Extending the hand of friendship

I have been wanting to write directly to our sangha for some time and so I am very happy to now share with you some highlights and reflections in my life as Chair of the LBC. 

I actually completed six years in this role in March 2024 and marked this by going to spend some time in Areotorara (or more commonly known as New Zealand). When I landed, I really felt like I was on the other side of the world and at the same time there was a strange familiarity, as if I had been waiting to be there for a very long time. 

I spent the first 10 days in Auckland meeting members of our sangha and was very touched by the warm welcome I received. I then spent the next ten days on a solitary retreat at Sudarshanaloka, an incredible retreat centre in the middle of a temperate rainforest. There’s much I could say about this experience except words also fail me… suffice to say these 10 days were amongst the richest and most meaningful of my life thus far… apart from my ordination and giving birth to my son. 

I spent the remaining days of my trip meeting more sangha members, leading a day retreat  at the centre and taking in more of the landscape. I am very grateful for the many hands of friendship extended to me during my stay that made it truly memorable, and how connections really deepeed. 

One of the things I’ve enjoyed since being Chair has been showing visitors around the centre. People from different backgrounds and faiths wish to see how Buddhism is practised now in the middle of a busy urban city. This year we hosted Buddhists from a Tibetan group and in the midst of that we discovered that we had a mutual friend by the name of Professor Jan Willis. 

I met Prof Jan Willis in my early twenties as a brand new Buddhist. I had been wondering if there were any Buddhists of colour in Western Buddhist circles and I was also really keen to meet experienced female practitioners. Meeting Prof Jan Willis proved to be the inspiration I was looking for. A few years later I invited Jan to visit the LBC, and fast forward a couple of decades I was delighted to invite her back. This time I wanted more of the sangha to hear her incredible story of marching with Dr Martin Luther King and her conversion to Buddhism in the 1970’s.

I often see my role as Chair as creating the conditions for friendship to flourish. The Buddha famously said that friendship was the whole of the spiritual life. In my early years as a Buddhist I found this statement both hopeful and challenging. Now, the more I understand the meaning and significance of spiritual friendship, the more I see how the world needs spaces, like the LBC, where people from all different backgrounds and personalities can share values that foster human growth, compassion, and wisdom. I am happy that the LBC is one of those spaces where we can be reminded of our common human worth and have a clear path to discover that more fully.