This is the initial session of our 1 Day Meditation Retreat at Dhammagiri Forest Hermitage with Ajahn Medhino.

Ajahn explains the program and provides instructions for meditation, including a guided meditation. He also leads the community in taking the Triple Refuge and the five or eight precepts.

Venerable Ajahn Medhino has been ordained as a bhikkhu for 33 years. Originally from the Netherlands, he received his ordination as a Buddhist monk at Wat Pah Nanachat in Thailand. However, for the last 12 years he has lived in Sri Lanka, where he has established a hermitage in Badulla district, at Udakiruwa Forest, located roughly between Bibile and Monaragala. Ajahn plans to develop the hermitage into a full fledged monastery that will be called Mahāvana Aranya Senasanaya / Wat Pa Mahavana.

Luang Por Medhino speaks fluent English, Sinhala and Thai; and also some French and German (and native Dutch, of course 😉).

Luang Por has kindly agreed to our invitation to visit Dhammagiri from 31 March to 07 April 2026, including leading a One Day Retreat on Easter Sunday 05 April.

Details of Ajahn Medhino's program at Dhammagiri can be found here: ⁠https://www.dhammagiri.net/post/ajahn...⁠

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Ajahn Dhammasiha explains suitable meditation objects for investigation (vipassana/insight/wisdom) that we can direct our attention to, after the mind emerges from Samatha/Samādhi meditation.

Samādhi/Concentration imbues the mind with calm, tranquillity, hightened mindfulness, brightness and radiant awareness, as well as wholesome joy, rapture and bliss. At the same time, the five hindrances of sensual desire, aversion, laziness, restlessness and doubt are suppressed (or at least reduced).

Of course, all these things are desirable and very pleasant to experience in and by themselves. However, even more important is that they provide the conditions for profound insight to arise. Whenever our mind has developed a certain level of calm/samatha, we should these mental qualities to develop insight/vispassana.

We're not merely enjoying the bright and blissful qualities of samādhi, we're using them to do the work of developing wisdom, to see things as they really are (yathā-bhūta-ñāṇadassana), to investigate and analyse.

So what are the areas of investigation the Buddha recommended for that purpose?

And how are we to investigate them, in which way should we contemplate them?

In this reflection, Ajahn Dhammasiha talks about the 5 groups of clinging (pañcupādānakkhandhā) as suitable objects for profound insight contemplation:

1. Rūpa = Form
2. Vedanā = Feeling (pleasant of unpleasant of neutral)
3. Saññā = Perception (Recognizing, labelling)
4. Sankhārā = Mental formations, in particular intention (cetana) & thinking (vitakka)
5. Viññāṇa = Consciousness

Ajahn also mentions the four foundations of mindfulness, which are highly suitable meditation objects for developing insight as well, and which tend to be easier to contemplate than the 5 groups of clinging.

Venerable Ariyananda Thero explains fundmental Buddhist contemplations. We have been circling through Saṃsāra, the wheel of repeated death and rebirth, since beginningless time.

We don't know where we came from (what was our last rebirth?), we don't know where we're going (what will be our next rebirth?), and still we pretend everything's fine and try to be merry.

Instead, the Buddha ecourages us to contemplate death and impermanence, so that we don't get lost in negligence, but make the effort to escape the round of death and birth through practising the Buddha's teaching and realizing the supreme securtity from bondage, the Deathless Element, Nibbāna.

Venerable Angulgamuwa Ariyananda Mahāthera is the abbot of Na Uyana Aranya, the largest forest monastery in Sri Lanka:

⁠https://nauyana.org/⁠

He has kindly accepted our invitation to visit Dhammagiri from 2nd to 4th April.

You can find all details of his program with us here:

https://www.dhammagiri.net/post/visiting-senior-monk-at-dhammagiri-buddhist-monastery

Bhante will be accompanied by Bhante Pāsādika Thera (abbot of Dhamsuwa Forest Monastery near Melbourne), Bhante Buddhavihārī Thera, and Bhante Jinaratana Thera.

Bhante has been a monk for 33 years. He has visited Dhammagiri once before in November/December 2010, giving special blessings to our newly arrived main Buddha statue. This visit was actually the first time Bhante Ariyananda gave formal teachings in English ourside of Sri Lanka.

Bhante Ariyananda and Ajahn Dhammasiha have known each other for 31 years. Bhante has been a true Kalyāna Mitta to Ajahn Dhammasiha during his arrival at Nissaraṇa Vana: preparing him for ordination, helping him with his visa, teaching him some Sinhala, and introducing him to his Upajjhāya, Most Venerable Kadawedduwe Jinavaṃsa Mahāthera.

Dhammagiri Forest Hermitage:

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