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New Year's Eve Vigil - Online only
Starts 21.00, Join Bhante on Zoom - Info
here
Practice in Daily Life (PODL)
Online support for Practice, Jan - March,
Led by Bhante, Info
here
See below for Retreats
Noirin here, Bhante is still on his annual retreat in Metta Vihara, he will return in Mid-December. We're now coming to the close of our 2025 retreat program, with Ven Obhasa leading Metta practice for the final fortnight.
Meanwhile work to prepare the bungalow in Shrewsbury continues. Bhante will become resident there sometime in the new year as he steps back from day-to-day involvement with Satipanya, allowing his period of active leadership to come to a close.
Happily he will not be too far away and will continue to teach some retreats. And so the transition to Satipanya's second phase can occur gently and organically. To this end, many new teachers have joined the program over recent years, with Hui now taking a large share of Bhante's teaching, Guus taking on a second fortnight from next year, and Pierre Gallaz and Hannes Huber teaching for a fortnight each and Mark Arthur continuing his week-long course. We hope Ven Vajiranani will return next year while
Carl hopes to add a weeklong to his current weekend offering.
In the new year we will start looking for a Household Manager to replace me, as I also fade into the background for my final years. My hope is to find somewhere conducive to letting the approach of death teach me about the deathless. Any suggestions are welcome!
Announcements
20.00 Sun 30 November
Metta and Forgiveness Practice.
Zoom links will be sent a few days in advance.
Our retreat house in Bishops Castle "Sativasa" is now open for personal retreats. Suitable only for established meditators. Come for a week or longer. Retreats are self catering so the first day might need to be spent shopping, cooking etc. See
here
for more info. To apply email
Bhante
or
Noirin
.
has been published as an
ebook
,
kindle
,
paperback
and can be dowloaded as a
PDF
. Based on Noirin's Daily Life courses over previous years and supplemented by students' reflections, the book offers a study-practice guide to the Buddha's teaching on Mindfulness of Body, Feeling and Mind. Many thanks to Therese Caherty for editing. Further info
here
.
Satipanya London Sangha
is a growing community of friendly and supportive meditators meeting in-person every month in a peaceful community garden near King's Cross station for group sits and lighthearted discussions.
If you'd like to attend upcoming meetings in London and practice vipassana in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw then join our WhatsApp group using
this link
and say hello, or
email Maz
if you have any questions.
Join us for your daily meditation -
Info.
An informal meditation group meets on a monthly basis via Zoom for a full day of meditation. Email Magda for details at
[email protected]
This collaborative online group studies various
dhamma
topics across multiple traditions — so, not just Mahāsi practice. Carl says: We
warmly extend an invitation to any practitioner
who would like to join us. Currently meeting on the second and fourth Sundays of each month at 10:20am - around midday. Please contact Carl at
[email protected]
for further information.
Join 20.00 to 21.00 on the Sunday closest to the Full Moon. Bhante gives a short dhamma talk, followed by a 30-min sitting, refuges and precepts and we end by reading and chanting the metta sutta.
For date of next Celebration.
Opening to the Impact of the Climate Emergency:
Following on from the Zoom with Gwen Sanderson and Bhante Bodhidhamma in 2023, there are two options for ongoing engagement:
-
Gwen Sanderson is facilitating monthly
Climate and Dhamma Conversations
which are held using
Zoom
. Email
Gwen
for further information or to register.
-
Noirin Sheahan has set up a Satipanya
Forum
focussing on the
Six Maxims
(ethical training to prepare for the social and environmental consequences of climate change). Contact
Noirin
for further info or to register.
Every morning at puja we call the names of those who are sick or dying, or are having a hard time.
Every evening at puja we call the names of those who have something to rejoice.
Satipanya Courses
Vipassana as taught by the Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma
The Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma, one of the most influential vipassana insight meditation teachers of the last century, developed techniques to help us maintain moment to moment mindfulness from the instant we awake to the instant we fall asleep.
This leads not only to spiritual insights into our true, unborn-undying essence, but also, equally important, to the purification of the heart. So that we not only become wiser but more caring, generous, joyous and compassionate.
Applying the techniques on this retreat we follow a robust schedule, but meditators can modulate their practice to fit their level of experience, even absolute beginners. The accent is on relaxation and curiosity, rather than striving and concentration. And regular teacher contact, daily Q&A and personal interviews ensures students are supported throughout.
The retreat ends with advice on how to bring the practice into ordinary daily life to enhance our relationships and give spiritual meaning to our work and everyday tasks.
Assistants Needed
N.B.
All the courses are serviced by assistants.
As assistant you have the opportunity to serve others. It can be a way of
expressing gratitude for the gift of Dhamma. Although the morning is mainly
taken up with breakfast preparation and cooking, the rest of day is for
practice.
You can
see
the menus here
(PDF).
As an assistant, we do not expect payment of the deposit or make a donation
because you have kindly offered your time.
However, your commitment is essential, for the course would be very difficult to
run without an assistant and may indeed have to be cancelled.
