HeartDhamma (2025)

31/08/2025

🧘‍♀️ Join our upcoming 10-Day Meditation Retreat in Melbourne🧘
📆 December 19-28, 2025 | Ripplebrook Meditation Centre

Our intensive silent retreats are a rare opportunity to dive deep into the Buddha's original teachings on developing mental collectedness through boundless love and joy. Come learn or sharpen your knowledge of Right Effort and the Noble Eightfold Path as a meditation practice that has helped thousands of meditators experience profound levels of liberation and happiness.

Retreat Summary: 🧘 Complete silence 📱 No phones or electronic devices ☸️ Personal guidance through individual interviews with Bhante Ānanda 📚 Evening dharma talks based on the Buddha's original discourses 🍃 Structured daily schedule from 6am to 10pm ❤️ Emphasis on loving-kindness meditation and natural mind development using the seven factors of awakening.

Bhante Ānanda brings years of training in early Buddhist practices and has guided retreats worldwide. His approach emphasizes the "two wings of awakening" - joy and letting go - which are the two Right Intentions, the core of the path, leading to direct experience of profound peace.

This retreat is for serious practitioners ready to commit to 7+ hours of daily meditation. Space is limited. 20/22 spots already filled!

Learn more and register: https://heartdhamma.love/2025-australia-retreat/
Link in bio for details and registration 🔗

"Sukhino cittaṃ samādhiyati - The happy mind becomes collected" 🙏

29/08/2025

Jhānas | Growing the Levels of Meditation Mastery | Buddha's Roadmap

https://youtu.be/0A0IfmcjooQ

The Buddha's complete roadmap of the nine levels of meditation known as the Jhānas, using the analogy of the mountain cow to understand how authentic spiritual progress unfolds naturally through patient practice. Drawing from retreat experience and original Buddhist teachings, this talk addresses common misconceptions about jhānic states, explains why forceful striving leads to spiritual "tumbling," and offers practical guidance on how these natural progressions develop through continued loving-kindness meditation. Rather than exotic attainments to grasp for, these represent natural insights into the mind available to all dedicated practitioners walking the Buddha's path of mental purification and liberation.

Dhamma talk given by Bhante Ānanda
Day 4 of meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

MN 21 The Analogy of the Saw
https://heartdhamma.love/sutta/mn-21/

18/08/2025

From the monastic life in the deepest jungles of Sri Lanka, to the Eucalyptus and Blue Gum forests of New South Wales in Australia.

From the Redwood forest and rolling oak meadows of California, to the Old growth Douglas Fir forests of British Columbia in the Canadian Pacific Northwest.

From the giant bamboo and Durpi forests of the Himalayan crests of West Bengal India, to the lush jungles of Costa Rica.

Here is an tribute to our forests, which have so kindly fostered our retreats and allowed countless meditators and contemplatives to find solace and liberation, under the loving and calming embrace of trees, since the dawn of human history, including all Buddhas. For they too, all attained awakening under a tree! 🧘🏼‍♀️🌲♥️🌳🧘🏽

A gem of a poem by the late Mary Oliver, When I am among the Trees, from her book “Thirst.”

15/08/2025

Cow Dung & Compassion: Spiritual Growth in Life's Difficult Moments

https://youtu.be/MqiJiM7Eygo

The true depth of Buddhist loving kindness and compassion practice and why it's far from the light, "feel-good" meditation many believe it to be. Through the Buddha's powerful "Analogy of the Saw" teaching, we discover many vibrant analogies on how to practice boundless love meditation and how true loving kindness requires us to put down our emotional armouring. We address the natural ups and downs of deeper practice, the relationship between loving kindness and forgiveness, and how to navigate the intense emotions that arise when we truly commit to healing the heart. This teaching sheds light on many aspects of the more advanced mettā practice before moving onwards with other vehicles of meditation.

Dhamma talk given by Bhante Ānanda
Day 4 of meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

MN 21 The Analogy of the Saw
https://heartdhamma.love/sutta/mn-21/

08/08/2025

More Valuable Than Gold | Meditation, Wisdom & Stream Entry

https://youtu.be/0n1H4DT4fZU

In this teaching, the Buddha demonstrates how even the most lavish material generosity cannot compare to the spiritual practices that lead to stream entry and awakening. We explore the progressive hierarchy of importance, from material giving to supporting noble practitioners, taking refuge with confidence, undertaking the five precepts, developing loving kindness meditation (metta bhavana), and ultimately cultivating the perception of impermanence (anicca) with an unabiding mind. This essential teaching shows us how to move beyond external merit-making to the internal transformation that brings true liberation, revealing that just a moment of developing loving kindness or insight into transience is infinitely more beneficial than any worldly treasure.

