BRC Newsflash - May 2024

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The Buddhist Retreat Centre
Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa		For people of all religions
BRC Newsflash: May 2024 Dear Friends,

Louis the artist at work		Image: Angela Shaw
My beloved Louis passed away peacefully on the morning of 26 March surrounded by those who loved and cared for him, together with his precious cats. Always kind and authentic, Louis' self-effacing wisdom, gentleness, and exemplary dedication, are testaments to his devout passion to live according to Buddhist philosophy. He was admired by so many, not only for creating the Buddhist Retreat Centre, but for his talent as an architect, engineer, teacher and artist, and for his humility. So many people have expressed how deeply they appreciated Louis and how the BRC has changed their lives. It was of great comfort to Louis to know that the Dharma work which he pioneered all those years ago would continue and flourish through the contributions and support of dear Dharma friends who ensure the sustainability and growth of the BRC. Thank you for your beautiful messages and thoughtful reflections. Louis will live on in all of us who have had some connection to him and the Centre. May his memory continue to shine a light on all who were touched by him. I assure you that I and the BRC Team, together with our dedicated Committee and Teachers and our wider BRC community will continue to sustain and celebrate Louis' vision and legacy going forward. It is the greatest gift we can offer Louis in return. With Metta, Chrisi

Misty morning walk		Image: Angela Buckland
There are still a few spaces left on the following April retreats: ☸ indicates retreats held in noble silence Finding My Voice - A Mindfulness Retreat Annika Nicol \| Weekend \| 12-14 April Do you struggle to speak your truth? Many of us hold back and listen to the critical voices in our heads. Over time, we may start to feel blocked in our throats, scared to speak what we feel, to make sounds, or to sing. We make ourselves small and hide our voices - fearing rejection or judgment. On this Mindfulness retreat we will deepen awareness of our voices and bodies. We will work with movement and the sensations in our bodies to help us open our throats and give voice to our experience – in the here and now. Come and explore your unique expression - to connect with your voice, to speak and sound from your heart, to sing regardless if it is in tune or not.... There will be periods of silent and sound meditations. In between sessions the retreat will be held in silence. A Weekend Of Ishta Yoga And African Sound Buhle Mabanga \| Weekend \| 19-21 April Join Buhle for a weekend of Ishta Yoga which is a blend of different styles of yoga practices. Ishta is an acronym for Integrated Science of Hatha, Tantra and Ayurveda, but also has deeper meaning in its Sanskrit roots that translates as “that which resonates with the individual”. In this full-rounded practice, you will also experience tapping, pranayama (breathwork) and inner child healing meditation. This retreat will also incorporate African indigenous music with Zawadi and Tinashe. Journey To Self – Explore Your Connection With Your True Self Sadhna Hamchander and Ravika Ramnath \| Weekend \| 26-28 April "Journey To Self" is a structured and interactive retreat designed to help you explore and develop your connection with your true self, to enhance self-awareness and cultivate personal growth and well-being. It focuses on various aspects of personal development, self-discovery and inner-child healing. Join Sadhna assisted by Ravika for a weekend in the nurturing atmosphere of the BRC and tap into joy. They will offer guided meditation and self-discovery exercises and help you to transform limiting beliefs.

