Deer Park to Offer Winter Courses

From requests in past year's Winter Retreats for more structured study during these three months, the community has planned a number of courses for monastic and lay practitioners this winter. We encourage you to find the time to be with us during the whole of the three months to better benefit from this graduated study.

Once a month special teachings will be offered on the 14 Mindfulness Trainings by senior Dharma teachers in Deer Park on the Sunday Day of Mindfulness. The talks are planned so as to form one coherent in-depth look into the nature of the trainings of the Order of Interbeing. In this way as a Sangha we may enrich our practice and more directly see ways to engage with the practice in ourselves, in our families, and in society.

The Lankavatara Sutra has been well-known as a basic text of Zen Buddhism, focusing on practices such as Buddha-nature in the context of Prajna-paramita dialectic. This winter, on Wednesday and Friday nights, the respected Venerable Thuong Toa Phuoc Tinh will be teaching the sutra with reference to its Chinese recension. The language of the teaching will be Vietnamese, but we will do our best to provide English translation for those who are in need.

Following the course in Buddhist Sanskrit offered during last year's Winter Retreat, this year monastic and lay residents of Deer Park as well as commuting friends from nearby are invited to participate in three months of introductory study in Pali, the principal scriptural language of the Theravada school of Buddhism. The course will focus on both language acquisition as well as practice, with short meditation sessions included along with Pali chanting. We will concentrate on learning the grammatical structures of Pali, with exercises from De Silva's Pali Primer and readings from the Anapanasati Sutta (Discourse on Mindfulness of Breathing), the Satipatthana Sutta (Discourse on the Foundations of Mindfulness) and the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (Discourse on Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma). Subhasitas, or "good sayings," will be presented in each class for regular translation and recitation practice. Intellectual learning through study of the original language of the texts and concrete practice of concepts learned go hand in hand. No previous language study is required. Read more here.

For more information on staying at Deer Park for the Winter Retreat, please see our Winter Retreat page.