Lam Rim Durban

Teachings in Durban
The group currently meets for puja and meditation in Elizabeth's house in Pinetown, towards the south west of Durban. The teachings are held in the BLIA (Buddha's Light International Association) temple in North Durban.
The view from Elizabeth's house (specifically, the balcony in Geshe-la's room) is wide and is not done justice by the above picture, which is a 180 degree view. In the distance, when the weather is clear, one can see Durban centre and the sea.
						Elizabeth's garden is large - I could just about reach the end of it by throwing a stone. Vervet monkeys visit daily. In the middle of the garden is a small guava tree. They eat the guavas but they take a bite of them before they are ripe and then throw them away, so they never really get much benefit from them. Elizabeth also has some small mango trees, but they never produce fruit for similar reasons. Geshe-la likes gardens and walks in the garden several times during the day, if it's not too hot.
						Elizabeth's house viewed from the bottom of the garden. Property prices in South Africa are many times lower than the UK. In Durban, they seem to be lower than Johannesburg. This house cost R250,000 (around Ł22,000) about six years ago. The house has three upstairs bedrooms, one with ensuite bathroom, and one downstairs bedroom/study, also with ensuite bathroom. There is a large lounge and a dining room and a double garage and 'domestic's quarters that is current unused.
						Geshe-la's room is on the top left, with a small balcony. My room is on the bottom left. I leave the windows wide open during the night and just use the duvet cover without a duvet. One evening, some animal tried to get in. It could have been a cat or a genet - a nocturnal cat-like animal with spotted fur and ringed tail. Elizabeth has seen one in the garden at times. An interesting point I notice about the house is that the water supply pipe-work to showers, sinks and bath seems to be stainless steel and is on the outside of the house. Clearly, freezing is not a problem. And I've never seen any central heating inside the houses that I've visited.
						The lounge, where Geshe-la gives meditation guidance and we do puja, leads out onto the veranda. If there are only a few of us, we do puja in Geshe-la's room.
						The shrine room in the BLIA temple in Durban North. The central Buddha statue is Burmese. There are statues of a Chinese patriarch on the left and Kwan Yin on the right. The table below the shrine has a large hollow wooden block on the left and a bowl-shaped gong on the right. One can just see the kitchen through the door to the right. During teachings, the outside door to the kitchen was left open. Just as Geshe-la was teaching on the faults of self-cherishing, monkeys entered the kitchen looking for food and one of the group quickly chased after them. "Need to cherish monkeys!" Geshe-la said.
						Geshe-la teaching on wisdom on Sunday afternoon. Geshe-la's 'throne' is actually a large block of foam. Standing up on the foam was somewhat precarious so Geshe-la had to remain seated and put his feet onto the floor. Excuse the quality of this photo and the next photo - they are digital photos of conventional prints on matt paper.
						Mike, Geshe-la and Elizabeth after teachings. Note Mike's demonstration of a relaxed meditation posture (how embarrassing!)
						Geshe-la visited the Ashley Primary School on the morning of Tuesday 27th February. Three classes of well-behaved and enthusiastic school children posed many questions to him. They had all been studying a little of the history of Tibet. The questions covered several different topics including his escape from Tibet, how to make Tibetan butter tea - and what was in his bag! There were many more questions to be asked, but time ran out. They all scrambled to sit next to him in the group photographs! Photographs of the three classes follow...
						Mrs Wendy Redman, their history teacher joined them for the next two photographs.

						Mrs Redman with Geshe-la.
						On Saturday 3rd March, we visited Kate Robert's house in Port Shepstone - about 90 minutes south of Durban. Geshe-la gave a short talk about the purpose of Buddhism and what we can practically do, namely not stop suffering directly but stop the causes of suffering - delusion and karma. Also, he gave some useful advice about following paths and teachers - that some teachings start off looking very attractive but can end up being caught in wrong practices. Here, Geshe-la is walking around the garden accompanied by Kate.
						The mandatory 'group photograph' - this one at Kate's house just after we had performed Tara Puja in the afternoon. If anyone would like a high resolution copy of this photo, please right click and select 'Save Picture As...'. The file is 831 KBytes.
						One morning, while Elizabeth and Mike were shopping and Chris was in the bathroom, the monkeys raided the kitchen and escaped with all the bananas and mangoes. Here are two of them disposing of the evidence! looking up to heaven - with gratitude or guilt?
This is an appropriate pair of photos to follow with scenes from the Refuge Ceremony, for it is rebirths like the above that we seek to avoid through taking refuge.
Pictures from the Refuge Ceremony in Durban Digital pictures were taken of most people taking refuge - apologies to anyone missed out. These small thumbnail pictures below are all numbered. Just float the cursor over them and the number and name will appear. If you would like a full-size picture sent by email, please send the picture number to Mike on mike@lamrim.org.uk. They will be sent from Thursday onwards, after returning to the UK. These pictures can be up to 1.6 MByte and may take several minutes to download. Alternatively, Elizabeth on cormkt@mweb.co.za has a CD containing all the pictures on if you want to make a copy. The last picture is of Jean's birthday cake and the three preceding that are of Bernard making the offering of thanks, request to return to teach and wish for long life to Geshe-la.

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Teachings in Durban

Pictures from the Refuge Ceremony in Durban