Meditate in the zendo		Image: Kim Ward
Conducted Retreats May 2024 ☸ indicates retreats held in noble silence Yoga For Well-Being Georgie Carter \| Weekend \| 3-5 May Scientists maintain that the leading cause of disease is not hypertension, diabetes or cancer, but stress which is the underlying cause of disease. In this retreat we use the tools of yoga, pranayama, qigong, meditation and yoga nidra or guided meditation to calm the nervous system, to soften and open up the body and allow it to re-calibrate. Most often we find we are not able to sustain regular practice of yoga or meditation due to the “flood” of stress in our daily lives. Sometimes we simply haven’t been shown the tools to learn to cope with these pressures. However, the body has an amazing ability to re-balance and, in doing so, to heal itself. This retreat is suitable for everyone and lays the foundation for deeper practice, cleansing and energizing. View teacher details Picture your Soul with SoulCollage®️ Keryn Rowley \| 2 days \| 6-8 May SoulCollage® is a creative, intuitive process that grants you the gift of insight into yourself. Using images, imagination and intuition, you will create individual collage cards that represent pieces of your inner self. By using these cards, you will connect with the many aspects of yourself and learn to access the wisdom that is held within you. Be ready to unleash your inner creativity and to delve into the labyrinth of your being. View teacher details THE SHIFT EXPERIENCE: The Art of Being - Part 1 John Homewood and Michelle McClunan \| Weekend \| 10- 12 May 2024 Are you ready for a life shift? John and Michelle bring their combined forty years of facilitating experience to this two-part retreat, providing you with a gentle, yet powerful process that will shift, awaken and nourish your whole being. You will leave this retreat greatly refreshed with a new and awakened perspective in life, taking with you practical tools to apply in shifting all areas of your life. The retreat will integrate transformational, yet practical spiritual teachings of Presence, Awakening and Creative Art Processes. This integration will help you clear blockages that may have prevented you from living a healthy, peaceful and abundant life. All creative experiences are process-driven, as opposed to being outcome-based, so no artistic experience or skill is required. Should you only be able to attend the weekend, Part 1, you will still gain much. However, investing in the whole 4 days will provide you the space to integrate and apply this Shift even deeper and more fully into your awareness. For more info on their work see www.journesyofawakening.com View teacher details THE SHIFT EXPERIENCE: Living In Joy - Part 2 John Homewood and Michelle McClunan \| 2 days \| 12- 14 May This 2 day mid week retreat will integrate transformational, yet practical spiritual teachings of Presence, Awakening and Creative Art Processes. This integration will help you clear blockages that may have prevented you from living a healthy, peaceful and abundant life. All creative experiences are process-driven, as opposed to being outcome-based, so no artistic experience or skill is required. Part 2 will provide you the space to integrate and apply this Shift more deeply and more fully into your awareness. You will leave with a deeper sense of peace; a more focused sense of life purpose and rekindled joy and with greater emotional and spiritual intelligence to navigate life’s challenges. For more info on their work see www.journesyofawakening.com View teacher details From Seeking To Seeing - Mindfulness Meditation David Gardner \| Weekend \| 17-19 May In this retreat, participants can expect to be guided gently through the process of becoming mindful through meditation and movement. Dave will lead sitting meditation in the Zendo, as well as walking and moving meditation in the inspiring and nourishing space that the BRC offers. He will also facilitate intentional open discussions around the fire to stoke the wholesome sparks of enquiry and deep listening. Whether you are a beginner or committed practitioner, this process will empower you to cultivate presence, clarity, adaptability, creativity and patience. The retreat will be held in an atmosphere of noble silence and introspection. View teacher details Just Sitting Zen Retreat Roux Malan \| Weekend \| 24-26 May During this silent retreat you will be introduced to a style of Zen that combines Just Sitting (zazen), High-Energy Chanting (okyo), Vocalized Movements (Mu-I-Tai) to cultivate strong Ki’ai (energy) and quiet awareness (Mindfulness) that will enable you to face your fears until they disappear. The retreat will commence and close with a short tea ceremony. The sessions will alternate between zazen, walking meditation, chanting and movement. On the Saturday night in union with Buddhists around the world, we will hold a traditional Wesak ceremony - a lantern-lit circumambulation around the Buddha Rupa. Wesak is the most important day on the Buddhist calendar, commemorating the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha nearly 2500 years ago and is traditionally held on the full moon of May. View teacher details Nikki Brighton is Wild About Weeds: A Weekend on Edible Weeds with Walks And Talks On Rewilding Nikki Brighton \| Weekend \| 31 May-2 June Nikki's immersive retreat will focus on finding and tasting weeds found in the garden. You will learn to identify various tasty edibles and surprise your palate while you forage for free food. Her books Mnandi - A Taste Of Mpophomeni celebrates the cooks and gardeners of Mpophomeni township in KZN Midlands and Wild About Weeds is an introduction to uncultivated food and a guide to the most common edible weeds and uncultivated foods found in South Africa. Her retreat is intended to stimulate curiosity and encourage foodies to explore and make the most of the delicious abundance in your area and to lighten your load on our planet. View teacher details A Self Retreat Think peace over pressure and serenity over stress. Enjoy some time at the BRC mid-week, with nourishing vegetarian meals, sunrise meditation and nature's healing embrace to colour the mood of your day. There is no better place than the BRC to rejuvenate the body and mind to guide you into presence and stillness. Read more

Zen cairn	Image:Thalente Khomo
The Pioneering Spirit I’m currently spending a month on self-retreat at the Buddhist Retreat Centre in Ixopo, Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa. It’s off the beaten Dhamma track of America, Europe and Asia, but that’s one of the reasons I come here. The Centre occupies about 300 acres of hill in the rural backcountry and is the most beautiful retreat centre I have come across in over 40 years of teaching. One admirable touch is the way that the centre honours the location, with its traditional thatch-roofed 'rondavels', and by offering work to local villagers - as well as through the support it gives to a social welfare organization working with AIDS orphans. I’ve been coming here since 1985 to teach – they need some support, and I’m an 'off the track' kind of person – and since then that mission has grown to include two other centres Dharmagiri and Emoyeni (and there are other places that I don't cover). They're even further off the track. And that makes it interesting. Things are fresh, and for sure there's enough suffering in South Africa to satisfy anyone's need to teach the Dhamma. Crucially, there's also enough faith for people to come, listen and practise.

