It was  a sunny Saturday morning for our first meeting at Station on the Green. With the Farmer’s market cheerfully underway in the background, a group of 10 gathered to listen to an introduction to Buddha’s teachings. A basic understanding in Buddhism is that we all wish to be happy all the time and we naturally avoid suffering. Therefore, we have a spontaneous wish to be free from suffering. This is true in our personal life and also can be demonstrated at the level of community, country and world. Even though for centuries, humans have tried to fulfill these two wishes, we still have trouble establishing lasting happiness and we have new problems we never had before. After all our effort, why have we been unsuccessful? The reason is that we are looking for the source of our happiness in the wrong place! Happiness is a state of mind. The real source of happiness is inner peace. Therefore, we need to seek happiness from within our mind.

A student wrote to the Centre after their first class, “Thank you for offering a meditation class in Creemore this past Saturday. I would be most interested in doing further studies with Kelsang Yonten in Creemore.”

Since Buddhism is offered by request and the community response was warm and welcoming, we will organize another Saturday to continue with the teachings. Thank you for the encouragement and we look forward to visiting again soon.