Building Fund Update

There have been a number of developments over the past month, as we continue to work towards finding a long-term home for the temple.

As mentioned in the last newsletter, we had applied for a grant from a charity called the Inlight Trust, and we recently received a cheque from them for £25,000. That was very generous of them, and really helps us towards reaching the amount we would need for a deposit on a property.

We have also received another offer of a loan and several lump-sum donations towards the building fund. For a possible purchase price of £300,000 we are aiming to raise a deposit of £100,000, and we are now only about £16,000 short of that.

We have also applied for a mortgage from the Triodos Bank. They seem to be viewing our application favourably, although there are still details to work through before we will know the outcome. Hopefully we will hear from them in the next couple of weeks.

On the property front, the house that we are interested in on Kingsmead Road, pictured above, has been reduced from £325,000 to £310,000, and now to £299,950. In addition, a number of other possible properties have come onto the market, including a number of four bedroom detached houses for about £250,000 although these are not in such a convenient area.

How you can help

If you feel able to offer any financial assistance to help us purchase a property for the temple, that would be greatly appreciated. There are a number of ways in which you could help, such as through a donation or by offering a long-term loan to the temple. Full details are on the Building Fund page. We are very grateful for all your support.

Forthcoming Events:
Festival of Achalanatha

This coming Saturday, the 1st of July, we will be celebrating the Festival of Achalanatha Bodhisattva. Achalanatha, the "Immovable One", represents commitment and determination in Buddhist practice. Achalanatha is portrayed sitting in meditation amidst the flames of the passions, and is not driven away from the place of meditation by them, however much they seem to burn. Achalanatha holds the Sword of Wisdom to cut through delusion, and offers us the rope of the Buddhist Precepts. To begin with this may seem like it constricts us, but when we look more closely we see that it liberates us.

The day will start at 10am with a meditation period, followed by the ceremony. After the ceremony there will be a Dharma talk, and at about 1pm there will be a bring-and-share vegetarian lunch. In the afternoon there will be two periods of meditation from 2pm, followed by a Dharma discussion and tea. You are welcome to come for any part of the day.

For other events in July, please see the events calendar.

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Update on Recent Steering Morning

We had a steering morning at the temple on the 24th of June, and the following is a summary of what we discussed.

Finances
We started off with a review of the finances, and below is a graph showing the temple's "core income" for each month since April 2015. The blue bars show regular income from standing order donations, the red bars represent donations placed in the temple alms bowl (guest donations), and the yellow bars are the sum of these two.

The temple's income continued at a healthy level in the last couple of months, helped by the new standing orders that have started recently. In May our core income was the highest we have had since the temple opened, and this level of income will be a great help in making mortgage repayments once we have purchased a property.

There is much more information, including more graphs, on the finances page of the temple website.

Properties
We discussed recent developments in our project to find a suitable property for the temple to purchase, as described at the beginning of the newsletter above.

Events for people who are new to Buddhist practice
We had some discussion of whether we are providing events that it is easy for people who are relatively new to Buddhism to join in with. We have Basic Buddhism Evenings on a Thursday, and the intention is that these should be quite "introductory". At any of our meetings, however, there are likely to be people who have been training for very different lengths of time; some for decades, some for just a few weeks or months. This is a great benefit to all, but those who are new to practice may not connect with a discussion between more long-standing Sangha members, and we agreed that we do also need to be aware of their needs.

There weren't any concrete proposals in this area, but we agreed that we needed to be aware of the issue.

Next Steering Morning
The next Steering Morning will be on Saturday the 19th of August. Please do get in touch if you have any questions or comments about any of this, or anything else related to the temple.

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Alms Bowl Requests

Thank you to all those who have donated items to the temple. We are very grateful for donations of any household or other items that the temple might be able to use. Please contact Rev. Aiden if you have an item to offer but are not sure whether it would be useful.

Donations of Food
Offering food is a traditional way to support a monk, and any donations of vegetarian food are most welcome. In particular:

• brown rice and pasta
• fresh fruit and vegetables (except garlic or peppers)
• porridge oats
• yoghurt and eggs
• peanuts or other nuts
• nut or seed spreads (e.g. peanut butter, tahini)

Any other suitable items would also be appreciated.

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Donations

The temple is dependent on donations for its continued existence, and any financial support you are able to offer is greatly appreciated. Details of how to offer support can be found on the Donations page of the website.