Dakkhina Dhammatthala

Buddha Rupa shrine set up in the church hall

Today the Buddhist Society of South Australia held its AGM at the Uniting church hall in Kensington Gardens.

Ayya Santacari started off the day with a Dhamma talk about the awesome qualities of the Buddha. She also discussed AN 10.51 the sutta about training “Ones Own Mind”; Training the mind to discern between 10 beneficial and 10 harmful qualities. How this leads to happiness and tranquillity and how happiness is an essential part of the path.

Ayya Santacari reading from the Anguttara Nikaya

A short questions and answers session followed where we discussed the Buddha’s own path to awakening and the need to balance one’s own practice with both tranquillity “Samadhi” practices and insight “Vipassana” practices.

Ayya lead us all on a guided meditation on mindfulness of breathing. She took us through the breath, the long and short breath, the whole breath, breath tranquillising the body and breath tranquillising the mind. Bringing us then to experiencing happiness with the breath, bringing up joy and happiness as part of mindfulness of breathing.

New BSSA Committee members: 
l to r back: Kaz, Angela, Ven Santacari, Padma [vp], Ben, Thet
l to r front: Shanaka, Michelle [sec], Ben [pres], Bec [tres].

 

After the guided meditation followed by a tea break we began the business portion of the meeting.

The first discussion made clear that those present did not want to wind down the BSSA, but wanted it to become renewed and revitalised. With this feeling of enthusiasm and good will, all people present wanted to renew their memberships or join as new members.

We were then able to elect new office bearers and committee members.

I would like to congratulate the new committee:

Thank you to everyone and we look forward to a renewal of Theravadan programs here in Adelaide to be organised in the future by our new committee.