BRC Newsflash - May 2025

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The Buddhist Retreat Centre
Ixopo, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa		For people of all religions
BRC Newsflash: May 2025 Dear Friends,

The art of being		Image: Andrew Brown
John Homewood who will be offering 2 back-to-back retreats “The Art of Being” Part 1 and “ Living In Joy - Going Deeper” Part 2 from 11-13 and 13-15 May writes: This Too Will Pass Many people are experiencing challenges, not only in their own personal life situations, relationships, health or finances, but also psychologically, with stress, anxiety and despondency robbing people of creative action. This is being fuelled by the doom & gloom being served up through the media’s negative narratives on the world’s political, economic, climate and health situations. This, however, obscures our true power – the power of choice. The most important choice we ever can make, right now, is to choose our own thoughts and feelings rather than other people’s. Every thought and every emotion is an act of creation. We regain our power from the world ‘out there’ by choosing thoughts and feeling that emanate, not from our minds, but rather from our hearts. We can choose to focus our intrinsic energy on creating the world we want, rather than the world we don’t want. Choosing to feel joy rather than despair, choosing connection rather than separateness, choosing to focus on perceiving beauty around us rather than being caught up in our judgmental minds. These are all positive and constructive actions of choice that will contribute to us making the world a better place for ourselves, our children, grandchildren and the greater community around us to live in. Ultimately there is only ever one choice to make - a choice between just two baskets; one labelled fear and the other love. Choose now. Choose wisely. Expect miracles. This too will pass. John Homewood

Expect miracles		Image: Tsunma Tsondru
Food For Thought Continued... Made with love Whenever you ask someone about the BRC, they usually struggle to put into words the tranquillity of the space - the calming energy that rolls up the valley with the mist, wrapping everything in a quiet embrace. But there is one thing they all inevitably mention, their eyes lighting up with a far-off look of bliss: the food. They regale you with stories of unforgettable meals, each dish described with the kind of reverence usually reserved for sacred experiences. “You simply must try it!” they insist, reaching for one of our recipe books, eager to take a piece of the BRC kitchen home with them. For those of us who work here, this reaction is no surprise. Volunteers often find themselves drawn into fireside conversations with guests, all hoping to uncover the secret behind our food. The ginger tea, rich and fragrant - how do we make it taste so magical? There must be some hidden trade secret, something beyond what’s printed in the recipes. Right? To finally put the mystery to rest, I sat down with the heart and hands behind the BRC kitchen - our head chef, Prudence Makhanya, from Creighton - to answer the question once and for all: What makes the food at the BRC so good?

Prudence Makhanya		Image:Lien Duvenage
A Journey into the Kitchen Prudence’s love for cooking began early, helping her aunt at a B&B in Scottsville, Pietermaritzburg. Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, she would assist in preparing breakfasts for international guests, soaking up knowledge and skills along the way. From there, I fell in love with food, and so I went to Café Bloom. It was at Café Bloom in Nottingham Road where Prudence truly honed her craft. Stepping into the fast-paced environment of a busy restaurant was a challenge - especially with no prior experience in baking or preparing lunch dishes. With little time for formal instruction, she had to learn quickly, adapting as she went. I did not know about baking. Just only when I’m looking through [the recipe of] this kind of cake. They gave me cheesecake, lemon polenta, brownies. We used to make a lot… When I had to make the cheesecake, I had never seen cheesecake before. I started to read and read the recipe. Now I can make cheesecake, carrot cake, and brownies. Prudence recalls, with gratitude, the Café Bloom manager who guided her through the art of baking, sharing small but invaluable tips - how to keep cakes moist, how to balance flavours. For many of us who struggle to decipher vague instructions like “a pinch of salt,” this might sound overwhelming, but for Prudence, it was a process of trial, error, and discovery. You have to teach yourself. Because all cakes are different. Everyone will tell you it’s very easy, but it’s not easy. You have to love it. Just wait - maybe today you make carrot cake, then maybe tomorrow you can do better. Then you see yourself, see what works and what doesn’t. You learn from your mistakes, and then you see what you did wrong.

