retreats and meditation courses conducted by a stellar panel of local and international teachers.
In one of his teachings, the Buddha enumerated the most noble sentiments we should endeavour to develop in our life. The first and foremost is Dana or Generosity because from that springs forth all other beautiful characteristics such as kindness, forgiveness and virtue. We should therefore be alert to situations that arouse these qualities in us and provide us with an opportunity to express them towards others. They then become habitual, effortless and spontaneous. Dictionaries offer a range of meanings for gratitude from thankfulness and a warm feeling towards a benefactor, to an acknowledgement of indebtedness. Such gratitude arises in us every time we receive gifts and donations from our supporters and visitors to the Centre. These feelings are rooted in the early traditions of all religions: that one is inclined to be grateful to religious institutions that offer a different, wider perspective on what is important in life - the meaningfulness of one's existence, along with the need to simply survive..
Join Stephen Batchelor live as he presents an online course on Sunday 13 May 2018, 6pm.
The Buddha statue at the BRC has an interesting story. The idea of constructing it occurred to me when I travelled widely in the East during the 1950’s and 60’s where I came across the majestic ruined remains of the ancient Buddhist monastic cities, built centuries before the Christian era - such as you find in India, Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka. They had been vandalised by hordes of antagonistic invaders who used the sculptures to vent their hatred of religions other than their own - much as Napolean’s soldiers did to the sphinxes guarding Egyptian pyramids when they used them as targets in rifle shooting practice. It happened again during the Crusades and the Reformation and, recently, when the Taliban went berserk in the Middle East.
In one of his teachings, the Buddha enumerated what he considered to be the most noble sentiments we should endeavour to develop. The first and foremost amongst them is Dana or Generosity: from that springs forth all other beautiful characteristics we are capable of, such as kindness, forgiveness and virtue. We should therefore be alert to situations that arouse these qualities in us and provide us with an opportunity to express them towards others. They then become habitual; effortless; spontaneous. Dictionaries offer a range of meanings for this word - from thankfulness and a warm feeling towards a benefactor, to an acknowledgement of indebtedness. Indeed, these emotions arise continuously in us every time we receive gifts and donations from our supporters and visitors to the Centre. These feelings are rooted in the early traditions of all religions: that one is inclined to be grateful to religious institutions that offer a different, wider perspective on what is important in life - the meaningfulness of one's existence along with the need to simply survive.