An independent Australian magazine on Theravada Buddhist life: meditation, teachings, festivals and temple visiting, read in the third person.
Meditation, teachings and temple life in Australia
An independent magazine on Theravada Buddhism and Thai culture in Australia
The magazine
Four sections, from the cushion to the wat
Each section opens with an index of its guides. Start with the practice, the ideas behind it, the festival year, or the temples themselves.
- 01
Meditation and Practice
From the first ten minutes on a cushion to the first multi-day retreat
- 02
Teachings and Ideas
The frame behind everything visible at a temple
- 03
Festivals and Thai Culture
The year at a Thai temple in Australia
- 04
Temples and Visiting
Where Queensland’s Theravada temples are, how they got there, and the etiquette that makes a first visit go well.
Section 1 of 4
Meditation and Practice
From the first ten minutes on a cushion to the first multi-day retreat: how the Theravada tradition teaches the breath, and what a daily practice asks of an ordinary week.
Meditation and Practice
Breath Meditation for Beginners
Start breath meditation the Theravada way: posture, timing, the wandering mind and how to build a ten minute daily habit.
Ten minutes, one spot, and the skill of coming back.
Meditation and Practice
Preparing for a First Retreat
What a Theravada retreat day looks like in Australia: silence, sittings, interviews, food rules, packing and realistic expectations.
Silence, sittings and interviews: what the timetable really holds.
Section 2 of 4
Teachings and Ideas
The frame behind everything visible at a temple: what Theravada is, the five precepts, the custom of dana, and the path that leads a person into robes.
Teachings and Ideas
What Is Theravada Buddhism
Theravada Buddhism explained: its Pali canon roots, its path through Sri Lanka and South East Asia, and its place in Australia.
The oldest surviving school, from the Pali canon to Forestdale.
Teachings and Ideas
The Five Precepts in Daily Life
What the five precepts actually say, how lay Buddhists keep them in ordinary life, and why they are training rules, not commandments.
Five abstentions that clear the ground for practice.
Teachings and Ideas
Dana: Offering Food to Monks
How alms and dana work in Theravada communities: what to offer, how to offer it, and the morning food round in Australia.
The meal at the centre of twenty-five centuries of monastic life.
Teachings and Ideas
Becoming a Monk or Novice
Novice and full ordination in the Theravada tradition: who may ordain, what the ceremony involves, and temporary ordination.
Ten precepts, then two hundred and twenty-seven: how the robes are earned.
In pictures
Three views from the guides
Three photographs from the guides below, each with the page that explains the scene in full.
Field note 1
The daily sit
Practice begins smaller than most expect: the meditation section starts at ten minutes.
Field note 2
The first visit
A temple visit has its own grammar; the etiquette guide lists what actually matters.
Field note 3
The festival year
Candles for Vesak, water for Songkran, cloth for Kathina: the calendar section maps the year.
Section 3 of 4
Festivals and Thai Culture
The year at a Thai temple in Australia: Songkran water and sand stupas, the candlelit vigil of Vesak, and the Kathina robe offering that closes the rains.
Festivals and Thai Culture
Vesak Day in Australia
What Vesak, or Visakha Puja, commemorates, how temples across Australia mark it, and what a first-time visitor will see.
Birth, enlightenment and passing, kept in one candlelit night.
Festivals and Thai Culture
Songkran: Thai New Year in Australia
How Songkran, the Thai New Year in April, is kept at temples in Australia: water blessings, food stalls, sand stupas and family day.
New Year as blessing: water over the image, not over the crowd.
Festivals and Thai Culture
The Kathina Robe Offering
What the Kathina ceremony is, why lay people offer cloth to monks after the rains, and how the day unfolds at Australian temples.
The cloth offering that clothes the order for the year ahead.
Section 4 of 4
Temples and Visiting
Where Queensland’s Theravada temples are, how they got there, and the etiquette that makes a first visit go well.
Temples and Visiting
Visiting a Thai Buddhist Temple
Shoes off, shoulders covered, feet pointed away: the practical etiquette for visiting a Thai Buddhist temple in Australia.
Shoes, shoulders, feet and the wai: the rules that matter.
Temples and Visiting
Thai Temples in Queensland
A short map of Thai and Theravada temples in Queensland, from Forestdale to regional communities, and how each fits local life.
From Highgate Hill in 1982 to a dozen temples across the south east.