Men’s Study Weekend 29-31 October. Brought to you by Leif!

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The weekend started with dinner on Friday night. The women had vacated the premises in order to do a gardening/study event down the hill.

After the meal, Shantikara – who would be leading the study sessions – gave us an introduction to the Sigalovada sutta. In it, the Buddha meets a young man engaged in the practice of venerating the six directions (the compass points plus up and down). He uses this as a framework to deliver a teaching, broadly on social responsibility.

We finished the day with a short dedication ceremony, to help set the focus for the weekend. The shrine room, it has to be said, is not terribly large. Fitting more then eight of us might have become a squeeze. But it was a good end to the day. And so dear reader, to bed – more or less.

The next day started at 7.00am with two 45 minute meditations in the shrine room, led by Satyajit – who facilitated all the meditations sessions. Then breakfast and a session of staring each other out until someone cracked and agreed to cook dinner.

10.30 saw us settling for a couple of hours study –  once we had gotten over Sean’s arrival in slinky lycra (he’d cycled in from home). Having fanned ourselves vigorously, we got down to looking at the sutta.

The first section covers the Buddha meeting Sigalaka while he’s worshipping the six directions and receiving his request to be instructed in the correct way to do it. The immediate point which Shantikara drew out of it was that the sutta is heavily imbued with the cultural context of that time and place (Northern India around 500BCE).

Moving on, the text listed four impure actions to be avoided-

  • Harming living beings
  • Taking what is not given
  • Sexual misconduct
  • False speech

The first four precepts in their traditional form and then another list of four causes of harmful deeds (also to be avoided)-

  • Desire
  • Hatred
  • Delusion
  • Fear

The first three form another traditional list called the three poisons.

A point came up around whether the Buddha was giving this teaching because he had recognised Sigalaka as someone in danger of falling into unskillful conduct. The basic teaching being, act in accordance with where you want to be. All familiar – but slippery – territory around karmic comsequences and conditionality (in its broadest sense, saying that phenomena arise dependent upon conditions). Suck on that.

Next the Buddhaa listed six ways of squandering wealth and then six dangers associated with each. This is where the cultural context really started kicking in – and that the suttas were orginally composed to be passed down orally (lists within lists are a common feature). This section caused a lot of smiles, but also serious questions about whether the Buddha meant only material wealth – and why – and how the lists related to our own experience.

Eventually, we drew the session to a close in order to have a short meditation before lunch.

After some free time in the afternoon, we reconvened for a couple of hours more study. The next section listed four kinds of true friends and four kinds of bad companion, and their characteristics. This had a lot in common with the earlier lists – hardly surprising. bearing in mind conditionality – covering the appropriate use of wealth and an exhortation to “gather wealth in harmless ways”.

Again stuff came up about cultural context, whether this was that actual word of the Buddha – texts were certainly added while passing down the centuries – and what which parts have a bearing on current circumstances. It’s all a bit academic, otherwise.

Another break for meditation, then dinner and a bit more free time. We ended the day with a puja – recitation of traditional verses and mantras in order to encourage devotional feeling (particularly in a group context). No music. Buddhafield is associated with wacky musical pujas but it isn’t par for the course when we are at home. I like them quiet, most of the time, anyway.

The next day followed the same routine. We spent both study sessions on the last part of the sutta. This is where the Buddha gives the teaching on the correct way to worship the six directions. Clearly he is using it to present the teaching which Sigalaka needs.

The Buddha identifies each direction with a particular relationship –

  • Parents
  • Secular teachers
  • Partner and children
  • Friends and colleagues
  • Workers and servants
  • Ascetics and Brahmins

For each, he lists five ways in which respect is shown toward them and five ways in which they respond positively to such treatment. Following this advice is presented as a path to happiness. Again, the material needs to be seen in the context of the time and place in which it was being given. The sutta ends with Sigalaka asking the Buddha to accept him as a lay-follower.

So dinner and a puja, then the weekend officially came to a close. The womenfolk arrived back sometime after I’d gone to bed – hardy souls.

