The Birth of the Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary
The birth of the Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary has been such a beautiful organic process it is hard to pinpoint an exact birth date.
Choeying (resident Sangha) was asked many years ago to start a Centre in Hervey Bay but she declined as there was already an established centre.
She chose instead to travel the world and sit at the feet (literally) of her various teachers, attending teachings and retreats to further her own knowledge and practice of the Dharma as a way of understanding her own suffering while traversing her own spiritual path. Along the way one of her teachers suggested she teach others the Dharma. Reluctant in the beginning she now, very gratefully, enjoys her teaching.
After her ordination Choeying resigned herself to remaining a travelling nun thinking no one in Hervey Bay would know what to do with a strange bald women who only owned one strange dress.
To her great surprise during her first outing as a nun, in the supermarket, in Hervey Bay she was approached and was asked for spiritual advice. She now has community members approach her with varying requests from facilitating funerals to visiting the sick, counseling people in distress or people simply asking if she is a Hari Krishna, recovering from cancer or just something that has landed from another planet. To which Choeying replies, while laughing, “I often wonder about that one myself!” Choeying, in fact, grew up thinking she came from another planet and was dropped on earth without a map or a guide.
Choeying is always pleasantly surprised when she is given the opportunity to meet and share the power of the Buddhist philosophy and meditation with others knowing she is supporting people find their own inner wisdom and through this giving them the ability to heal themselves.
Still thinking she was destined to be a travelling nun Choeying was preparing to attend a Winter Retreat at Plum Village in France with a teacher she highly respects, the Venerable Thich Nhat Hahn, or Thay as he is affectionately known, when she was asked to facilitate a Calm Abiding Course.
The course turned her life in a whole new, unexpected direction when several attendees asked her to facilitate regular classes. This was the conception of another Buddhist center in Hervey Bay.
It was quickly named The Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary.
Choeying said, “I chose the name Oddiyana because it appealed to my sense that love and life and everything in between was an intriguing mystery and that if we surrendered to the mystery of love and life there was a certain kind of magic about it.
Oddiyana, it seemed, was also bathed in mystery and magic and so it sparked my curiosity to find out more.Never seeing myself as a feminist, and in fact at times making myself unpopular by not adhering to the concept that the feminist movement needed the pendulum to swing to the extreme in order for it to come back to the middle to achieve liberation. It seemed far wiser to me to see a coming together of men and women through deep understanding of each other.
I love having men and women as well as boys and girls come to my classes in the hope of promoting a coming together in a spiritual environment to add sacredness to their relationships through deep understanding of themselves and each other. I see this is so important in every relationship in whatever form it comes. To me this is a wise approach to true liberation. For this to happen I felt I needed a study and practice which was more connected with the feminine aspect in Buddhism. I had a deep sense that I had at last found what I needed when I read that Oddiyana was also known as “the paradise of the dakinis”, reputed for its unique sisterhood of priestesses—ladies dedicated to wisdom and spiritual development. These priestesses were not nuns, and lived in sanctuaries or forest chapels.
It became apparent I needed guidance and deep understanding of myself and the opposite gender in order to be able to embrace my own female energy and come from a more balanced place to develop my skills of teaching both men and women how to better come together in a loving respectful way from a Buddhist perspective.Before becoming a nun I had my own form of robes which were for many, many years “all white”.
In the past I have also dreamt and drawn pictures of living in a forest temple near a mountain with a line of huge glass stupas standing majestically alongside a river (or some body of water) so I was amused when I read that Oddiyana Buddhist texts speak of Oddiyana as a beautifully green and fertile kingdom, inhabited by gentle people often clothed in white, who had great respect for wisdom and learning. It was surrounded by high, rugged mountains, and in the broad valleys were towering white stupas and golden temple roofs. It seemed a paradise on earth and so was called “the royal garden” from the Sanskrit; Udyan. I still feel more comfortable in white (especially in our climate) and our Sanctuary is surrounded by beautiful tropical gardens that many see as a paradise on earth. So the first part of the name Oddiyana was given life and the rest naturally flowed.
Having a very deep love and devotion of the Dharma it was never a question for me if the word Dharma would be in the name . . . it was more a question of where?
Dharma; although commonly known as the teachings of the Buddha (the awakened one, or fully awake) it also has a deeper meaning such as; a phenomenon or constituent factor of human experience. This was gradually expanded into a classification of constituents of the entire material and mental world.
The word Sanctuary has always filled my heart with feelings of refuge, peace and bliss and seemed to succinctly support and complete the rest of the name.
Sanctuary; is also a multi layered concept such as; A sanctuary is the consecrated area of a church or temple around its tabernacle or altar. Its history is deeply imbedded with the scent of sacredness, safety and refuge.
The combination of these three concepts, I felt, was an apt description of what The Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary would represent; “A safe, sacred refuge or space to find ourselves through meditation and study in order to enjoy a more peaceful life for ourselves and all beings to achieve Enlightenment”As well as my personal commitment to this path with the desire to achieve Enlightenment for myself for the benefit all beings the following links describe why my affection and certainty that the best name has been chosen for this sacred place of learning and contemplation.”
In later Tibetan traditions, Oddiyana is either conflated or identified with Shambhala, a land inhabited by dakinis and inaccessible to or by, ordinary mortals being a “Hidden Land”.
