Welcome!

Hi Eduardo,

Glad to meet you! Namasté! Have you been initiated in Buddhism ?

Here are a few talks with Thich Nhat Hanh, this is from an interview with Oprah:



Here is an article on the four mantras:

upliftconnect.com/four-mantras/

and here is a dharma talk that I love:

tnhaudio.org/tag/four-mantras/

Here are free images and Buddhist thangkas:

www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche...S6ETjAWI2t6aPgKUGFcM

If you have a smartphone and use Android you can find Rabten apps in Google Play: there is Dharma Treasure and Tibetan calendar.

In Europe in Switzerland and in a few other countries there are Buddhist monasteries: www.rabten.eu

Gonsar Tulku Rinpoche is a Living Master in Tibetan Buddhism you can find information concerning dharma talks in Dharma Treasure app or on Rabten website.

For Zen I warmly recommend Shunmyo Masuno's book "The Art of Simple Living". You can find the book on Audible where you can get it for free when you register.

Begining the 5th of December there is a retreat in Maui with Ram Dass, Krishna Das, Jack Kornfield, Dr. Robert Svoboda, Trudy Goodman and Mirabai Bush. Jack Kornfield is a buddhist monk and the retreats organized by Love Serve Remember foundation bring together Bhakti and Buddhist practices. Should you wanna join here is a link:

www.ramdass.org/join?utm_source=Ram+Dass...3f&mc_eid=1ae46a7c68

Have a joyful day,
Vlad

Hello!

Thank you all, I feel very lucky to be here!
Fantastic recommendations Vlad, I will examine each one carefully!

Hi to you all!
Just to introduce myself;
Am 45 years old, look after my son and wife, little dog and a cat, and some Honeybees too. Play electric guitar, paint oil on canvas, part time worker (as Im the one looking after our little boy, wife has long working hours).
Enjoy Nature, especially wild nature. Live in a Danish countryside with not much wild nature left to enjoy.

Worked with Kenneth Folk over Skype last year but had no clue the man had an online forum. Glad to be here! I see some familiar faces from over at DhO I will lay low Chris

Namasté!

Nice to see you, Dusko!

Om Mani Padme Hum
Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram
Sat Chit Ananda

Peace, harmony, laughter, love!

Hello!

Honeybee question: are there different kinds of honeybees in Europe, which make different kinds of honey? Or just one kind?

I think there are several Apis melifera in Europe not sure what the Turkish Apis is called but in Scandnvia we have Brown Apis, in Southern Europe there is Apis carnica, Black Apis in UK which might be the same as the one in Scandinavia, there is one called Buckfast which is a hybrid created by Brother Adam from UK, and there is the Yellow Italian Apis. I think this is about it in EU unless some also have imported Russian Apis.

They collect nectar from the surronding nature what ever there is really so it all depends on whats there during the warm flowering season. In my locality there is a guy with Carnica bess, one with Italian and I with Buckfast and they all make the same honey = the one they can find in out locality at any given time.

I can geek out even more if you are interested in keeping bees as there are those who keep bees conventioanlly (very controlled bees and forced into honey production) and those who keep them naturally (without threatments and letting them naturally swarm and make as much honey as the bees choose to collect) Yeah this is geek stuff!

Many kinds! Christian, Buddhist, Isha, Presence groups, Sufi.
Love is all around!

I am definitely not interested in keeping bees myself. But I was surprised to find different kinds of honey here in Brazil where I live. That is, there's not just different kinds of honey because bees drank from different flowers, but rather because there are different species of native bees that some people 'cultivate' (or you can collect honey in the wild, there's apparently a special way to do it that doesn't make the bees leave - they will renew the hive in the same place, so you can keep going back to get more honey over the years.) The native bees are often (not all) sting-less. And they each have specific diets, so their honeys all taste totally different and even behave differently. One will remain liquid even if refrigerated for many months, never hardening. Another turns crystalline immediately if kept cold. One tastes like limes, another tastes very sweet and floral, etc.

At the park nearby they have a demonstration area with a few dozen small hives for different native bees, raised up off the ground with protectors so predators can't climb up and get the bees or honey. They have signs that explain about each kind. The honeys we bought from a hipster at a market.

I was only used to 'ordinary' honey in the United States, even if it was from a local farmer, it was from 'ordinary' honeybees, as far as I knew. So I wondered if other regions of the world have honey-producing native bees too. There must be many I don't know about.

