Why a Retreat Center?

Why build a retreat center in Sri Lanka?
 
Sri Lanka provides a very good environment for retreats:

• the kindness  and openness of the inhabitants,
• there are still remote places in seemingly untouched nature.
• the outstanding quality of the food, especially the diversity of fruits and vegetables,
• abundant tropical flora and fauna,
• a climate always warm.

The goal of meditation is to discover the essence, our true nature, 
clear, unlimited and joyful, hidden under the veils 
of our past habits and conditioning.

The Buddha’s Teachings are still alive in Sri Lanka :

• They are part of the school curriculum.
• The Buddhist attitude is still part of the Sri Lankans` way of life.
• The Buddhist tradition has continued since the time of the Buddha: According to the resident Sangha, his teachings were passed down orally for about 38 generations and then monks gathered to write their memories of the doctrine on palm leaves, which are still preserved in the Aluvihara Temple in Matale, 30 km from our center.

What is the meaning of life,
does this life have a cause, a goal,
where are we going and why?
Why do I accumulate misfortunes?
Why am I unlucky?

If we ask ourselves these questions, it is then necessary to withdraw from the super-active world and turn our attention inward, into ourselves.
 
The Nalanda Retreat Center offers the best conditions to solve these questions and share the resulting well-being for the benefit of all sentient beings.
 
All these outer and inner conditions support the spiritual practice in a Retreat Center for the benefit of all sentient beings:

• There are many people in these times suffering from physical and mental sicknesses who could find at least a certain degree of relief by learning about the Buddhas Teachings and by practising meditation and mindfulness.
• As modern daily life gets increasingly more complex, there is the potential of becoming aware of what is truely essential to a human life.
• It became urgent to find a place to do extended retreats not only for oneself but to be shared with other practitioners.

Question asked to the Dalai Lama:
 
What surprises you most about humanity?
“Men…because they lose their health to accumulate money, 
then they lose money to regain their health.
And by thinking anxiously about the future, they forget the present 
so that they end up living neither the present nor the future.
They live as if they were never going to die …
and die as if they had never lived.”

Refuge is within each of us” said the Buddha.
A Retreat Center is a blessed place to find that refuge within.
to create an interior space,
an opening and aspiration
to allow light to manifest.

Fortunately, the Founder had a family of competent, experienced, dedicated Sri Lankan friends, ready to embark on the adventure, in whom there was complete trust!