Making time for single sex activities is held to be important within the movement and I have previously found it a helpful space to work with. Possibly because I was doing it at home this time, mostly with a group who also live here, my main impression around it was of the house being half empty. But this is not even a quibble. It was a pleasure to have the opportunity for intensive study – especially with material taken for the Pali canon.

I think we were unanimous in agreeing that we need to do it again. I expect that, next time, we’ll leave the house and the women will have the house for a bit. Camping in January anyone?

What Women do for Women — Opinions of Single Sex Activities

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Over the weekend I came to think about what being a woman is and what having a held space for women means to me. It almost feels wrong to say that woman’s roles are a new discovery for me. I have always known what these consist of but it is only recently that I have been told, learnt and experienced these roles with a positive and realistic view instead of the derogatory portrayal of housewifery and associated tasks.

I have started to look at housewifery, nurturing, sewing and cooking as much more than a stereotypical role, but as a natural role that women have undertaken across the ages. My renewed passion in these tasks has made me feel more secure as a woman, which has enabled me to open up to new passions, such as that of wood working, something I was frightened to pursue in school because it meant that I would be in a room full of boys. I wish I had the strength of mind and confidence that I have now back then as I would have taken that step, no questions asked. I can do the common masculine ‘powerhouse’ jobs-heavy lifting, chopping wood, digging holes, because of good techniques and strength in my core. I also know when my body needs a rest. I am not a believer in ‘everything you can do, I can do better’ which I believe many feminists these days to believe in. Men can cook, I can chop wood (and enjoy it) but I also believe that there is a division and it is worth being respectful of it. When I am pregnant I don’t want to have to chop wood but I’ll happily darn or weave or weed.

In a spiritual sense, the female space is also a new discovery, having never fully looked closely at myself spiritually. This comes from a fear of looking too deeply at things that scare or repulse me. This fear has always been at the back of my mind and making myself known to me and to others is much easier in the supportive and nurturing space of a room full of females. The instincts in a woman of care and compassion are clear to feel when discussing everything, from the universe to the acorns, the childhood bullying to pregnancy. It is more free with no men around. Men are sometimes too quick to joke. I feel stronger when surrounded by women and more able to be heard.

This is not to say that sharing my world with just women is how I feel my life should evolve. I strongly believe in the gentle interplay between the genders in all things as being a powerful tool in learning about myself and my position in the planets ecosystems, but having a separate organised space really helps to focus your attentions on gender specific intentions and issues.

Ruth: I really appreciate the chance to be in a single sex environment, as growing up, both at school and at home, I never spent much time in one. It is a very new experience for me to be part of such a close knit group of women and feel completely trusting and comfortable around them. Over this first season that I have spent with Buddhafield I have been through some really difficult circumstances and had to face a lot of things about myself and my relationships with others that were very hard to admit to.  Had it not been for the support of so many women within the cafe team, and also from the retreats team, I think I wouldn’t have been able to make the changes I have, and understand the whys and hows of the situations I found myself in.

I have always found it difficult to make and maintain female friendships, but it is something that I am realising is really important to me, both personally and spiritually, and that the more I open up and give, the easier creating and maintaining friendships with women is. I feel as if an aspect of me which I never gave much thought to before is being nourished and being brought out of me. The areas of Buddhafield I have experienced, the cafe, festival and Trevince House, all have an enriching female aspect alongside an equal, yet not necessarily the same, enriching male aspect. This serves to create a really held, supportive, open space, in which I feel I have been able to explore myself and start to understand myself, in ways that, within a mixed environment, it is harder to do.

Women’s Weekend at Easterbrook

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>On the last weekend of October at Trevince House there was a men’s study weekend. The women of the household had to vacate the premises and decamp to Easterbrook Farm where we have an allotment space, which Trevince House has recently taken responsibility for.

Easterbrook farm is owned by a friend of Buddhafield and there Buddhafield stores, in one of the barns, all of Buddhafield’s tents and equipment. Vans are also parked there over the winter. We use the loft as a space to mend our canvases for the forthcoming season and it is where we hold the annual team retreat. Easterbrook, with its beautiful surroundings, is an important resource to us.

