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Letters from the Abbess

Dear Friends,

Our first winter in the Nunnery was quiet. After the first snowfall in November, many animals came almost to our door to eat the berries left on the trees. Deer, coyote, raccoon and rabbit tracks could be found in the snow. Every morning there are tracks of squirrels and other furry friends around the place where I put out the food offerings for the protectors.

December and January will always be a time of deep retreat. One can learn many practices but integrating them into your bones happens during retreat. At Vajra Dakini nunnery, we are a contemplative order, thus retreat is an important part of our life. I had the good fortune this winter to do six weeks of retreat. It is a time of disciplined focus in which one maintains meditation for 8 to 12 hours a day. In this way the mind never leaves the visualizations and chanting, maintaining complete focus, layers of emotional issues arise and the teachings are applied on the spot!

I learn tremendously from every long retreat that I am able to do. Retreats are the source, the wellspring of experience from which I teach. I was well supported by the community who came with groceries, and collected the mail, and by Ani Tsultrim, who maintained the Sunday morning practice.

Now with Spring in our minds, new ideas about sharing the teachings are arising! We reopened the doors on Tibetan New Year with a one week residential retreat, and our first Teachings via teleconference. In our tradition the greatest blessing is seeing your root teacher as the first sight of the New Year. Venerable Dhyani graced us with a brilliant talk on the foundation practices. We offered a mandala while imagining offering all the wonderful things in the world to her. Auspiciously, on the day before, a huge box of prayer flags arrived on our doorstep! Ven. Dhyani blessed them and we gave them to everyone who came by. Now as you drive the back roads of our Vermont neighbourhood, you see their bright colors in trees, softening the winter snowy gray that stays till May.

I was tremendously moved that we could share our New Year's Teaching day with students from all across the continent with a simple phone in system. One called in from Hawaii; a family called while sitting with their dying mother in South Dakota, and many others, who could not make their way through the snowstorms to Vermont, were able to participate! I heard from many that they put their phones near their shrine, feeling all the blessings as though they were sitting in person with Ven. Dhyani Ywahoo.

Starting in May we have plans for a wonderful series introducing Ven. Dhyani's Buddhist teachings and basic meditation. These will be live in Vermont, and available again by teleconference for people to easily join in. I hope you will consider gathering a group of friends at your home and calling in. The Teachings will also be videoed so that you can download them at your convenience.

It makes me so happy to think we can share the blessings, from our small rural monastic jewel, in new and modern ways!

In the Dharma,
Khenmo Drolma
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