Almsgiving Ceremony for
Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery
Please join us for this opportunity
to support the Bhikkhuni Sangha in the West
When: Saturday, September 3, 2016, 10:30am – 3:00pm
Location: Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery, Placerville, California
Directions: click here
Sponsors: Claire and Dongshil with Friends of Aloka Vihara
For more information, please visit the Friends of Aloka Vihara website
or contact us via email.
The Aloka Vihara Forest Monastery is a rural monastery located in the Sierra foothills where women can live and train as nuns and the lay community can stay and practice. An opportunity to offer support to the monastery is coming up with the Almsgiving ceremony on September 3, 2016. This Almsgiving ceremony will be a unique opportunity for us as laypeople to reflect deeply on the interdependent relationship between the monastic and lay communities and to follow that reflection into action. Just as the monastics dedicate themselves to sharing the teachings with us both in word and through their way of life, we lay practitioners have the opportunity to offer what it takes to help the Bhikkhuni Sangha thrive.
An Almsgiving ceremony is a traditional Buddhist ceremony in which the lay and monastic communities gather so that the lay community can express their support and gratitude by making formal offerings of financial and material support to the monastics.
September 2016 commemorates the 2600th anniversary of the Bhikkhuni Sangha. This year bhikkhunis from Dhammadharini Monastery and Karuna Buddhist Vihara will be joining us for this special day. We look forward to spending time on the land and with each other, celebrating the continued development of Aloka Vihara.
Donations to the 2016 Almsgiving Ceremony
Aloka Vihara’s vision for creating a training monastery for women has been unfolding since 2009. Joyfully, in January 2015, the Saranaloka Foundation purchased the rural property in Placerville, California where Aloka Vihara has been located since 2014. Financial support received from this year’s Almsgiving Ceremony will help fund the Nuns’ Quarters Renovation Project. The private quarters for bhikkhunis, samaneris, and anagarikas will be improved to accommodate more nuns and women who wish to begin training, allowing the community to grow and flourish.
To make a donation now, please use this PayPal link.
Visit the FAQ page on the Friends of Aloka Vihara website for more information about this year’s ceremony.
We are looking for volunteers to help out with the event! Please contact us via email if you are interested.
With much gratitude,
Claire and Dongshil with the Friends of Aloka Vihara
For more information about the Almsgiving ceremony, including answers to many common questions, please visit the Friends of Aloka Vihara website.
Our wish is that anyone who would like to attend the Almsgiving Ceremony would have transportation to do so. We’d also like to encourage carpooling as much as possible. If you are able to offer a ride or if would like to request a ride, please use the link below!