Louis adding the final touch to the Buddha Rupa
The quality of faith, as well as the material foundation of Buddha-Dhamma in South Africa, is on account of a few remarkable pioneers. In the case of the BRC, this means Louis van Loon who opened the place in the early 1980s. Louis was born in the Netherlands in 1935, but came out to South Africa after the Second World War on a migration scheme that offered free passage and 50 guilders to people to leave the Netherlands and seek their fortune overseas. Louis established himself as an award-winning architect. In the late 60’s he was working in Sri Lanka and became grievously sick, so sick that he didn’t know whether he was going to make it. Lying on a mattress soaked with his own sweat and in a semi-delirious state, he made a vow that if he could get through this illness, he'd dedicate his life to doing something for the peace and well-being of human beings. A vision arose of a hill rain-swept hill, that’s all. He recovered, returned to South Africa and with this vision in his mind felt he should start looking for property. Based in Durban, he started scanning newspapers for property, and found that there was an old farm going up for sale out in the backcountry. So he jumped in his car, picked up the estate agent and drove out there. It was pouring with rain as they drove up an overgrown and muddy dirt track and stopped at a barbed-wire fence. The estate agent pointed through the windscreen and said 'It's out there.’ Louis got out of the car, peered through the rain and dense mist and heard an inner voice say 'This is it. You've come home.''I’ll take it', he said.

Louis building the stupa
That was 1969. For the next eleven years he put his own money and labour into clearing the land, building huts, a meditation hall, a stupa, accommodation, kitchen and so on to establish a Buddhist retreat centre. In a fundamentalist Calvinist culture, this itself was a leap. Then he started looking round for teachers and invited various monks and teachers .... In 1984, an invitation was made to our sangha, and Ajahn Anando, one of the original group who accompanied Luang Por Sumedho to the UK, was sent. He ended up extending his stay to help Louis sculpt a 5 metre high Buddha-image that now presides over the Centre. I came along in 1985 to install relics in the Buddha's head and consecrate the site. Now the BRC is an established Dhamma-refuge and an accredited wildlife sanctuary – but struggling to make ends meet. The world! While hostility, distraction and consumerism remain popular and rake in millions, it's often the case that Dhamma centres with their incalculable offerings and blessings barely get by .... However, Louis heading into his 89th year, is living his last years in contentment. {Afterword: Louis has subsequently passed away, peacefully. on March 26 this year.} Sadhu, Louis. Ajahn Sucitto

Ajahn Sucitto off the beaten track		Image: Nick Halliday
About the BRC Perched on a ridge at the head of a valley in the Umkomaas river system in KwaZulu-Natal, the Buddhist Retreat Centre looks out on a vista of indigenous valleys, forests and rolling hills receding like waves in the blue distance. Here, for forty-four years, people of all religions and none have come to experience peace and tranquillity. It is a gentle, sympathetic space where one can be still and get in touch with oneself and reflect on the things that crowd one's life. The BRC was voted by CNN as one of the ten best meditation centres in the world. CNN Travel awarded another feather in the BRC’s cap by voting it as one of the ten best spiritual centres in South Africa. The BRC was awarded Natural Heritage status in 1995 under the auspices of the Department of Environmental Affairs and received a certificate to that effect signed by President Nelson Mandela for turning an eroded farm into the natural paradise it has become - thousands of indigenous trees were planted by retreatants under the supervision of Mervyn Croft - with 160 species of birds, including the Blue Swallow, otter, deer, antbear and indigenous forests. The Centre was also given the special status of “Custodian of the Blue Swallow” for its work in preserving the breeding areas of this endangered bird. Recently, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife granted the BRC “Private Nature Reserve” for the conservation of the rare Blue Swallow and Mistbelt Grassland. The BRC facilitated the founding of Woza Moya, the community-based NGO, located in Ufafa Valley, twenty-two years ago, on the estate. Their vision is for all people in the community to be healthy and productive, to live in a safe and clean environment, with good access to services and social justice. The Centre continues to support the organisation by showcasing their crafts in the shop and sponsoring their trainers and consultants. We have been very touched by your appreciative letters, emails and friendship towards the BRC - your spiritual home from home. We are deeply grateful for your generous gifts to the Centre in the form of PUY and Monthly contributions, new beds and bases, office chairs and a desk, a new refrigerator, microwave oven, bathroom towels, indigenous trees and seedlings, books for our library, a generator, garden benches, pillows, towels and linen, geyser insulation blankets, clothing and Dana for our staff, an inverter and beautiful antique scrolls and Imari platters and ceramics, framed prints and Thankas, new tablecloths and serviettes, a brand new Magimix, signage for our forest paths - and so much more. Thank you to all of you who continue to support our work in Ixopo with monthly and Paid Up Yogi contributions and donations, with gifts, or with skills and time. And, of course, to everyone who comes to the Centre - you keep us open and viable - and to our teachers who keep the Dharma wheels turning. We are deeply grateful for your generosity towards us; it encourages us to continue Louis’ beautiful vision and legacy for the future. Please continue to support the BRC by becoming a friend of the Buddhist Retreat Centre (a registered non-profit organisation) and find out more about the BRC's Paid-Up-Yogi and Sangha Friends’ projects. Chrisi Visit our website for further information, directions, image gallery etc.
www.brcixopo.co.za \| 066 395 4682 \| 082 579 3037 \| 031 2095995 Share: \| Follow us:
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