Available Year Round
Retreat Highlights
• 2, 10, and 20 day Vipassana meditation course
• Silent
• Simple Vegetarian Food
• Introductory course to Vipassana Meditation where the technique is taught step-by-step each day
• Newly build beautiful pagoda on site understanding of the basics of insight meditation by attending an introductory
A meditation retreat is a serious undertaking which requires effort and self-discipline. A retreat is not merely a chance to escape the pressures of daily life, nor a means of overcoming a psychological crisis, nor time out in which to do your own practice. Rather, it is a unique opportunity to cultivate the Buddha’s way of liberation first taught two and a half thousand years ago through the practice of generosity, ethics, meditation and understanding.
Vipassana Retreats
Residential retreats can run for two, ten or twenty days. Retreats are conducted in silence, which includes no talking (including no use of mobile phones or email), no communicating through body language, no listening to music, no reading, and no writing, except for brief notes recording your meditation experience. However, there are opportunities to discuss the practice with the teacher through individual consultations or group discussions.
Venerable Pannyavaro
Venerable Pannyavaro is an Australian Buddhist monk who has devoted his life to the meditational aspects of the Buddha's teachings.
During his meditation training, he practiced under several meditation masters in Sri Lanka and Burma, including Venerable Sayadaw U Janaka of Chanmyay Meditation Centre, Rangoon, who is the foremost disciple of the renowned Burmese meditation master, the late Venerable Mahasi Sayadaw.
Pannyavaro was involved in the beginnings of a number of the very early Buddhist communities in Australia. He later went to Thailand and received higher ordination at Wat Borvornivet in Bangkok under Venerable Phra Nyanasamvarva, the Sangha Raja of Thailand.
Since 1974, he has from time to time studied and practised Vipassana meditation in most of the major Theravada Buddhist countries, including long periods of intensive practise with teachers at the Mahasi Sayadaw centres in Burma.
As a Western meditation teacher, Ven. Pannyavaro naturally empathises with the concerns and needs of meditators in their own culture. His long training and life experience combine to bring a practical in-depth approach to the teaching of insight (Vipassana) meditation in contemporary life.
In 2005, Pannyavaro founded the Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery and Retreat Centre, near Lismore in Northern NSW, Australia, where he is the resident senior monk and teacher. He also gives retreats and meditation workshops from time to time in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and other Asian countries, but more regularly he conducts retreats and workshops at the Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery and Retreat Centre.
Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery and Retreat Centre have a regular schedule of retreats and workshops for beginners and long-term meditators throughout the year. You are welcome to come to Bodhi Tree to practice.