Tushita’s Annual Report 2012
December 2012
Another incredible year at Tushita, which continues to thrive and offer authentic, accessible Dharma teachings – in an increasingly beautiful environment!
You can see that since we started keeping records in 2009, Tushita has grown a lot, particularly since we began to offer our daily guided meditation sessions in April 2010 (therefore the jump in 2011 partly reflects the fact that these sessions ran throughout the full 2011 season, 2 months more than in 2010). As you can see from the charts below, in the past 4 years, our drop-in sessions have amassed more than 23,000 “cushion units”!
That’s to say that the same people often attend these sessions frequently, so it wouldn’t be accurate to say that this many individuals had attended, but no matter how you interpret the figures, our drop-in sessions are definitely well attended!
| RESIDENTIAL |
TOTAL: 2009 – 12 |
| Introduction Courses |
4176 |
| Intermediate Courses |
619 |
| Tantric Retreats |
376 |
| Pre-Ordination Course |
58 |
| Total |
5,229 |
| NON-RESIDENTIAL |
TOTAL: 2009 – 12 |
| Non-Residential Courses |
1063 |
| Movie Days |
2811 |
| Daily Drop-in Meditations |
19,128 |
| Total |
23,002 |
2011 saw record student numbers on our residential courses (at one stage each Introduction course beating the previous course’s all-time record!). As you can see above, 2012 was still another record breaking year, but logistically, it is student numbers on our residential courses that have made the biggest impact on us; a slight reduction in participation in residential student numbers this year. As part of our 2013 motivation of consolidation, we’re happy that this stabilisation gives us an opportunity to reflect re-focussing on quality, not quantity.
Different courses for different people!
Looking at the overall percentage of students on our residential Courses and Retreats over this 4 year period:
Clearly, Introduction to Buddhism courses continue to be the most popular in our residential programme in terms of student numbers, with 77% of our students taking part in them during 2012.
Participation in Tantric Retreats has fluctuated over this period, one factor being the Hayagriva Retreat with Lama Zopa Rinpoche boosting 2010’s figure. 2011’s figure for Tantric retreats is lower due to there not being a Vajrasattva retreat that year, which had a consequent impact on our capacity for Introduction course students.
It’s difficult to evaluate the measurement of 2012’s retreats, as we offered more than ever before, yet there was significant re-structuring of some of our regular retreats, such as Medicine Buddha and Chenrezig. On these retreats the pre-requisites of having taken refuge and having the appropriate Tantric commitment were lowered and they were offered as Intermediate-level practice-based courses instead. This opening up of deity-practice retreats has been very popular, as students who feel drawn to Vajrayana, but do not feel ready to make such a deep commitment to a Tibetan Buddhist path can now participate.
This of course partly explains the rise on Intermediate Level courses since 2011, but only partly. Whatever we offer is popular, it’s just that we aren’t always able to offer everything that we’d like to. Teacher / meditation leader shortages and our ongoing problems with space / noise reduction mean that our options are limited. It seems accurate to say: If we had more teachers and more space, we’d have more students: our experience of Intermediate Level courses and Non-Residential courses is offer it and they will come!
Tushita’s Year – 2012
This chart shows a calendar of all 17 Introduction courses we held in 2012. The smallest course was the first of the year; “quiet season” and yet still attended by 52 students. Although pre-Monsoon is still our busiest season (our largest course having 85 students in June), we’re seeing a general even-ing out of course numbers: the courses are more popular than ever, throughout our 10-month year.
And then of course there was the rest of our programme – 9 Intermediate Level Courses, 7 Tantric retreats, 5 non-residential courses, many special guests and ongoing drop-in events… vast and extensive Dharma activity happening up here on the hill!