🍵 next on February 8 ☕
Theme: Breaking Out of Stuckness!

Join us for mindfulness / meditation practices (Ch'an) and sharing (Chat) facilitated by Buddhist Chaplain!

UBC Life Building 1303
Every 2nd Thursday of the month during the winter session at 3:30 to 4:30 pm.

For every monthly session, we will start gathering 30 mins before and stay 30 mins after for tea / coffee!

TLKYCS will launch the "Purifying Connections" Tongue Drum course in February. We are honored to welcome Venerable Wai Leung as our instructor for this course. Through the ethereal tones of the Steel Tongue Drum, participants will learn to play the harmonious and pure sounds of the Five Assemblies Reciting the Buddha's Name. This experience aims to help students let go of worries, focus on the present moment, and enter the inner tranquility and serenity.

February 24, March 2, 9, 16 & 23.

TLKYCS is organizing a Guided Study Course on the "Sixteen Gates of Contemplations Sutra", and we are honored to welcome Venerable Wai Leung Sik as the instructor. The Sixteen Gates of Contemplations is a practice method for Pure Land Buddhism practitioners. Through the guidance of the classics and the combination of recitation of the Infinite Life Sutra and Five Assemblies Reciting the Buddha's Name, participants will gain an understanding of the profound meaning and content of the scriptures. This will help integrate Buddhist compassion and wisdom into daily life.
March 3, 10, 17, 24; April 14, 21

The Society continues the "Sowing seeds in your mind" winter extension program, offers a variety of activities. During the six classes we will focused on agricultural themes, share knowledge about farming, food, tea, and mindfulness, deepening our understanding of the connection between people, the mind, and the natural world.

Next session on "Cultivation Knowledge and Film Sharing Session" will be held on
March 9 and 23, 2024, 2-4 PM.

On 11 January, we organized the monthly Ch'an & Chat meet-ups at the UBC Life Building. Together with the university community, we met for a mindfulness practice, tea & coffee meditation, sharing and exploring the theme "Reconnecting!", and listening to harp music together.

The third session of the Leadership and Communication Skills Course (LCSG) invited Rev. Dr. Monica Sanford from Harvard Divinity School to share insights on "Writing Down the Dharma of Everyday Life: Reflective Writing as a Spiritual Practice." The session explored reflective writing as a form of spiritual practice, guiding participants to document the minutiae of daily life and contemplate the inherent meaning within those moments.

On 13 Jan, "Sowing seeds in your mind" Winter Extension Program featured a tea meditation session. Instructors introduced tea varieties and production methods, discussed how soil nutrients affected taste, and explored the benefits of tea.

The Buddha guides the purification of the mind by identifying "desire, anger, fear, and ignorance" as four sources of transgressions. He also highlights the importance of cultivating "four virtues—non-desire, non-anger, non-fear, and non-ignorance" for establishing realizable peace and fostering a life of joy and purity, emphasizing the need to nurture these virtues from the heart.

In celebration of the Society's 30th Anniversary, we have completed a new design of the website with new functions such as event calendar, and new pages on video and audio resources with better browsing experience. Please let us know your feedback on the new design!

This month’s book sharing is Buddhism with and Attitude: The Tibetan Seven-point Mind-Training by B. Alan Wallace. Wallace has studied and taught Buddhist theory and trained as a Buddhist monk in Indian and Swiss monasteries.

This book is an explanation derived from earlier commentaries on the seven-point mind training passed down from an Indian Buddhist sage called Atisha, who lived in the late 10th to 11th century. It describes the Seven Points, how they apply in the modern world, and how they can be used to shift the mind from “murky pools of problems” to “pure wellsprings of joy”. The overview for this month includes a quick summary of Wallace’s explanations on the First Point: The Preliminaries. Summaries for the other six points will be discussed in later newsletters. “First, train the preliminaries”. The four preliminary meditations deal with: the precious human life of leisure and opportunity, death and impermanence, the cycle of suffering, and karma. Wallace explains for the first preliminary that in this world of leisure and opportunity created by civilization, chasing after material wealth, fame, stimulation, or respect, although not inherently bad, takes time away from pursuing genuine dharma in showing compassion and reducing suffering. The next two preliminaries deal with attachment to the body and attachments in the mind, respectively. Accepting the continuity of consciousness and realizing that suffering comes from within can relieve these attachments and thus relieve the suffering. The final preliminary deals with actions that result in consequences that sprout at a later time in the stream of consciousness. Wallace explains that although these karmic seeds never go away, their growth can be halted through remorse, reliance or showing compassion, resolve or turning away from misconduct, and purification in making up for an action committed.

*Thanks our volunteer Aaron Lund for preparing this book sharing, views expressed in the content belong to the writer, and not the Society, its affiliates, or employees. His views do not represent the position of our organization.

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