Dharmagiri maintains a strong connection with the Forest Sangha of Ajahn Chah and hosts regular visits from monastics. Talks are available from the monastic sangha and Kittisaro and Thanissara alongside publications.

To order the CD's (most of which are in MP3 format) or books please contact Dharmagiri Office. These are distributed on a donation basis, all donations received go to further support teaching visits from monastics.

Please contact Dharmagiri Office for details of CD's and publications available.

Direct contact can be made through http://www.forestsangha.org/contact1.htm

Reflections from Ajahn Sucitto

A Brief Appreciation

I'd like to say hello and pass on my best wishes to friends and Dhamma-colleagues in South Africa. Following an invitation from Kittisaro and Thanissara, I'm concluding  a year's sabbatical with a visit to DharmaGiri.  As it is a time when I have been laying aside duties to undertake fuller long-term introspection, I have limited my teaching engagements to a session in Johannesburg.  But I would like to come back and support the Dhamma in South Africa in the future: the situation inspires putting forth some effort.

Details of 'the situation' probably look different to different people, but a survey of global conditions produces signs and statistics that give rise to deep concern, if not  despair. And on the other hand we can look at more global co-operation, greater access to knowledge, and I think a far deeper penetration and sharing of spiritual truth than was available a century ago.  As it is for the planet in general, so it is in South Africa.  The Buddhist vision of seemingly ineradicable suffering and complete peace and liberation moving side by side is as always a fitting one.  It stirs us to dwell neither in one nor the other: if we have some resource of peace and well-being, we develop it and share it with those who are in need.  It's not even a matter of calculating whether we can put out the fires of greed, hatred and delusion, but what else is there to do but try? 

However this is not a matter of a single heroic campaign, or a few strategic moves. The conundrum of human ignorance has been a recognisable issue for centuries. It isn't going to go away. So awareness of the paradigm means that we accord with time. We prepare the ground for liberation, we train ourselves, exercise, and work - but also enjoy and celebrate the Dhamma, and give it time to grow.  In this way the Eightfold Path can get thoroughly embedded and lived out in a culture and society.  My visits to Tibet and Thailand in recent years have made me aware of the great benefits that the people in general share through feeling themselves to be part of a spiritual mandala, despite the problems and even tragedies of their nations. Actually people in those countries have a deeper and more stable inner resource than many in the West; and this is what gets them through the hardships and bleak days.  So I feel that being part of a process that deepens that resource is something that befits all of us who have heard and been inspired by the Dhamma. In many individual and communal ways we can do this.  I feel that different teachers and different situations give us an idea of the range of possibilities. In this respect, DharmaGiri has its part, perhaps a unique part, to play in South Africa's spiritual vision.

It has been good as always to spend time with a Kittisaro, a committed practitioner whom I have known for some 27 years now.  This is a quiet time for both of us, a time to recharge our batteries, wipe the mind clean and so improve both the energy and the clarity with which we share our practice with others.  DharmaGiri is a wonderful setting for this kind of in-depth practice; a bright offering of fresh air, beauty - and of the inspiration of knowing that all this has come around through free-will donations. All of the buildings and the infrastructure have come from people's wish to support the good.  And some of those people don't even live in this country - there is that sense in which the locality is connected to the wider community through the conduit of human goodness.  Marlene's warm and efficient management, offered as a response to the efforts that Kittisaro and Thanissara have put into supporting the Dhamma in South Africa, is another bright reflection that I will take with me when I leave.

If you've ever been on a pilgrimage...you know how it is when, after the long journey and the discomforts and the crowds and so on, you come to the holy place.  Maybe it was where the Buddha dwelt for a while, maybe it's just a memorial or a mountain that people have revered over the centuries.  But at that moment, there is a special joy and confirmation: the inner and the outer worlds can meet in a spiritual embrace, rather than in the clutch of commerce, or war. Here, for a change, human goodness is being made manifest - not just as a book, but as a place where you can move, breathe, and meet other humans.  We are blessed that such places exist all over this planet in centres and sanctuaries of different moods and functions. I am pleased, very pleased to know that DharmaGiri is such a place. As long as it is supported through the input of human goodness, it will continue to nourish and generate that very obvious, but so precious quality.

Ajahn Sucitto