Dharma Day Nov 16
Saturday, November 16th (10 a.m. – 4 p.m.) (Our final activity before Wattle Hollow closes for the winter) We will be practicing the various forms of Vipassana Buddhist meditation: ** Sitting (no sessions more than 30-40 minutes), various types of practices.** Walking (both indoor and outdoor)** An hour-long movement/yoga session** Eating (lunchtime will be silent, with special focus on the food)** Metta/Lovingkindness practice The practice of Noble Silence will be observed all day, except for group discussions, in order to deepen our...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Joy #6 – 2024
Hello, dear readers. The Sweet Dream,Fahn Deecontinues… Last night, Nawng Joy said that she had checked every item off on her fantasy list. Some of them might surprise you: **We four women (Nawng Joy, Aey, Ur and I) have been singing.. A LOT!Mostly sweet oldies like : How could anyone ever tell youYou were anything less than beautiful?How could anyone ever tell youYou were less than whole?How could anyone fail to noticeThat your loving is a miracle?How deeply you’re connected to my soul. One night, Nawng Joy requested that we all hold hands...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Joy #5, 2024
Hello again, dear readers. Many of you are experiencing sub-zero temperatures up north, with blizzards. I wonder whether it is a form of cruelty to send these photos to your side of the world… although some of you are delighted with the snow, the quiet, the mysterious frost etchings on your window panes. I spent many wonderful winters in Montana and Wisconsin. I remember the gifts of splitting wood, stoking the stove, snow-shoeing in the woods at dusk, rainbow patterns in the sunny drifts… It was a little harder to unwrap the...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Joy 2024 – #4
Hello again dear readers… or, more properly around here: Dhamma sawadhi kha 🙏 .(Greetings, in the spirit of Dhamma) My braincells are starting to seep back in ….and it’s such a relief! Someone please remind me if/when you hear me denigrating the mind…which is fairly fashionable in Buddhist circles. I slept well, and awoke to the sound of the nuns chanting next door, as they do every morning around 5:15. Such a charming wakeup bell! I did not join them, however, since I do suffer from CFS** But I did arise (well, by 6 a.m., anyhow) and...
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Hola, dear readers. No, this is not a Mexican kitty..This is Tater Bug, seen here contemplating the sunset. She lives in Little Rock with my friend Becky. I’ve been thinking about aliens lately, and what that means…For instance, when I go down to the bay every morning before dawn, wearing my down jacket, a cap, leg warmers, an alpaca poncho and three layers of clothes beneath all that…. and I encounter these people: Which of us is the alien?(Clue: I heard them speaking French.) And I see that they have more freedom/options than I, because...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Joy – 2024 #2
Hello again, dear readers. Thanks for your heartfelt response to the first Tales, dears. Some of you will probably receive duplicate copies, since my readership file is a glitch-filled rat’s-nest and seems to have lost or omitted about half of the original recipients… let me know if you receive several copies, please. A couple of you shared your own bobcat and panther tales, and of having your experience denied (especially regarding the panther), by local experts.. I have to wonder if these officials are concerned about igniting the...
READ MORE / RegisterTales from Joy 2024 #1
Hello again, dear readers. It’s been an extraordinarily long time since the last installment, hasn’t it? This is because I dropped the ball last year, after about four Tales…I was pretending that no one really had time to read them, and that I was just too busy to write them. However, an astounding number of you have mentioned to me, without rancor but with an irrefutable intensity, that you do indeed WAIT to hear the next installment. My apologies to those of you who relate to that. An additional excuse for my lapse is the ever-quirky and...
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Hello again, dear readers. I don’t know if I can describe the way that I am greeted here, all day long…like a beloved auntie who has finally returned… I am the oldest member of this community and therefore Pa Joy**, which means Auntie Joy, to all. Some of these relationships go back decades. We traveled Thailand together with Khun Mae and shared some challenges, too. It was my birthday last week…and I tend to be a curmudgeon about holidays. So I wanted it to be low-key. I consider every day as a holy day… and sense a...
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Sawadhi kha, 🙏dear readers. My first day in Thailand felt quite significant, for myself and for the entire community. Some of you may recall from last year’s Tales: I reported a sense of physical and energetic deterioration in the S.D.S. (Bangkok) center’s vitality level.For one thing, Ajahn Chom’s work crew was spending all their time in the southern center, creating fantastic new water features and landscaping miracles every day. Meanwhile, the monsoons, pollution and extreme heat up in Bangkok take a rapid and unrelenting toll on...
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Hello again, dear readers. You all have reminded me why I write these Tales. Every year I experience prolonged labor and difficulty with Tales #1. My primary symptom is a sense of over-exposure… like I’m on YouTube giving birth. Then your responses come rolling in, almost immediately, bursting with the enthusiasm of shared confessions, and relief (this year) to be “not the only one” who is so damn crazy and strung out on watching the news, the whiskey cocaine of cellphone usage or whatever your hit parade happened to encompass in 2022....
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Hola, my dear readers. Harvesting veggies in the community garden I like to imagine each year is totally different from the one preceding it…. But I do seem to recall that the exact same thing occurred last year …hmmmm: I arrived here in the lovely town of La Paz (Baja Sur) and sloughed into a pleasantly vegetative state, setting up my little 1950’s kitchen, getting my drinking water, renting a bicycle…. And revisiting my favorite sacred spots… And same as last year, it took a few weeks and several sweet but persistent inquiries from...
READ MORE / RegisterTales of Joy 2022 #9
Heading south to SDS II, known as Bodhisattva Valley, we began to feel lighter and lighter. Nawng Joy, Aey and I have a way of sparking each other into silly happiness. Here we are at a lunch stop along the way. Yes, rice paddies are really that green. I packed pillows and extra towels and bedding into my luggage, in order to survive a week of sleeping directly on the cement floor like I did two years ago. And ear plugs, to drown out the snoring nuns in the next room, and barking dogs. And sheets of seaweed, cashews and supplements, cause...
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Wattle Hollow is a relatively small retreat center (40 acres of woodlands on a mountainside in Northwest Arkansas) with capacity for 20 - 25 folks.