Report: Ven Pannyavaro’s visit

This last month we have hosted Venerable Pannyavaro from Bodhi Tree temple, Australia, who is also the webmaster of Buddhanet.net.

Approaching 70 years old (next month) he has been a monk for some 25 years, and been in and out of intensive practise retreats for considerably longer than that. Our aim was to take him to different venues, doing different events, and hopefully help to raise some funds for his ongoing temple development. Currently he is trying to develop from a small temple setting into a proper retreat centre for 30+ participants on the east coast of Australia.

We had him booked for a weekend retreat (see a couple of George’s photos above) and several talks, a workshop and overnight workshop at the Dhammodaya Cetnre. Despite the protests, we hopefully exceeded 40 000 baht, which is considerable. Several of the groups/places we went to donated directly to the temple so we don’t have an exact figure. It is nice to be able to ‘Tam Boon’ and we should feel happy that we have been able to support in some small way to the development of a very beautiful retreat centre in Australia. Perhpas some of you will have chance to go there – Bodhit Tree Monastery, Lisborne, Australia.

While some of Ven. Pannyavaro’s advice was to choose a teacher and then stick to that one method, we here in Bangkok do not have such a luxury – there is not that much to choose from close by. Through the Little Bangkok Sangha the aim is to set up different events with different teachers and then people can choose for themselves who and what they like to join.

We look forward to hosting Ajahn Pannyavaro again next year.