Indeed, stingless bees might be one of those who are specialist feeders and go only on certain flowers. I know of some solitary bees feeding only one ONE flower that flowers for not more than 2-3 weeks I think and then its over. So they need to emerge from their eggs (layed last year by their mother) get out feed, find a partner to mate and lay new egss and die , all within those 2-3 weeks Then the new eggs hatch next year during those few weeks and the cycle goes on ... ...

I have no experience with stingless bees.

haha

Chris Marti wrote:

So they need to emerge from their eggs (layed last year by their mother) get out feed, find a partner to mate and lay new egss and die , all within those 2-3 weeks...

In the U.S. we call those insects cicadas

Fun story about me: I had never really heard the incredible cacophany that a huge number of cicadas on a hot day can make, until I moved to Toronto. I was finally fed up with the sound and told my roommate I was going to call the city about the awful buzzing sound the electrical line outside our building was making. He had the great delight of telling me how horribly wrong I was. I was gobsmacked.

Insects can be really amazingly loud! There's some kind of insect that sings here at dawn and at dusk, for about 5 minutes. It revs up slowly, escalates to a rather infernal siren-like wailing buzz, and then winds down again. Just twice a day. You can use it as an alarm clock. I've never seen it, but assume it's some kind of cicada or grasshopper type thing.

Hello all. My name is Jayson and I live in New York. I've been a long time lurker for all forums related to Kenneth Folk and found the public practice logs to be very helpful in my own practice. I have practiced in many traditions over the last 10ish years. In the last year I really buckled down and got my concentration strong with The Mind Illuminated and then switched to Mahasi noting for insight. Now I'm looking to connect with others on the path to work through the murkier, less mappable stages that come with later paths territory.

Jayson Paul wrote: Hello all. My name is Jayson and I live in New York. I've been a long time lurker for all forums related to Kenneth Folk and found the public practice logs to be very helpful in my own practice. I have practiced in many traditions over the last 10ish years. In the last year I really buckled down and got my concentration strong with The Mind Illuminated and then switched to Mahasi noting for insight. Now I'm looking to connect with others on the path to work through the murkier, less mappable stages that come with later paths territory.

Welcome! Good to have you here.

Hello! Welcome.

Hi Jayson and welcome!

I really like the way you say "buckled down" as it reminds me of last year before deciding to contact Kenneth Folk. I was stuck to my throat in the nasty swamp of the Dark Night for almost a decade and then had a thought "There is no way I can go back, or stay in this stage, but only forward, buckle up!" And so I did! I asked Kenneth if he would be so kind to assist me and he said "Yes".

Looking forward to read you!

Hello all, I'm new here.

I am a self-directed Ch'an / Huayan Buddhist with Taoist leanings.

Being self-directed I have no formal in-person Sangha (closest is 100km away). I am here to add you to my Sangha, to learn from you and to share what I have learned. Hopefully we can be of benefit to each other as we walk the path together.

- johnathan

Nice to meet you.

Hey folks, a 34 year old from Sydney, Australia here. It's nice to meet you all, and it's great to see so many people from different and diverse paths.

I've been meditating for 3 or 4 years now - generally just 30 minutes a day, with some more intensive periods and short retreats. I haven't really enjoyed the Buddhist or secular meditation groups that are available around me, so I've come here to meet people and learn (and hopefully get a little guidance and feedback). I feel like I need some supportive sangha to help guide me forward.

I've had a few powerful meditation experiences over the years with Leigh Brasington's method, and would love to continue down that path for a while.

But I've also had a really powerful experience on a Dhammakaya retreat in Northern Thailand, using a technique focused on the sacral chakra. Before I read anything about meditation I experimented a little with my own method, focused on the third eye chakra. That lead to some very strong experiences of bliss, with colourful visualisations. (Anyone else hear of this stuff? It's new to me.)

I'm the type of guy who thought the New Atheists were cool 15 years ago, so it's been quite a journey to open up to these types of experiences. These days I like to read Buddhist philosophy and meditation, critiques of Buddhism and meditation, etc (Glenn Wallis, Evan Thompson, Ann Gleig, Donald Lopez Jr, Erik Braun, etc) and still think about some more formal academic study.

I'm hoping to sit my first 10 day retreat in Australia this year, though with Coronavirus that is looking a little questionable. There doesn't seem to be too much choice around, so I guess it'll be a Goenka retreat.