If you are interested, follow this link:
Course
Assistant
For info. about retreats and teachers see website:
www.satipanya.org.uk
See drop down menus: especially About Us, Teachings and Retreats
Would you like to come and assist on a course?
See
calendar on website
for up-to-date assistant need.
The 2026 Calanders is available for courses into January.
Please Note
Courses from late March into late summer open for application on
Friday, 16 January
Please apply only when you are certain to come.
Cultivating Metta for Future Generations.
Noirin Sheahan
Following from last month’s tip, I want to explore additional Dhamma supports for last of the
six maxims
suggested as
ethical preparation for climate catastrophe
. The final maxim challenges to think beyond our close circle and act for the future generation of all species.
There are many ways we could do this - caring for the soil, for ecosystems, for political structures promoting long-term social well-being over short term gain. But unless we can do this with good will, we risk burning out, overwhelmed by the immensity of the task, demoralised by the cultural habits that fuel climate change and blind us to the coming catastrophe. To sustain our efforts we need to develop a metta (goodwill) practice which can encompass future generations.
Last month I described how the teaching: “
The whole world can be found in this fathom long body
” allowed me to use news and documentary images of climate related suffering to become an embodied aspect of ‘my world’ – the world of present experience – for the purpose of opening the heart to those beyond my immediate circle.
But when I tried applying this to developing metta for future generations, it didn’t work as I couldn’t imagine who or what I was directing metta towards.
Because the Metta Sutta asks us to extend goodwill and care to
‘those born and to be born’
, I guessed the Buddha would have provided some help with this aspect of metta practice and started looking for anything relevant.
The teaching I found particularly helpful is from the Samyutta Nikaya:
“It would be better, bhikkhus, for the uninstructed worldling to take this body composed of the four great elements as self rather than the mind. For what reason? Because this body may last for ten, twenty, thirty, or forty years… But that which is called mind, intellect, or consciousness arises as one thing and ceases as another, both by day and by night.”
In other teachings the Buddha clarifies that he does not want us to identify with the body, because it cannot provide a reliable basis for happiness. At any moment the body may get injured or fall ill; if we live long enough it will grow frail and eventually will die. Beautiful sights and sounds, thrilling or tender touches – all these give temporary pleasure and we can use such pleasure to lift the heart: relaxing in a bath, having a massage, gazing at the sunset, sipping tea. But if we keep chasing one sense pleasure after another we’ll exhaust ourselves. None of them can ever satisfy our natural desire for lasting happiness.
In this teaching however, the Buddha tells us it would be better to identify with the body rather than the mind, because the body is a more trusty source of stability.
He says this applies to ‘an uninstructed worldling’, someone who doesn’t know the Dhamma. This is true of all of us at times – when we’re on autopilot or caught in an emotional storm or getting fixated on an idea or somehow stuck in meditation. Our Dhamma knowledge has temporarily deserted us, we need to relearn it in this presenting moment.
What I really like about this teaching is that it gives us permission to make a mistake. For those of us who tend towards perfectionism, this is gold dust. We know it’s a mistake to identify with the body, but we do it anyway, assured that it’s the lesser mistake than following our current line of thought. Relaxing into the body, enjoying the temporary illusion of identity, some wiser thoughts start to appear in the mind.
I used this approach to develop metta for future generations. I pictured a cousin’s grandchild, tried to imagine him getting older, with his own children and grandchildren and the kind of world they might be living in. But trying to hold this in imagination along with goodwill was a step to far. The images kept collapsing and I began to feel resentful at being asked too much.
I took the Buddha’s advice and let myself sink into identity with the body. It was a great relief to let go of the imaginative effort and lots of joy arose at simply being able to sit and breathe, to think of this as 'my body, my breath'.
Recognizing the relative stability of the body brought forth gratitude for the enduring nature of physical form in general, the house I was in, the earth itself, nature, the bodies of others.
Gratitude that my own body had already lasted several decades triggered memories of my grandparents. It occurred to me that although I wasn’t able to imagine future generations, I could remember past ones, which seemed like a good way to ease back into the metta exercise. I recruited my grandparents in the flow of goodwill, imagining them wishing me and all their grandchildren well. It then because easy and natural for this metta to flow onwards to future generations.
At intervals thoughts and images suggesting future climate catastrophe brought the metta stream to a stop. Gripped by horror I again accepted the Buddha’s invitation to relax, let mental images fade, identify with the physical body, take the comfort it offered from being at this moment, safe, comfortable, well. This reminded me of the physicality of future generations – the bodies of people and animals that would be living then, the ground around them, the buildings or shelters they would inhabit. I sensed in all these the potential for strength and care and the basic blessing of survival. Metta flowed again, strengthened in fact, for having worked through the challenge.
The practice of identifying with the body whenever I feel stuck in meditation or lost in daily life has since proved a refuge on many occasions. I hope it will also prove a refuge for future generations facing challenges we are spared and that the intricate web of physical life on earth can continue to link beings with the Dhamma and hence with liberation.
Calendar
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