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End Of Year Wishes

Dear friends,

We wish you a peaceful holiday season, connected to truth and wisdom, abundant with joy, caring, and gratitude. We at Vipassana Hawai‘i for sure have much to be grateful for. On a deep level, we feel daily blessed with the timeless gift of practice. It’s what carries us through. On a worldly level, in what seems a powerful bridge time, our coastal lands in North Kohala are preparing for new, mindful stewardship, while, in tandem, we are planning design and construction of the Hawai’i Insight Meditation Center (HIMC), with groundbreaking to launch by early 2015. Our meditation retreats in Hawai‘i, Canada, and the mainland, as well as in Southeast Asia are drawing yogis from around the world, and, in Myanmar, the humanitarian-aid Mettadana Project continues in full strength. Our Sunday Sittings at HIMC (currently outdoors) and on O‘ahu remain solid anchors for our local sanghas. These are beautiful and humbling experiences to be part of. We are grateful to each and everyone of you for your participation in this work: On seen and unseen levels, you make it possible for Vipassana Hawai‘i to exist. We depend on your support for our diverse efforts to flow forward. Thank you!

And so we also want to ask, as we reach the end of the year and some of you are thinking about last-minute tax-deductible financial contributions, please consider us with a donation. We will apply your gift where it is needed the most, which, during this bridge period is truly critical. If you prefer, you may also specify how your contribution should be applied, or you may contribute directly to the HIMC or Mettadana campaigns. Thank you for your generosity!

May your 2014 be filled with happiness. With metta,
Trent Cornell, Steven Smith, Michele McDonald.

Checks can be sent to Vipassana Hawai‘i, earmarked as bridge period or with specifics, or you may make an online donation.

Message from Michele and Steven

Dear sangha:

Every generation carries the responsibility of caring for and passing on its knowledge to its youth. Arguably, we have never known such difficult times on so many levels. Yet possibility and resiliency seem intrinsic qualities of both people and planet. We cannot cease from efforts to change for the better. One of our cherished goals is to understand how and why we suffer; we explore who we are through our own mind and body on very profound levels, is a process of becoming less indifferent to our suffering and the suffering of others.

Our own inheritance of the 2,500-year-old transmission of Dhamma began nearly 35 years ago. An organic fusion has been unfolding ever since between revered Burmese meditation masters and some of the Western students to whom they’ve provided exceptional training. Now, we often teach side by side: Asian with Western, ordained monk/nun with lay person, classic traditional with contemporary style, male with female. This fusion is a powerful tension arc of complementary opposites and forges ways of teaching that offer precise practice styles according to individual needs within our community.

The Buddha taught: “ehi passiko”- come and see for yourself. Vipassana Hawaii, the Mettadana Project, and the soon to be built Hawai’I Insight Meditation Center offer ways for youth and elders to do just that: to nurture each other and the planet toward what is good and see for ourselves that more is possible than we ever thought

We invite you to join us in this great practice and to see for yourselves what is possible for you.

With Aloha,
Steven Smith
Michele McDonald