Buddhist Society of Western Australia

Every year, the sangha (monastic community of monks and nuns) go on a three month retreat called the “Rains Retreat” from the full moon in July to the full moon in October. During this period, they do not visit our centres not appear online for teachings as it’s a time for deepening their own practice. Whilst it may seem that the lay community can only suffer as a result of not having regular teachings, the truth is the opposite from appearances. Because the lay community supports the sangha of monks and nuns in during this period of focused meditation and retreat from worldly duties, monastics get the opportunity to deepen their sense of tranquility and insight as a consequence. This means that they have something genuine to share with us when they return to their regular teaching duties, and can guide the lay community to deepen their practice also.

Even though there will be few new teachings being posted during the next three months, the volunteers in the Broadcasting Group of the BSWA will still be posting content. The BSWA Podcast ( http://podcast.bswa.org/ ) will be updated with content every day. And it is worth keeping in mind that you can go https://bswa.org/teachings/ to search through around 2400 teachings given in the previous 20 years sorted by teacher, topic and key terms (tags).

For nearly all of the past 14 months we've been posting a new dhamma talk nearly every day. Over the next 5 weeks we need to redirect our energies to a getting a new website up and running for the Buddhist Society of Western Australia, and as a result, there won't be so many posts coming through on the podcast during this period. But stay tuned as there's much to look forward to as the monks and nuns will be giving new dhamma talks starting in October, and a new website to be released in November.

Thanks to all our listeners, and especially our generous patrons that have made this podcast channel so popular. We just passed through 450,000 downloads - in under 8 months. Last month was our most popular with over 88,000 downloads in one month! It's been a quite a bit of work over the months getting talks uploaded nearly every day, and to celebrate our most recent milestone, we're taking an 8 day break for some R&R.

This podcast has been up and running for six and a half months now, and it's just had it's 300,000th download! With over 600 subscribers and approaching 200 dharma talks now available on this podcast, we're making a real effort to offer quality dharma teachings to an international audience.

This is a quick message to say thankyou to listeners around the world for making the Living Dharma podcast so popular, and a special thankyou to our donors who are keeping us running!

This podcast has been in operation around 4 months now and we've just posted the 100th dharma talk! In that same period our daily downloads have grown to the point where we've now had around 120,000 dharma talk plays by listeners! A special thanks to our 376 subscribers who've signed up via one to the podcast apps.

Of course, Living Dharma wouldn't be around if it weren't for our generous donors. We've been working hard to get talks posted nearly everyday to make their donations go as far as possible. In October this podcast has 41,789 talks downloaded - which means every $5 donated paid for 3,799 dharma talks downloaded! November is already on track to be an even bigger month, so if you're thinking of cultivating your generosity and supporting a worthy cause, please consider becoming a supporter of Living Dharma by committing to a regular $5 donation for each month. Could you give up a couple of cups of coffee so that a few thousand people could hear dharma talks for free? Go on, you know you can do it! ;)

If you've enjoyed listening to these talks, please don't keep them to yourself, but tell your friends and associates about this podcast, as they too may benefit from the wisdom of these teachings. And if you like a dharma talk, please share it via social media.

In other news, we've established a Living Dharma website which we hope to grow into a well organised and thorough catalogue of dharma talks over the course of the next year or so. There's already well over 100 dharma teachings in audio and video format, with plans to add other formats in future. You can subscribe to new postings to the Living Dharma website via a widget on the right hand column by typing in your email.

We have some big plans for 2016 so stay tuned. Thanks for joining us for the journey to promote the dharma teachings of Ajahn Brahm and the Australian forest sangha teachers.

May all beings be safe and well. May all beings have peace.

In the first three months since setting up this podcast we've had over 65,000 downloads and 299 subscribers. This includes 35,000 downloads in September alone. 

This new dhamma podcast has been up and running with talks now for just 30 days, and in the time we've had 17,176 talks downloaded and 148 people subscribe to this dhamma podcast. That's a HUGE first month - much bigger than we anticipated - and a clear indication that there's lots of people out there that want to hear good dhamma talks.

Since launching our new dharma podcast 19 days ago we've had 7178 episodes downloaded and almost 100 subscribers - and the traffic is still growing! People are discovering that one of the best ways to listen to a dharma talk is to download it to your ipod / phone / listening device and either go to a quiet place to listen, or for those who are more busy, to listen whilst on their way to work in the morning, set up in the right frame of mind for the rest of the day. (Or for the sleep deprived, to help them drift off to sleep in the evening!)

This podcast is on track to get 12,000 downloads in its first month and yet there's so much more potential. We'd like to add a couple of new podcasts to this platform, one of them specifically for guided meditations.

These teaching remain free only because of the generosity of donors that help cover the costs of these services. You can help make this happen by becoming a patron and donating as little as $5 per month. Could this generous donor be you?