1st Tuesday Tea and Dhamma Talk at Berkeley Buddhist Monastery

When: 5-9pm, 2 กรกฎาคม 2024

Location: 2304 McKinley Ave, Berkeley, CA 94703

Description:

Dear Friends:

The Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery’s First Tuesday program in Berkeley will be held on July 2. Luang Por Amaro, the abbot of Amaravati Monastery in England and founding co-abbot of Abhayagiri, will be our honored guest and lead the program. Additional background on Luang Por Amaro is provided further below. The program will be in-person only, and masks are optional.

The schedule is as follows:

• 5:00 - 6:00 pm. Teatime Q&A with the monastics in the Dining Room. This is a great opportunity to ask your dhamma questions. Kindly keep voices low in the lobby and hallway as you enter and exit the building. Please arrive by 4:50 pm and help yourself to tea and allowables.
• 7:30 - 9:30 pm. Evening Session in the Main Shrine Room. Dhamma talk preceded by chanting, meditation, and refuges/precepts. We would greatly appreciate your assistance with setting up and putting away chairs/cushions. Doors for this session open at 7:15 pm.

The Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, our gracious host, has meditation and chanting programs from 5:15 to 7:15 pm in the Main Shrine Room. These programs partially overlap with the Abhayagiri First Tuesday program. After the Teatime and prior to the Evening Session, please be mindful of others and take conversations outside the building.   
Address:
Berkeley Buddhist Monastery
2304 McKinley Ave.
(One block from the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Way and Bancroft Way. The Downtown Berkeley BART station is about a 10-15 minute walk.)

Hope you can join us.

With gratitude,

Moderator

Ajahn Amaro Background

Born in England in 1956, Ven. Amaro Bhikkhu received a BSc. in Psychology and Physiology from the University of London. Spiritual searching led him to Thailand, where he went to Wat Pah Nanachat, a Forest Tradition monastery established for Western disciples of Thai meditation master Ajahn Chah, who ordained him as a bhikkhu in 1979. Soon afterwards he returned to England and joined Ajahn Sumedho at the newly established Chithurst Monastery. He resided for many years at Amaravati Buddhist Monastery, making trips to California every year during the 1990s.

In June 1996 he established Abhayagiri Monastery in Redwood Valley, California, where he was co-Abbot with Ajahn Pasanno until 2010. He then returned to Amaravati to become Abbot of this large monastic community.

Ajahn Amaro has written a number of books, including an account of an 830-mile trek from Chithurst to Harnham Vihara called Tudong - the Long Road North, republished in the expanded book Silent Rain. His other publications include Small Boat, Great Mountain (2003), Rain on the Nile (2009), and The Island - An Anthology of the Buddha’s Teachings on Nibbana (2009) co-written with Ajahn Pasanno, a guide to meditation called Finding the Missing Peace and other works dealing with various aspects of Buddhism.

In December 2015, along with Ajahn Pasanno, Ajahn Amaro was honored by the King of Thailand with the ecclesiastical title ‘Chao Khun.’ Together with this honor he was given the name ‘Videsabuddhiguna.’ In July 2019, again with Ajahn Pasanno, he was honored with the title ‘Chao Khun Rāja’ and received the name ‘Rājabuddhivaraguṇa.’