31/05/2026
JUNE NEWSBYTE 2026
Trust all is well!
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All Past Tips
For calendar and assistant opportunities, see below.
Tip o' the Day
Awakening, Heart, and Ground:
A Buddha Day Reflection
Noirin Sheahan
(Difficulty reading text? Press Ctrl +)
Assistants Needed
From 15 August onward
Calendar for Autumn is also open for Applications
Full Moon Celebration Sunday 31 May
Diary
Noirin here. Happily the recent spell of good weather included Buddha Day, which we celebrated last Saturday. Bhante had invited Rev Mugo from the Zen Priory in Telford to bless the 'new' Zen bell which followed him back to Satipanya after his pilgrimage to Japan nine years ago.
We were delighted that Mae Chee (also known as Sister Rachel-Anne) came along with several members of the Liverpool Theravada group. On their behalf she presented Bhante with a rupa for the new Shrewsbury Vihara where he is now living.
Bhante, Mae Chee and Rev Mugo gave inspiring talks to open the ceremony, which I have done my best to summarise in the this month's tip below.
In other news - our offer for The Homestead has been accepted with the aid of some generous loans which are tiding us over until we can sell Sativasa (our personal retreat house in Bishops Castle). A survey will be carried out next week and if all goes to plan, we hope Jim and Maureen can move in there later in the summer to let Jim take up his new role as Satipanya Manager.
Announcements
Daily Life Course: This years on-line course is titled "Rooted in Mud" and looks at the many ways our path to liberation can spring from the mud and mire of deep sorrows as well as the minor miseries of everyday life. The course includes suggested exercises for home practice and the opportunity to share your reflections with other students on the Satipanya Forum. The first run of the 7 week course started mid-May and it will run again in October. For further information or to register please contact Noirin.
Personal Retreat: Our house in Bishops Castle "Sativasa" remains open for personal retreats. Suitable only for those with a well-established meditation practice. Come for a week or longer. Retreats are self catering so the first day might need to be spent shopping, cooking etc. See here for more info. To apply email Bhante or Noirin.
Sharing the Path, Satipattthana Studies Part 1 has been published as an ebook, kindle, paperback and can be dowloaded as a PDF. Based on Noirin's Daily Life courses over previous years and supplemented by students' reflections, the book offers a study-practice guide to the Buddha's teaching on Mindfulness of Body, Feeling and Mind. Many thanks to Therese Caherty for editing. Further info here.
Meeting in London: Satipanya London Sangha is a small but growing community of friendly and supportive meditators meeting in person at a peaceful community garden near King's Cross station for group sits and lighthearted discussions.
If you'd like to attend upcoming meetings in London and practice vipassana in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw then email Maz and ask to be added to the mailing list.
Regular Online Meetings:
Meditation Hall on Zoom: Join us for your daily meditation - Info.
Satipanya Spiritual Companions: An informal meditation group meets on a monthly basis via Zoom for a full day of meditation. Email Magda for details at [email protected]
Online Study Group: This collaborative online group studies various dhamma topics across multiple traditions — so, not just Mahāsi practice. Carl says: We warmly extend an invitation to any practitioner who would like to join us. Currently meeting on the second and fourth Sundays of each month at 10:20am - around midday. Please contact Carl at [email protected] for further information.
Full Moon Celebrations: Join 20.00 to 21.00 on the Sunday closest to the Full Moon. Bhante gives a short dhamma talk, followed by a 30-min sitting, refuges and precepts and we end by reading and chanting the metta sutta. For date of next Celebration.
Opening to the Impact of the Climate Emergency: Following on from the Zoom with Gwen Sanderson and Bhante Bodhidhamma in 2023, there are two options for ongoing engagement:
• Gwen Sanderson is facilitating monthly Climate and Dhamma Conversations which are held using Zoom. Email Gwen for further information or to register.
• Noirin Sheahan has set up a Satipanya Forum focussing on the Six Maxims (ethical training to prepare for the social and environmental consequences of climate change). Contact Noirin for further info or to register.
Karuna Book: Every morning at puja we call the names of those who are sick or dying, or are having a hard time.
Mudita Book: Every evening at puja we call the names of those who have something to rejoice.
Satipanya Courses
Vipassana as taught by the Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma
The Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma, one of the most influential vipassana insight meditation teachers of the last century, developed techniques to help us maintain moment to moment mindfulness from the instant we awake to the instant we fall asleep.
This leads not only to spiritual insights into our true, unborn-undying essence, but also, equally important, to the purification of the heart. So that we not only become wiser but more caring, generous, joyous and compassionate.
Applying the techniques on this retreat we follow a robust schedule, but meditators can modulate their practice to fit their level of experience, even absolute beginners. The accent is on relaxation and curiosity, rather than striving and concentration. And regular teacher contact, daily Q&A and personal interviews ensures students are supported throughout.
The retreat ends with advice on how to bring the practice into ordinary daily life to enhance our relationships and give spiritual meaning to our work and everyday tasks.
Assistants Needed
N.B. All the courses are serviced by assistants.
As assistant you have the opportunity to serve others. It can be a way of expressing gratitude for the gift of Dhamma. Although the morning is mainly taken up with breakfast preparation and cooking, the rest of day is for practice.
