Venerable Pannyavaro , the founder of Buddhanet devotes his life to the meditational aspects of the Buddha's teachings. We were indeed fortunate and blessed to have him conduct a 1-day workshop on Satipatthana-Vipassana and Loving-Kindness meditation techniques during his short stay at Than Hsiang Temple on his visit to Malaysia recently.

To start at the beginning-

9.00 – 9.30am: Arrival of Venerable Pannyavaro and 14 participants.

9.30am – 9.35am: Brother Chew briefly introduced Venerable Pannyavaro , who is a Senior Australian monk from Bodhi Tree Forest Monastery, located in Northern New South Wales.

9.35am to 9.50am: As an ice breaking exercise, all 14 participants were giving an opportunity to introduce themselves and share their meditation experiences.

9.50am to 11am: Venerable Pannyavaro explained that it is important for a meditator to understand the fundamentals of meditation practice.

The basic practice structure to follow comprises mindfulness during formal sitting, formal walking and daily activities. If the meditator can link them together the benefit is that it will create a continuous ‘thread of awareness’ throughout the day that brings the momentum needed for deepening the practice.
Furthermore, Venerable Pannyavaro also guided us on the techniques of mental noting and instruction of proper sitting meditation.

11am – 11.30am: Under Ven Pannyavaro’s personal guidance, all participants practiced 30 minutes sitting meditation.

11.30am – 12pm: . A really good interactive session followed with loads of questions and answers. Ven. Pannyavaro took his time and patience to answer each and every meditator’s query.

12pm – 1pm: Lunch break for everyone and a big thank you to Brother Chew for organising the vegetarian pizza meal for all of us in the dining hall. We were all happily enjoying our lunch break with Ven. Pannyavaro.

1pm – 2pm: Ven. Pannyavaro continued to teach the 2nd meditation method, ie : Walking meditation. He demonstrated the technique in walking meditation, ie : mentally noting or labelling each step part-by-part, building up until you are able to note all the 6 component parts , ‘raising’, ‘lifting’, ‘pushing’, ‘dropping’, ‘touching’, and ‘pressing’ concurrently with the actual experience of the movements.

2pm – 3pm: All participants were given 30 minutes to practise walking meditation followed by another 30 minutes of sitting meditation.

3pm – 4pm: Another round of question and answer session. Meditators were given a chance to clarify any doubts they might have during their practice.

4pm – 4.45pm: Ven. Pannyavaro explained Loving-Kindness meditation practice taught by the Buddha to develop the mental habit of selfless or altruistic love.

The practice begins with developing loving acceptance of oneself before this feeling is extended one after another to 4 types of persons, ie : a respected person, a beloved person, a neutral person and finally a difficult person.

4.45pm – 5.30pm: Short video session shown by Ven Pannyavaro on his plan to build a new meditation centre in Australia.

Lastly, we will like to thank Ven. Pannyavaro for his patience and excellent guidance in teaching us in this wonderful meditation workshop. Apart from this, we also deeply appreciate the kindness of Than Hsiang Temple in letting us use its multipurpose hall to make this meditation workshop a success.