Dakini (Skt.): female spirits, witches and sometimes deities. The word is commonly translated from the Tibetan khandroma as ‘sky-goer,’ thought to be someone that can fly through the air and possessed of special powers. A class of Buddhist tantric deities and Buddha emanations are modeled after the Dakini. In Tantric Buddhism the two terms yogini and dakini are used almost synonymously.
Deity; These mythic figures are understood to arise out of, and return to, Emptiness; they have no inherent reality. They are not worshipped in the sense of idolatry, though certainly it may seem to be so, as for example, when one first encounters people doing prostrations before images on a shrine. That is one reason for not using the term ‘altar’, by the way.Also, the expression ‘tutelary deity’ which is often used to translate the Tibetan word yidam is misleading as it implies a teacher-student relation. A yidam is a deity with which the practitioner has a special relationship. The deity is sometimes selected by the advisor or lama to balance or complement the student’s psychology.”
The Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary is growing with the help of some very enthusiastic Dharma brothers and sisters who are dedicated to The Oddiyana being a Sanctuary that benefits themselves and many beings in the community of Hervey Bay as well as the broader community, through meditation, Buddhist philosophy, yoga and other spiritual activities.
Autobiography
by Choeying Dolma
choeying@oddiyanadharmasanctuary.org
I have been asked to write about myself for the Oddiyana Dharma Sanctuary website.
Teachers of the Dharma (Buddha’s teachings) normally list their qualifications and achievements, years of study, number and duration of retreats, high titles, and reincarnation status and so on . . .
I feel these days the world seems far too attached to the concept of fame for just about anything from being the biggest, longest, fastest, highest, most famous and so on . . .
It seems spirituality is not safe from this as well.
I’m sure the intention is to encourage student confidence in the teacher. However I personally don’t feel very comfortable with this approach.
Besides, I honestly do not see myself as a teacher. I see myself as a student of the precious Dharma not a teacher . . . but since I have been encouraged by my precious teachers to share the Dharma with others I feel I must follow their wishes.
I’m just a person of the world who has chosen to happily devote her life to the Triple Gem which is the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
If it helps you to have more confidence in me to hear these teachings I welcome you to come and ask me about my studies and experience and I will, though erring on the side of reluctantly, share them with you.
The experience I would prefer to share with you is the story of how the Dharma has transformed my own life.
Like all beings, I have suffered from the time I was born. That is until I had the good karma to meet the precious Dharma.
This doesn’t mean I am now completely free of suffering. Suffering knocks on my door as it does for everyone. The difference now is that my study and practice of the precious Dharma and meditation has shown me how my suffering is a state of mind and not a permanent part of my life.
The precious Dharma has shown me how true happiness comes from loving and caring for all beings equally.
The precious Dharma has shown me how I must have loving kindness and compassion for myself so that I am able to develop the ability to show loving kindness and compassion for all beings without discrimination.
The precious Dharma has helped me to see clearly that without having self love and compassion for ourselves we cannot possibly have it for others.
Travelling this path has shown me we can suffer from compassion fatigue when practising what is sometimes referred to as “idiot compassion.” How this in turn can result in hurting rather than helping others.
I learned the hard way that it is not enough to just want to help others that we need wisdom to walk hand in hand with compassion in order to be of benefit to those who are suffering.
The Dharma is the greatest gift I have had the good fortune to have received in my life. This precious Jewel has stumbled patiently with me along the path of understanding my own deluded mind in order to make sense of the world I live in and beyond.
This precious gift came to me wrapped beautifully in the importance of taking this understanding deeply into my own heart.
I see clearly unless it dwells in my heart I will never learn how to understand others deeply and love all beings equally without discrimination.
The Dharma has given me the key to having a life well lived by teaching me the importance of living in the present moment . . . not the past . . . or the future . . . the present moment . . . which is all we have.
I am forever grateful to my teacher Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche for helping me to understand Buddha Nature through his succinct, clear and riveting teachings. Showering me in the optimism of being able to remove the dust of my defilements to recognise my delusions and bathe in the freedom of my fully awakened, “Enlightened” mind.
I am eternally grateful to all of my teachers guiding me to understanding the impermanence and emptiness of all things including this thing we call “self.”
And most importantly I thank all my teachers especially His Holiness the Dalai Lama for helping me to see the emptiness of not only self but all of phenomena . . . I just need a few eons of study and meditation to achieve this realisation.
I cannot imagine anything more important or rewarding to do in my life than study and practice the Dharma. I am humbled to have the great fortune of sharing it with others with the wish that they may transform all their suffering and achieve Enlightenment.
I feel so blessed to be traversing this sometimes very difficult, sometimes blissful . . . but never boring . . . path of the Buddhadharma.
I welcome anyone who thinks they may benefit from these very logical, profound and nurturing teachings of the Buddha.
A very warm welcome to all faiths and non faiths who feel meditation may enhance their spiritual journey.
I dedicate my good fortune of finding the precious Triple Gem: The Buddhadharma to all the teachers of the past present and future that they have long lives and stay with us until all beings achieve Enlightenment.
OM AH HUNG! OM AH HUNG! OM AH HUNG!