Both of us, Rosie, Alice, Liz and Abie were all present at this weekend and it soon became clear that we all share a passion for growing vegetables following permaculture ideals and using herbs for their culinary and medicinal properties. The garden’s creator, Dharmamrta also shares these same values and took us on a guided tour of what is planted where.

Dharmamrta started this garden as a right livelihood business, supplying the festival and cafe with specialist salad leaves through the season. She built a poly tunnel, creating the entire garden from a patch of grass. She is now doing other things but lent her time to us to show and explain what is in the garden and her reasonings for planting what she did.

Alongside Dharmamrta, Abie has been it’s nurturer for the last year or so, growing flowers at Easterbrook from April 2010. Previously, she had an allotment in Norwich on which she grew flowers on for a year, using them to make bouquets as gifts. This, being her main success, made her decide to buy lots of seeds, and she approached The Greenhouse in Crediton as a place to sell locally grown cut flower bouquets. They were delighted and very supportive in giving it a go. Dharmamrta had grown Echinacea and Rudbeckia ‘Black Eyed Susan’ and Abie planted alongside those Calendula, Centaurea Cyanus ‘Black Ball’, Blue Cornflowers, Ammi Majus ‘Bishops’s Flower, Ammi visnaga white, Zinnias, Dahlia’s, Sunflowers, Sweet peas (though the deer ate all of these) Salvia Patens and Achillea. You may have seen some of these flowers which so beautifully decorate some of the shrines at the retreats. Abie brought with her an amazing number of books on Buddhism and gardening, which were laid out ceremoniously next to our modest shrine amid exclamations of excitement! As the weather was very wet and the sewing loft cold, us resilient women spent time drinking tea whilst looking at books and discussing what our future plans for the garden may be, and touching on subjects that concern Buddhism and our gender such as abortion, feminism and being a parent. Many times a cry of ‘Hey! listen to this!’ was heard as we individually discovered little gems of knowledge to do with herbs, the earth or Buddhism.

On Saturday night Abie led a simple three-fold puja, her first time leading one, which was really beautiful. We both felt really touched to be present at this, as Abie has been really instrumental in furthering our understanding of Buddhism, helping answer our questions and trying to point us in interesting and fruitful directions on where to look for answers. Abie has been really enthusiastic and supportive about both this blog and us taking on the garden. She has been really generous with her time and the gathering at Easterbrook would not have been the same without her! Big sadhu!

 Late Sunday morning the rain eased off and we bumbled round the garden in our wellies and water proofs, taking pictures and making notes on what plants and herbs were in the garden, what needed to come out and what spaces were available for developing. Dharmamrta visited us on Sunday afternoon, and we collectively worked in the garden. Rosie and Dharmamrta cleared a bed in the polytunnel, digging up the sunflowers which had been there, and whose heads now hang from a light fixture on the wall in the living room at Trevince, waiting to dry so their seeds can be harvested. Ruth and Alice cleared a small bed outside and replanted lambs lettuce that had self seeded, for a mid winter green feast. Lou cleared out old cucumbers and the smaller self seeded lambs lettuce in another bed whilst uncovering more and more hibernating slugs. The whole bed was mulched with a thick layer of Elecampagne leaves that grow elsewhere in the garden. Abie cleared behind the shelves that edge one side of the poly tunnel and Liz cleared out the basil that had been prolific and had now died off and did some general weeding.

As the light failed Ruth went to put the kettle and started cooking dinner while the others finished up in the garden. We meditated and then had dinner and finished the evening reading aloud from ‘The Jewel in the Cabbage which draws parallels between cooking and Buddhism in very interesting ways, being mostly cafe crew it was something that we could all relate to. This marked the end of our gardening weekend at Easterbrook, later that evening we all returned to the warmth of Trevince House and had tea with our male counterparts.

Photos from the Women’s weekend at Easterbrook

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A selection of photos from our gardening weekend at Easterbrook.
Alice ponders the Polytunnel.

 

Women’s ‘mess’.

 

Our camp in the sewing loft, complete with shrine and library!
View from the Polytunnel, there is so much to do!

 

Lamb’s Lettuce.

 

Sunflowers and slugs trying to escape the Polytunnel

 

 

The beauteous, bountiful Kale!

