Back in February and March earlier this year I had the opportunity and honour to lead a group of four monks, 1 nun and around 35 laypeople on the traditional Buddhist Pilgrimage circuit in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh states of India, as well as in Lumbini, Nepal. I have shared both talks and slideshows from previous India Pilgrimages at the Peace Beyond Suffering website before. But this time I am happy to announce that we are able to share something a little more engaging and lively. As many of the pilgrims took pictures (at the allowed time ☺) and mini movies, there was a lot of material that could be shared.

Chooiwan, a Chinese-Malaysian living in Melbourne, Australia and who had joined the Pilgrimage kindly volunteered to select the choicest pictures and splice them together with excerpts of video footage - in the order that we visited the various important sites. The combination of still shots as well as moving footage and sometimes audio from those places, as well as relevant text, helps in bringing the experience more to life than the previous slideshows.

Because doing all of this work takes quite a bit of time we will be releasing the slideshows in two batches. On this occasion however we do have three separate slides. 

1. Varanasi and Sarnath - (First Teaching)
2. Bodhgaya and Dungeshwari - (Austere striving and Enlightenment)
3. Rajgir and Nalanda – (First Monastery and Vultures Peak)

The pilgrims and I hope that by sharing these glimpses of our journey, which was undertaken with great faith and commitment by all, that you will feel nourished and inspired to continue in whatever way you can on your cultivation of this noble Path, wherever you are now.

There is also a more serene and simple slideshow that can be used as something of a Pilgrimage Contemplation/meditation (scroll to page bottom) with 350 pictures carefully selected by me. These pictures have a higher resolution so that the wonderful sites and magnificent vistas, as well as the joy on the faces of the pilgrims can be shared in greater detail.
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With Loving-Kindness

Greetings fellow practitioners,

On a recent visit to Sri Lanka I was asked to answer some questions from a group of sincere students of Buddhism. As the occasion was filmed I am able to share it with you now. The questions were of a high quality and were asked in a coherent order so I feel happy to share them. The time constraints of the session forced me to be succinct and to the point... which on this occasion seems to have worked well.

Some examples of the questions asked are...

What is mind?... what is mindfulness?... what is skillful concentration?
How does one develop the levels of samadhi progressively?
How does one develop Vipassana Insight? How to work with pain?

The entire session is quite long, so feel to listen to the first half in one go and come back to listen to the remainder.

I hope that something contained within this session is useful or encouraging to you.

With Loving-Kindness