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Detailed List of Retreats

Catching The Ungraspable Moment: Christmas at the BRC: a time to reflect

Teacher: Louis van Loon
Cost: Cost: 3 or 5 days’ accommodation + R150 surcharge
Dates: Sunday 24 December 2017 - Tuesday 26 December 2017

louis van loonLife consists of things coming and going, births and deaths, decay and renewal, stops and starts. We try to juggle these as well as we can, liking some of it, avoiding the ones we don’t.  But there is a deeper wisdom behind all this - one that asks us not to be so choosy and opinionated about what should and should not be happening to us. This requires us to live on the edge of the only thing that is truly real: the ever-fleeting, ungraspable moment. In these two retreats we will discover how we forget to live in the here and now when we focus too much on what is past and fret about what may or may not happen in the future. This is a good time of the year to take stock and contemplate our moment to moment, here-now reality in all its fullness; bid farewell to 2017 and welcome the New Year with a renewed willingness to take life on the chin and make whatever comes along workable. We will celebrate Christmas with a Buddhist slant and conduct a Japanese tea ceremony. Apart from the discussion periods and ceremonies, there will be periods of meditative Noble Silence.

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Louis van Loon lectured in Buddhist philosophy at the Universities of Cape Town and Durban-Westville for 22 years.  He established the Buddhist Retreat Centre in 1980 and, along with his wife, Chrisi, directs its affairs. Both were involved in the compilation of the BRC’s popular recipe books Quiet Food, The Cake the Buddha Ate and Plentiful:The Big Book Of Buddha Food. His interest lies in the psychology of meditation and in the relationship between art, science, religion and philosophy.  He is an architect and consulting civil and structural engineer in private practice in Durban. He teaches Sumie, Japanese brush painting, and sketching in Durban, Cape Town and Ixopo.