A thriller with vanilla – baked vanilla cheesecake		Image:Lien Duvenage
Finding a home at the BRC When the pandemic hit, Café Bloom closed its doors. But fate had other plans for Prudence. Her manager recommended her to the BRC, and in January 2021, she joined us as our head chef. I asked Prudence what she thought of the Centre when she first arrived. Coming from the bustling world of restaurants and B&Bs, this place, tucked away in the hills, must have felt like another world entirely. The most important thing to me is that this is my home, because every time when I passed by on the way to Pietermaritzburg I saw the sign. I thought, ‘OK, maybe it is a church.’ I didn’t know. [In Pietermaritzburg], we had to travel every day with transport, and I was renting in not a good place. So, yeah, it’s nice and cool. When I started here, I didn’t find it hard because most of the menu is here [in the recipe books]. But as I said, you can find things to change the way you like it. I’m happy here because I can visit home anytime, and my family, they can come around. It’s nice here, and I enjoy cooking for people. I am happy because they appreciate us and make us feel much happier every day. I wake up and say, ‘God, please be with me.’ I like to learn cooking and baking. Most of the time, when I’m watching TV, I don’t watch soaps but cooking.

Zesty lemon squares		Image: Angela Shaw
A Favourite Dish Finally, I asked Prudence - out of all the meals she prepares, which is her favourite to make for our guests? You know, people like everything. But for me, I like the spinach bake, yes. And the pudding, I like carrot cake and the lemon squares. The True Secret Ingredient So, what is the magic that makes the food at the BRC so special? If you ask Prudence, it is not just about recipes or techniques - it’s about love. It’s about waking up every morning with gratitude, finding joy in the simple act of cooking, and sharing that joy with others. It’s about learning, growing, and taking pride in the meals that nourish both body and soul. And perhaps, just perhaps, it’s also about those blessed hands, pouring heart and devotion into every dish served at our table. William Shogan If you would like to take a ‘Taste of Ixopo’ back home with you, please support our GoodMoodFood prepared take-away meals from our delicious lasagne, to soups and dips. You can pre-order or let the staff know the day before your departure from the Centre.

Taste of Ixopo		Images: Angela Shaw
There are still a few spaces left on the following April retreats: ☸ indicates retreats held in noble silence The Art of Being Part 1 John Homewood and Michelle McClunan \| Weekend \| 11-13 April Are you ready for a life shift? John Homewood and Michelle McClunan bring their combined forty years of facilitating experience to this two-part retreat, providing you with a gentle, yet powerful process that will shift, awaken and nourish your whole being. You will leave this retreat greatly refreshed with a new and awakened perspective in life, taking with you practical tools to apply in shifting all areas of your life. The retreat will integrate transformational, yet practical spiritual teachings of Presence, Awakening and Creative Art Processes that will help you clear blockages that may have prevented you from living a healthy, peaceful and abundant life. Living In Joy - Going Deeper Part 2 John Homewood and Michelle McClunan \| 2 days \| 13-15 April Part 2 will provide you the space to integrate and apply this Shift more deeply and more fully into your awareness. You will leave with a deeper sense of peace and with greater emotional and spiritual intelligence to navigate life’s challenges. For more info on their work see www.journeysofawakening.com Read more Open The Heart and Still The Mind: The Joy of Courageous, Heartfelt Presence Sue Cooper \| 4 or 7 days \| 17-24 April Inspired by the wisdom teachings of the Dharma and of Buddhist and western psychology, we will cultivate mindfulness and compassion practices which calm the nervous system and help integrate body, heart and mind. As we learn to listen and connect more compassionately with ourselves, drawing silent support from the sangha (like-minded practitioners finding solace in the shared silence), we will discover that the containment of ennobling silence allows us to find the courage to honour and embody our authentic, heartfelt presence with greater confidence, clarity and joy. Read more Beginner's Mind, Quiet Mind: Meditation Instruction And Practice For Meaningful Daily Living Tsunma Tsondru \| 3 days \| 28 April-1 May It is important for us to take time out from the incessant demands and fast pace of daily life. The BRC gives us a space to step off the wheel and the time to come home to the quiet, strong refuge which lies at our centre. Cultivating the natural state of peace and ease that lies there reveals our true nature - which enables us to not only help ourselves, but to help the world of which we are part. The time will be silent, quiet, and slow. There will be meditation instruction and guidance, formal sitting, and time for walking, writing, or staring into the distance Read more

