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UPDATE 10-1-2025"Cultivate Peace Within"
The Southeastern Buddhist Retreat Center's
Inaugural Annual Meeting
Saturday, November 1, 2025
Registration & continental breakfast: 8-9:15 a.m.
Speakers: 9:30-11 a.m.
Officer reports: 11 a.m.-Noon
Santa Fe College Blount Hall
Room DB-109/110
530 W. University Avenue
Gainesville FL 32601
Featured Speakers
Ayya Marajina Bhikkuni of Bhava Nirodha Nilaya (cessation of suffering the third Noble Truth of Lord Buddha)
Nancy Lasseter of Karuna Cottage in Gainesville, co-founder of the Gainesville Buddhist Alliance
Board members and volunteers of the Southeastern Buddhist Retreat Center (SEBRC) are working to create an international, nonsectarian Buddhist retreat center that will help people cultivate peace within--the first step to creating peace in our wider communities and the world.
Here in North Florida, we are blessed to have a variety of Buddhist groups from a number of different paths. We are happy that for our inaugural annual meeting, we will have guest speakers who are affiliated with two of those groups.
Ayya Marajina Bhikkuni of Bhava Nirodha Nilaya (cessation of suffering, the third Noble Truth of Lord Buddha) has spent the last 13 years studying the mind through the Tipitaka, the "Three Baskets" of Theravada Buddhism. She was ordained in 2012 at Aranya Bodhi Hermitage in California with Pavattini-Upajjhaya Venerable Tathaloka, Maha Theri and dual ordination presided by the Venerable Seelawimala Maha Thero of the American Buddhist Seminary in Sacramento as Kammavacacariya. She is a Cuban-American, fluent in Spanish and English and currently teaching in Cuba and Florida.
Nancy Lasseter has been a student of Vipassana meditation since 2002. Her teachers include Marajina Bhikkhuni, Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters, Ajahn Sucitto, Ayya Anandabodhi and Sayadaw Tejaniya. She is drawn to the Thai Forest practices and the Early Buddhist practices but also receives wisdom from many other Buddhist practices. In 2019, she opened Karuna Cottage with her husband Ewen Thomson where she teaches three groups per week. She is also an Integrative Therapies Wellness Educator for the University of Florida Health Arts in Medicine Program where she teaches Beginners Meditation online.
We are also looking forward to hearing from Lama Losang, the founder, president emeritus and spiritual advisor to SEBRC and the resident teacher and spiritual director of Gainesville Karma Thegsum Choling (Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism).
Following the continental breakfast and speakers, officers will give reports on SEBRC's activities in the past year and describe how you could help us to manifest our vision.
Everyone is welcome to attend this free event. We are asking for RSVPs so we can plan for the continental breakfast. Information about how to RSVP is given below. Please share this information, including the request for RSVPs, with anyone you know who might be interested. Thank you!
Want to help? Information about how to volunteer and/or donate will be available.
Organized and sponsored by the Southeastern Buddhist Retreat Center
Co-sponsored by Gainesville Karma Thegsum Choling &
Gainesville Buddhist Alliance
Information & RSVP
[email protected]
or
321-216-0505
(For RSVP & phone call questions about the event, leave message if no answer and say your call is about the annual meeting on November 1)
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Santa Fe College Blount Hall, Room DB-109/110, 530 W. University Avenue Gainesville FL 32601, 530 W University Ave, Gainesville, FL 32601-5287, United States
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