Sutta Sundays are the monthly gathering of the HeartDhamma community where we study original teachings on meditation directly from the Buddha. Join us on Zoom, every first Sunday of the month:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87824875440

Talk by Bhante Ānanda in August during the Sutta Sunday teaching.

AN 9.20 Velāma’s Offering (Velāma Sutta)
https://heartdhamma.love/sutta/an-9-20/

01/08/2025

Seeds of Distractions | How Thoughts Take Root & Become Hindrances

https://youtu.be/fMoisj59ucI

A deep yet practical exploration of how mental distractions arise and evolve, using the metaphor of a plant’s life cycle—from seed to full-grown entanglement, also called the five hindrances. Drawing from the Five Aggregates, and the Six Senses, this teaching reveals how unnoticed moments of craving and clinging silently take root in the mind. Here, we explore the process of recognizing these seeds of distraction, understanding how they are nourished, and applying Right Effort to gently uproot them and experience the calming of thoughts.

Dhamma talk given by Bhante Ānanda
Day 3 of meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

MN 19 Discerning Thoughts into Two
https://heartdhamma.love/sutta/mn-19/

25/07/2025

From Struggle to Syntropy | The Uplifting & Life-Giving Power of Right Effort

https://youtu.be/Z93X5KWEaAs

Explore the awakening of the Buddha of the nature of mental states, wholesome and unwholesome, which is a the core of karma, and the path of meditation which he discover. Syntropic meditation refers to the life-giving principle of cultivating wholesome mental states through this ancient technique based on the Buddha's wisdom. The natural samādhi that ripens through right effort by uplifitng the mind with loving kindness and letting go as somatic release.

Dhamma talk given by Bhante Ānanda
Day 2 of meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

MN 19 Discerning Thoughts into Two
https://heartdhamma.love/sutta/mn-19/

***We apologize for the poor sound quality, the mic was not connected.

16/07/2025

This year, the HeartDhamma community in Canada is inviting Bhante Ānanda and Anagārika Sarah to spend vassa (Monastic rains retreat), from July until October, at their hermitage in the West Kootenays.

Yesterday, the intimate ceremony of invitation (Vassa Ārādhana) was performed, monastics were formally invited and then, they determined the Heartwood Hermitage as their residence for the retreat. 🙏😇♥️

The ceremony had the flavour of simplicity, without expensive and elaborate decorations, free of hassle, going to the essence, going to the heartwood. In the Heartwood Hermitage's usual style, cutting through the clutter, and going to the heart of what truly matters: Mental Development (Bhāvanā) and a loving community (Saṅgha). 🪷

07/07/2025

🇱🇰A glimpse at our retreat which ended last week, in the heart of Sri Lanka! All smiles, open hearts and deep meditation practice for yet another memorable 10-day retreat. Our group was unique and filled with particularly devoted meditators! 🧘😇🧘‍♀️

Our next retreat in our meditation heaven of the mystical island in the Indian Ocean will be next February (2026)! 🏝️🌅 Find out more on the HeartDhamma website! Next retreats in Canada and Australia 😇

15/06/2025

Letting Go with Wisdom | Relaxing & Smiling in Loving Kindness Meditation

This short teaching emphasizes the importance of relaxing and smiling before returning to loving kindness. Instead of forcing the mind, it requires first letting go of distractions. Using wisdom to gently guide the mind to loving kindness meditation makes the process more effective and insightful, promoting deeper mindfulness. These brief instructions are the ABC of meditation (Bhāvanā).Meditation instructions given by Bhante Ānanda 10-Day meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

06/06/2025

The Surprising Power of Smiling in Meditation | How to Meditate w/ Right Effort

https://youtu.be/A6lzFIV-Vg0

Wondering how to meditate? Here, we are putting down the essentials of loving kindness meditation and how to use right effort. These brief instructions are the ABC of meditation (Bhāvanā). Cultivating wholesome mental states (Loving kindness) and letting go of unwholesome mental state (Distractions) in a process that develops the seven factors of awakening.

Meditation instructions given by Bhante Ānanda
10-Day meditation retreat at Tierramor, in Costa Rica, June 2024.

01/06/2025

The guided meditations from our last retreat in Sri Lanka (February 2025) are now out! 🧘‍♀️🌅🧘

Do you ever feel a bit alone when meditating, and feel like you want to feel a part of a bigger community when you practice? 🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Maybe having the sense of meditating with other people would enliven your practice again? Maybe, you would like to kick off the dust from these old meditation instructions and refresh your knowledge?

All of our retreats guided meditations are posted on SoundCloud!
You can re-live memories of a past retreat or strengthen your understanding, if you have not come for a retreat in a while. :) 💪🏻

They are all accessible for free, and free to download.☸️✨
We’ll put the link in a comment below 🔗

Enjoy! 😇❤️

HeartDhamma