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  • Home
  • About us
    • Background
    • Tradition
    • Arrival in the west
    • Ajahn Chah
    • Community Members
    • Contact
      • Getting There
    • Links
      • Other monasteries
      • Meditation centers
      • Further contacts
  • News & Events
    • Calendar
    • Events
      • All Events
      • Meditation weekends
      • Monastic retreats
    • News
  • Visiting
    • The Eight Precepts
    • General behaviour
    • Daily routine
  • Dhamma
    • Audio talks
    • Other resources
  • Support
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Monastic retreats

Scheduled retreat dates >>

Quiet weeks

Three times per year the monastery puts down all its activities, to refresh the spirits of guest and monks within a so called quiet week. This means that the monastic community pulls back form its public duties and responsabilities and spends a week or two on quiet retreat.

A small number of guests is welcome to join the monastic community during this time, if they are happy to get actively involved in the daily house cleaning, cooking and washing-up activities.

Recommended schedule during a quiet week.

3 months winter retreat

The three months winter retreat directly follows the New Year’s retreat, which usually ends on January first.

Instead of retreating during the annual monsoon season – as it is customary in Theravada countries in Asia – already during the 1980s some of our Western  communities established an extended retreat period during the long European winters.

This means practically, that during this time the monastic community withdraws from all its public responsibilities and all other service and teaching activities around the monastery. It is a period of individual solitude for the monks and nuns.

A limited number of guests are allowed to join the the monastic winter retreat for an extended period of time (ideally a minimum of one month), so that they can also benefit from from the stillness and seclusion of an alpine winter and develop their own Dhamma practice. Note that there are no communal meditations together with the monastic Sangha. So as a prerequisite lay participants have to be experienced practitioners as well as very self motivated.

In addition we expect guests to help with all the daily chores, kitchen duties and of course the snow shoveling.

  • Kloster Dhammapala
  • Bütschelsstrasse 74
  • CH-3718 Kandersteg
  • +41 33 675 21 00
  • info@dhammapala.ch

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  • Home
  • About us
    • Background
    • Tradition
    • Arrival in the west
    • Ajahn Chah
    • Community Members
    • Contact
      • Getting There
    • Links
      • Other monasteries
      • Meditation centers
      • Further contacts
  • News & Events
    • Calendar
    • Events
      • All Events
      • Meditation weekends
      • Monastic retreats
    • News
  • Visiting
    • The Eight Precepts
    • General behaviour
    • Daily routine
  • Dhamma
    • Audio talks
    • Other resources
  • Support
  • Deutschgermany_flag-35