You can see the menus here (PDF).
As an assistant, we do not expect payment of the deposit or make a donation because you have kindly offered your time.
However, your commitment is essential, for the course would be very difficult to run without an assistant and may indeed have to be cancelled.
If you are interested, follow this link: Course Assistant
For info. about retreats and teachers see website: www.satipanya.org.uk
See drop down menus: especially About Us, Teachings and Retreats
Would you like to come and assist on a course?
See calendar on website for up-to-date assistant need.
Satipanya Calendar 2026
Please apply only when you are certain to come.
Awakening, Heart, and Ground:
A Buddha Day Reflection
Noirin Sheahan
At last weekend's Buddha Day celebration, we heard three talks that brought us from the Buddha’s Awakening through the qualities of the heart that sustain our path and the Buddha nature that is our deepest ground.
Bhante began with the Tevijja — the three knowledges that came to the Buddha on the night of his awakening. In the first watch he understood dependent arising as it applied to himself, recollecting his many past lives with their features and details. Ignorance was destroyed and knowledge arose; darkness was destroyed and light arose, as happens for a meditator who is diligent, keen, and resolute. But even such pleasant feeling did not occupy my awareness.
In the second watch he saw how dependent arising applied to all beings: I saw sentient beings passing away and being reborn — inferior and superior, beautiful and ugly, in a good place or a bad place. I understood how sentient beings are reborn according to their deeds.
In the third watch he saw how all suffering comes to an end through the cessation of the three defilements: the desire for sense pleasure, desire for rebirth, and ignorance — which Bhante explained as the mistake of identifying with our body and mind. Knowing and seeing like this, my mind was freed from the defilements of sensuality, desire to be reborn, and ignorance. When it was freed, I knew it was freed. Rebirth is ended; the spiritual journey has been completed; what had to be done has been done; there is no return to any state of becoming.
Bhante closed by inviting us to ponder some of the ways Nibbāna is described — although these can only point at what words can’t reach: unconditioned (beyond cause and effect); peaceful; blissful; ineffable (beyond concept, indescribable); radiant (dispelling darkness and ignorance, illuminating in pure awareness).
Where Bhante had taken the Buddha's Awakening to the edge of the knowable, Mae Chee turned to the qualities of the Buddha that we can know - the Brahma Vihārās, the Divine Abodes. These states of mind and heart accompany and sustain our own path toward awakening.
She offered a memorable image: a flowering plant, rooted in the earth.
Equanimity, she said, is the root system — the foundation of everything. It doesn't reach toward the light but it holds firm. Accepting situations just as they are, equanimity steadies and anchors the mind however hard the winds of desire or aversion may blow. Without it, the whole plant topples.
Mettā — goodwill — is the stem, holding the plant upright and directing it toward the light. Likewise mettā orients our whole being toward liberation, lifts us from the mud of dukkha. Like sap rising through the stem to nourish every part, goodwill is the living essence flowing through every expression of the awakened heart.
And then the flowers: karuna (compassion) and muditā (appreciative joy). These don't bloom continuously — they arise when conditions call them forth. When we encounter suffering, compassion opens; we are able to empathise, to sit alongside another in their difficulty without flinching or turning away.
When we meet with happiness — our own or another's — muditā blooms: an inner gladness that mirrors outer joy, a grateful recognition of goodness wherever it appears.
Both Compassion and Mudita are expressions of the same mettā that flows beneath them, shaped by circumstance into their particular form. All are supported by the steadying root of equanimity.
Rev. Mugo thanked the other two for giving her, she said, a perfect opening. She spoke of her own name: mu, signifying emptiness, and go, signifying awakening — pointing to the empty, luminous nature of mind that is our Buddha nature. Everything that had been said, she suggested, was in some sense a description of this: the awakening the Buddha touched, the qualities of heart that open toward it, all pointing to something that is already here, already our deepest nature, even before we have recognised it as such.
She stressed that Buddha mind is not something we acquire or construct. It is our natural state — always present, waiting to be noticed in the gap before experience gets named and sorted.
She asked us: what is the smallest unit of time? And then pointed us toward an example: that gap just before we strike the bell (for each of us would sound it as part of the blessing ceremony). In that tiny pause before the sound is heard, we can taste the undefinable, unconditioned nature of what is our deepest truth.
She then explained how she would bless the bell using water and a palm frond - symbols of new life and purity. She invited us to hear the bell as the voice of the Buddha, calling us to be present and to seek our true nature. What a beautiful image. Since the weekend, the sound of the bell makes me stop in my tracks.
Bhante had mentioned that the bell was now nine years old, and Rev. Mugo noted that Bodhidharma had spent nine years facing the wall — entirely fitting that the bell had also waited nine years before receiving its blessing!
Rev. Mugo said more, but I can't recall her words now — perhaps because she ended by asking us to let go of everything she had said, not to hold onto any of it. My mind was obviously in an obedient mood.
I'm grateful to Bhante, Mae Chee, and Rev. Mugo for their inspiring talks. These are my notes and impressions rather than a transcript — I hope they capture something true, even where memory has filled in the gaps.
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