Wesak lanterns		Image: Tsunma Tsondru
Conducted Retreats May 2025 ☸ indicates retreats held in noble silence Active Hope - Practice For Difficult Times Tsunma Tsondru \| Weekend \| 2 days accommodation \| 2-4 May Hope does not sit on the threadbare couch clutching a lotto ticket, passively waiting for good luck. Hope wields an axe, actively breaking down the door in a crisis. We can’t escape that Earth is in crisis. It’s also ever-more evident that we feel this crisis within ourselves as personal crisis. There is creeping hopelessness, fatalism, anxiety, denial, and numbness - a disengagement from the natural world which sustains us. The inner crisis even has a name now: eco-anxiety. How to respond to these crises? Within a framing of Active Hope, the weekend will be spent in group and solo practices from The Work That Reconnects, moving through the spiral of gratefulness, grief, and transformation that will unlock your unexpected resilience and creative power. Hope is waking up to the beauty of life, on whose behalf we can act. Read more The Way Of Ubuntu: Exploring Traditional South African Healing John Lockley and Nomusa Mthembu \| 3 days \| 5-8 May Participants will experience a traditional South African healing ceremony over three days during which they will learn to connect to their Ancestors (bones), Dreams, 'Umoya' (spirit) and one another. 'Ubuntu' means 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. It is a circle of interlinking relationships connecting the seen and unseen worlds. The ceremony will involve a plant cleanse, using medicinal plants to cleanse the spirit and open the heart. Included will be an in-depth discussion on 'African cosmology' and the understanding of ancestors, plant medicine and dreaming. Retreatants will learn one of the most ancient and misunderstood cultures in South Africa today - the Sangoma medicine people, the monks and nuns of Southern Africa. The retreat will focus on educating people about South African traditional spirituality and also lead participants on a spiritual journey to rediscover their own ‘soul’ or what is termed ‘umoya’ in Xhosa and Zulu culture. This is a unique opportunity as there are very few places in South Africa today where people can learn from this mystical tradition. 'Ubuntu' in essence represents harmony and is similar to the Zen circle. Linking the past and present. Read the Odyssey magazine article on John Lockley. Read more Wesak: Doing What The Buddha Did Stephen Coan \| Weekend \| 9-11 May The feast of Wesak is the most important day in the Buddhist calendar, commemorating the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha 2,500 years ago, and is held annually on the full moon of the lunar month of Vesakha (coincidental with May). We will mark this festival with a programme of sitting and walking meditation plus reflections on the Buddha’s life and teachings and, in union with Buddhists around the world, hold a traditional Wesak ceremony - a lantern-lit circumambulation – on Saturday evening. Apart from a talk or two, and some discussion, the weekend will place an emphasis on meditation, the basic Buddhist practice common to all traditions – simply breathing in and breathing out – doing exactly what the Buddha did. This weekend will also mark the 45th year anniversary of the Centre. We hope that you will share this milestone with us. Please note: This retreat will be held in Noble Silence. Read more Unveiling The Deeper Layers of Yoga: The Philosophy Of Posture Sushmitha Shrikanth \| Weekend \| 16-18 May Through a merging of concepts from Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Vedanta Philosophy, this retreat explores deepening your understanding of yoga beyond asanas. We will uncover how the practice of yoga postures can be a gateway to understanding the subtle interplay between our physical actions and mental states through a variety of lectures, reflection exercises, group discussions and breathwork sessions. The aim is to view asanas not merely as physical shapes, but as embodiments of our mental states. The weekend is ideal for those interested in bringing ancient wisdom to modern times through a time-tested self-practice method or Sadhana (spiritual training) to serve as an antidote to our distracted lives. Read more The Sacred Feminine: Empowering The Feminine With Yoga, Meditation And Your Astrological Moon Margarita Celeste and Michelle Strybis \| Weekend \| 23-25 May In this empowering weekend for women, gentle Yin-style yoga will be offered as an invitation to expand, open and release tightly-held emotions and stress, focusing on the hips and heart. Evening "Moon" themed meditations will help participants to get in touch with this powerful Lunar Body to connect with your inner Feminine. Included will be talks on the Astrological Moon which will help women to navigate their emotional styles, and that of others. Body and Mind will be nourished over a weekend that promises to be nurturing for women - mothers and daughters, sisters and best friends - in a moment by moment openness to each other and to the beautiful, tranquil surroundings of the BRC. Read more Change Your Mind - A Mindfulness Retreat Mark Joseph \| Weekend \| 30 May-1 June In the 1980’s Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn brought mindfulness into western medical focus. He was a practitioner of Zen Buddhism at the time and wanted to introduce his eastern learnings into a secular western framework. He was highly successful and his work became the cornerstone of a Mark Joseph's work. He found it wasn’t about converting South Africans to Buddhism but sharing the heart of practices that transformed his mind and heart. Mark became fascinated with the collaboration of HH The 14th Dalai Lama and science, especially with the work of neuroscientist Richard Davidson and author Daniel Goleman. Mark has been running mindfulness workshops for many years incorporating neuroscience and performance psychology. In 2016 he created the ‘Mindfulness teacher training program’ and in 2018 it was introduced into RMB bank to train wellness ambassadors. During the pandemic this program spread to the entire First Rand organisation as well as ABSA and DHL. Mark has pioneered the growth of mindfulness not only in the corporate world but also in training psychologists and individuals in mindful therapy. The essence of this program will be shared in this 2-day retreat and combines key points around how mindfulness contributes to: - Focus and attention management - Stress Management - Insight and Innovation - Psychological safety - Emotional Intelligence - Self compassion - Empathy - Wisdom Experience the merging of the eastern and western forms of mindfulness to provide you with an evidence-based approach to cultivating a daily practice and how this will affect your positive mental well-being. Read more Doing Your Own Thing: A Personal Retreat We are offering a 15% discount in April Find meaningful solitude on a Self-Retreat. These Retreats are unstructured: one does as much (or as little) reading, walking, meditation or resting as one chooses. Enjoy walks and bird watching; savour our delicious vegetarian food and browse our well-stocked library. Qigong and meditation with William and massage treatments with Krishia are available daily. Self-Retreats are an ideal opportunity to be in a gentle, sympathetic space where one can be still and get in touch with oneself. Read more

