{"id":7855,"date":"2023-08-03T07:35:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T07:35:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/newsite\/?p=7855"},"modified":"2024-09-08T11:05:45","modified_gmt":"2024-09-08T11:05:45","slug":"a-short-visit-to-sunyata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/sangha-admin\/a-short-visit-to-sunyata\/","title":{"rendered":"A Short Visit to Sunyata"},"content":{"rendered":"<h6>\n<h4>A Short Visit to Sunyata<\/h4>\n<h6>Sunyata \u2013 a small forest thai wat in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare, Ireland \u2013 by Cathal<\/h6>\n<style>\np<br \/>\nfont-family: Verdana;<br \/>\nfont-size: 1.9em;<br \/>\nfont-weight: bold;<br \/>\n}<br \/>\n<\/style>\n<p><strong>I came to Sunyata for 5 days (1\/12\/2022-5\/12\/2022) and I was very impressed by how such a small<br \/>\nmonastery can have such a big impact. The schedule ran like the other wats in this forest thai tradition<br \/>\n(with Ajahn Chah) such as Chithurst, Amavarati \u2013 there was about 3 hours work to be done the entire<br \/>\nday with everything being ran off of d\u0101na, breakfast, lunch, tea and the two daily hour pujas I attended.<br \/>\nIn the barren countryside of Ireland it\u2019s very personal experience in polarity to the busyness of other<br \/>\nwats, there was 3 other guys in the entire place so I was left alone for most of the day to the chatters of<br \/>\nmy mind, which proved to be a new experience and a very insightful to see my mind in such social<br \/>\nseclusion. There was no monastics about although recently Ajahn Succito resided a while for a self-<br \/>\nretreat, there are generally lay visitors coming and going and a couple dedicated long-term laypeople<br \/>\nwho stick around who worked quite a bit to maintain the place and keep up the handling of retreats and<br \/>\nso on. It still somehow felt like a Sangha with those guys, we openly could talk and relate to each other<br \/>\non many levels of personal experience in life and our experiences in meditation, it felt really nice to be<br \/>\nable to find a place in my home country who practiced, sharing connections and places to meet Sangha<br \/>\nis pretty solid.<br \/>\nThe place itself is really very simple and after roaming around it is easy to tell they\u2019ve spent a lot of time<br \/>\ncultivating a very aesthetically beautiful place with a bit of land for herbs and vegetables, you have your<br \/>\nroom in a dormitory (although the entire dorm will likely be your room if you\u2019re not in some<br \/>\nretreat\/event) and do whatever you want. There are free books to read if you like and a comfortable hall<br \/>\nto sit in during the common showery cold Irish days and the only thing you\u2019ll be disturbed by is a dog<br \/>\nand a few cats. There is literally nothing to do and nowhere to go. (welcome to anapanasati)<br \/>\nAfter the morning reflection, work begins, you will be likely off to do your own task and it is very nice to<br \/>\npractice working meditation as that is something quite mentioned in this tradition, to approach<br \/>\nabsolutely everything with mindfulness even the most mundane of things. (where I saw my mind prefers<br \/>\nto be the most active).<br \/>\nIt is good to bring any kind of d\u0101na you can whether that be some groceries from the nearby town of<br \/>\nSixmilebridge or donations, this is a very small place and generally they have to do their own shopping<br \/>\nfrom retreat donations, but don\u2019t worry if you can\u2019t because there is plenty of food to go around. Being<br \/>\nno monastics has its downside of not being able to talk about your practice or observe long-term<br \/>\npractitioners who can make great friends or teachers, so I suggest if you are a point you\u2019d like a self-<br \/>\nretreat this is definitely a good place to go or to join during some kind of retreat where you\u2019ll be<br \/>\namongst more people, or to be in contact with the lay-manager as to when monastics are coming and<br \/>\ngoing. I\u2019ll absolutely be back and for anyone in Ireland this is certainly a place you\u2019ll be glad to be able to<br \/>\nvisit often.<\/strong><br \/>\n<\/h6>\n<p>Views: 36<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Short Visit to Sunyata Sunyata \u2013 a small forest thai wat in Sixmilebridge, Co. Clare, Ireland \u2013 by Cathal I came to Sunyata for 5 days (1\/12\/2022-5\/12\/2022) and I was very impressed by how such a small monastery can have such a big impact. The schedule ran like the other wats in this forest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":7702,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-7855","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-teaching"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7855"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15480,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7855\/revisions\/15480"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/opensanghafoundation.org\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}