Happy New Year!

Today we celebrated the festival of the Buddha's birth, and therefore the start of the new year, at Throssel Hole Abbey.
In this picture of the altar are offerings of cakes iced in brown and blue - probably the results of one of the children's activities, as the weekend was a family retreat. The mass of flowers at the bottom right of the picture is the roof over the small statue of the baby Buddha.


This shows the ceremony hall after the ceremony and the Dharma talk - a couple of people were still in the side chapels behind the main altar.

As usual, we had an excellent lunch, and it was just about warm enough to eat outside, though cloudy and dull.