Doing what the Buddha did	Image: Andrew Brown
About the BRC Perched on a ridge at the head of a valley in the Umkomaas river system in KwaZulu-Natal, the Buddhist Retreat Centre looks out on a vista of indigenous valleys, forests and rolling hills receding like waves in the blue distance. Here, for forty-five years, people of all religions and none have come to experience peace and tranquillity. It is a gentle, sympathetic space where one can be still and get in touch with oneself and reflect on the things that crowd one's life. The BRC was voted by CNN as one of the ten best meditation centres in the world. CNN Travel awarded another feather in the BRC’s cap by voting it as one of the ten best spiritual centres in South Africa. The BRC was awarded Natural Heritage status in 1995 under the auspices of the Department of Environmental Affairs and received a certificate to that effect signed by President Nelson Mandela for turning an eroded farm into the natural paradise it has become - thousands of indigenous trees were planted by retreatants under the supervision of Mervyn Croft - with 160 species of birds, including the Blue Swallow, otter, deer, antbear and indigenous forests. The Centre was also given the special status of “Custodian of the Blue Swallow” for its work in preserving the breeding areas of this endangered bird. Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife granted the BRC “Private Nature Reserve” for the conservation of the rare Blue Swallow and Mistbelt Grassland. The BRC facilitated the founding of Woza Moya, the community-based NGO, located in Ufafa Valley, twenty-two years ago, on the estate. Their vision is for all people in the community to be healthy and productive, to live in a safe and clean environment, with good access to services and social justice. The Centre continues to support the organisation by showcasing their crafts in the shop and sponsoring their trainers and consultants. We have been very touched by your appreciative letters, emails and friendship towards the BRC - your spiritual home from home. How you can help to keep the Dharma wheels turning at the BRC and continue its legacy for the future: Become a Spiritual friend by: Booking for a retreat – we have a broad range of retreats on offer until the 8 January 2026 Offering a donation Pledging a monthly contribution of R50 or more Joining our Paid Up Yogi scheme which involves paying a contribution forward whereby your credit can be used at any time in the future towards a retreat, with a 10% discount Gifting a voucher to a friend or family member Supporting our film “Bodhi Is Light” Purchasing our popular recipe books Organising a group visit midweek Supporting our GoodMoodFood take-away prepared meals Booking a mid-week self-retreat with the option of yoga, qigong, meditation, and healing treatments The continued existence of the Centre as a sanctuary for healing is dependent on the goodwill and support of our Sangha. Chrisi Visit our website for further information, directions, image gallery etc.
www.brcixopo.co.za \| 066 395 4682 \| 082 579 3037 Share: \| Follow us:
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