Newsletter Winter 2004/05 from Sonia

You receive this newsletter whilst I am in Guatemala on a 2 month retreat, a time to deepen my practice and recharge. As a friend told me: “you cannot keep giving so much without some topping up for yourself too!”
Quite right!.

2005 will again be a year full of teaching. At the end of January and through to the end of February I will be in Australia and New Zealand for teaching commitments that had been postponed several times in the last few years. So I am delighted and ready to travel that far again.
I am returning to Germany and Switzerland where the courses are well received. We even had to put on a special course for the partners of the shiatsu participants as they too were keen to study Mindfulness meditation.

The theme for my meditation teaching at The Orchard will be on the strengthening of calm abiding as the foundation to the insight into emptiness. The teaching of the paramis, the 6 virtues that support our awakening will also be integral to all the courses.

In the Healing-Shiatsu workshops, I’ll continue to focus on the quality of witnessing cultivated in the meditation training, rather than on the doing aspects of techniques and looking for results. They attract students from all over Britain and from abroad and so the 2-week format will be repeated in August.

2004 saw several students on long-term retreat at The Orchard, 3 and 6 months. This is a very special time and a rewarding work for both the students and myself, as guiding a meditator through the many faces of clinging, aversion and confusion to emerge with a new, clear and expansive view is so beautiful.

My own meditation practice continues to be a source of true refuge and strength, especially so now that for the first time in my life I do not have a living teacher to turn to.

For all the meditation courses and retreats I am introducing the parami of Dana. Dana is a Pali word meaning: “liberality, generosity, offering” and is the first of the “Six Paramis” ,”the virtues that helps us go further”. The others are morality, patience, energy, concentration and wisdom. Dana is the antidote to holding on and egoism or self-referencing. The Ven. Namgyal Rinpoche stressed this first virtue as most important to make genuine changes in one’s life. To turn one’s mind to the welfare of others through offering, giving, brings about a loosening of the self-referencing of “ I, Me and Mine”. It is the opposite of the attitude of poverty, where one sees the world in terms of lacks rather than offerings and openings. So many times in my life I’ve experienced this to be true in small and big ways, the more I give, the more I let go of my limited views and the more I receive gifts of all kinds, much beyond my imagination.

So, I invite you to join in this practice of spontaneous offering and opening, of trusting that as we freely give, in turn we are so nurtured.
Finally, as I will be away during the festive season, I send you all my warmest wishes for a happy Christmas and a joyous New Year.

In metta, Sonia

“as long as space endures,
as long as sentient beings remain,
until then, may I too remain and dispel
the suffering of the world”
(Dalai Lama)