 

More Kale…

 

And more Kale, the most abundant vegetable in the garden, we have it every night at Trevince!
Rocket flower.

 

Mixed salad in one hand and…
Freshly picked lettuce in the other!
All photos were taken by us and Liz, we will be uploading more soon.

 

 

Introduction to us!

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>Lou: I started working for Buddhafield as a way of getting to spend more time at festivals. For me being at a festival is something that I have always loved, the bubble of contentment and madness that arises within the site boundaries is a wonderful thing and I have always wanted to be more involved in how festivals are put together. After setting up the Café at Glastonbury, a festival that is very familiar to me, I soon realised that not only do Buddhafield Café provide a safe and welcoming place for festival punters but it also provides a home, a sanctuary amongst the chaos for its team of volunteers. I am one of the café volunteers and this year I also got involved with the site décor at this year’s festival. What I didn’t realise is that I would fall sideways into being with a family all of whom are learning and trying to adhere to Buddhist principles. This is what the café, in a wider context is trying to do; to bring the Dharma, the Buddhist spiritual path, to a greater audience. I have learnt much about myself and my relationship to others in the last few months and now that my position becomes more and more established I look forward to bringing my discoveries to aid the creation of this blog to support Buddhafield in all it does.

Ruth: It started off as a one time visit last year to work for the cafe at the festival, a week of working later, I knew with the most certainty I’ve ever felt that I needed to become part of Buddhafield. Just over a year later and I have been job-free, house-free and volunteering for the cafe for nearly 5 months and have never been happier. Before joining Buddhafield I had no interest in Buddhism,  having been brought up a Jehavah’s Witness and left the faith I have quite a strong resistance to ‘religion’, I was interested more in living a life outside of mainstream society, that didn’t have as its main aim acquisition of objects or money, that promoted freedom of choice and personal responsibility. What I found was so much more than that. I have slowly come to think that what I was looking for seems to be embodied in Buddhism, and while I still have my doubts, the effect on me that Buddhafield and my increasing knowledge of Buddhism has had cannot be seen as anything other than good.

What is a Buddhafield?


A Buddhafield in the Mahayana Tradition is a place in which the conditions are perfect for spiritual growth, a place where there are no burdens or hassles, a beautiful place that exists to benefit all beings and is under the influence of the Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. The Buddhafield that we work for, in its various guises, creates a supportive space that holds many people on their own paths into Buddhism and the journey they choose to undertake to spiritual enlightenment.

In its most basic form Buddhafield can be spilt into three factions: Buddhafield Cafe, Buddhafield Festival and Buddhafield Retreats. The café which takes its delicious vegan food to various festivals over the summer including Glastonbury, Wildheart, Sunrise, Out of the Ordinary and many others. The cafe creates a perfect space for festival goers to relax and rejuvenate and also hold a space within which the Dharma is an ongoing concern. The festival, unique in its ‘no drink, no drugs’ stance, holds many free workshops that encapsulate awareness: from Dharma talks to all kinds of meditations and yoga, from rituals and pujas to beautiful acoustic music. The retreats team hold a number of different retreats throughout the year for those who wish to delve deeper into Buddhism.  All the retreats are held in stunning locations offering a chance to get closer to nature and yourself. The most popular of our retreats is the Family Friendly retreat, held at Frog Mill, a piece of  land in Dartmoor National Park which Buddhafield has bought, and that the Land Appeal, another offshoot of Buddhafield, is raising money to pay for.

The Festival, Café and Retreats are all working towards being as sustainable as possible. We use wind and solar energy to power the cafe and the festival, biodiesel in the vans used to transport us and all the equipment from site to site, wood fired hot water systems for the hot water in the cafe, (the excess heat goes into a sauna and shower for the cafe crew to keep them clean and happy!!) composting loo’s at retreats and at the festival and we also source our veg from local suppliers, in whatever part of the country we happen to be in. This caring for the environment we inhabit, in turn helps to create a safe space for people to confidently and comfortably grow at their own pace, so they can lighten their burdens and release the constraints of their mind and bodies and become enlightened (or near enough!). Truly a Buddhafield in action.