south pacific

well, it really has been too long!!! i think most folk have given up on me blogging by now. i just get so busy and it slides but i'd like to try and find the time to keep it up.
i'm on the last full day of my trip to the south pacific region. i left britain in the midst of incredible snowstorms and below zero temperatures and flew to auckland. i was picked up at the airport and whisked off to awhitu (pronounced afitu) environmental camp where i was to lead a retreat for dharmacharinis from the region. a couple of days later 35 of us were studying and meditating together. i really enjoyed the retreat, we studied the cetokila sutta which was a good choice i think. it deals with faith and confidence in: the three jewels; the training and the community. i gave talks and we had discussions around the text. i had wondered if there was enough to do a whole retreat and had another text up my sleeve but i ended up giving 10 talks and our discussions were stimulating and (i'm told) useful. the whole retreat felt very satisfying indeed.
straight after the retreat a bunch more order members turned up - men and women - including dhammarati and we had the first southern pacific region order convention for 15 years. i thoroughly enjoyed that. as we had received bhante's letter re his suggestion for the new name for the order, people were very keen to do some kind of ritual to mark how happy they were with this development. so, we had a lovely ritual on the saturday evening in the midst of a padmasambhava puja. that felt very significant. the photo above is the banner made by prajnalila to welcome folk onto the convention. it was lovely seeing it billowing in the wind against a clear blue sky.(well it was cloudy that day but there were moments of clear blue sky as well) i think there were 57 of us on the convention. this was my 4th order convention in 12 months! international one at bodh gaya, the combined and then women's european conventions and now this. seems good for an order convenor. i had hoped to also attend the american convention in sept this year but i think i've got to let go of that.
after the convention the women public preceptors here had a meeting which sanghadevi and i attended. dhammarati stayed on for a day and a half with us and we talked about all sorts of things to do with the ordination process here in this region. plenty of food for thought.
after that spent a night in auckland and then took the train down to wellington. that was a gorgeous 12 hour train journey. i spent a few days in wellington mainly attending order events though i also gave a talk at friends night. i talked on what would the buddha do now?.
from wellington i flew to melbourne where i led a weekend retreat and gave a talk in the buddhist centre. they had been focussing on going for refuge so i talked on my own experience of going for refuge. lots of tales from my experience of finding the movement and the early days of the order (well the late 70s early 80s, early days for me).
i took the train up to sydney from melbourne. another 12 hour journey. relaxing if not quite so picturesque as the new zealand trip. i've been pretty busy here. again, order events and seeing people. i've enjoyed it a lot. i feel very at home in sydney and this is my 3rd trip so i am getting to know people here. on monday night i led the parinirvana celebrations. that was lovely. tonight i'll give a talk on the mahaparinibbana sutta. this morning i went to a right livelihood meeting at bodhi books, the team based right livelihood business here run by ratnajyoti and carunalaka. i have a fantasy that if i wasn't order convenor i'd like to come here and live for a few years and work in bodhi books. oh well!
tomorrow i fly back to birmingham. i'm not looking forward to going back to the frozen north in terms of the temperature but i am quite happy to be getting back. i'm way behind with e mails and other communications so look forward to catching up.