HOL in Mar & Apr: When Dhamma things don't go our way

When things don't go our way especially when doing Dhamma activities, it is a good reminder that things are hardly within our control.

Greetings supporters,

March was a pretty exciting month for us as we celebrated IWD by sharing a list of female Dhamma teachers we can learn from while having a podcast chat with Venerable Sumangala on balancing ambition with inner peace.

Having female Dhamma teachers is especially helpful for lay females who sometimes share that they find it harder to relate female-centric challenges with male monastics. We hope to continuously bring to light more female Dhamma teachers out there to fill out the 'missing half' of the Dhamma landscape.

We thought that bringing to mind these female teachers could bring to light the missing 'half of Dhamma'.

Our team and supporters

In April, we did our set-up at the Singapore Buddhist Federation’s Vesak Day and worked hard to ship out different merchandise items! We sold items ranging from key chains to greeting cards to our awesome Brahma Vihara Nano-bricks blindbox!

Our first stock of blind boxes was quickly sold out just after midday, thanks to support from the crowd.

Blindbox that consumers can buy and see which they can get: Metta, Mudita, Karuna, Uppekha nano-bricks Buddha!

It is now back on sale with pre-orders right here: https://handfulofleaves.life/merchandise/. We are still at a pre-order stage as the stock has delays and also modifications needed.

For our team, it has been a gruelling process to get the blind boxes from design to selling our first batch. Naturally, frustrations arose with overpromised timelines from our manufacturers, but we are just glad to have some of the boxes reach in time for Vesak!

It was a good reminder of our practice that we can only put in conditions, but cannot control the outcome that happens.

Interestingly, April was also the month our website went down for 24 hours because of a hosting issue. We are touched to have a number of readers asking us, ‘Bruh what’s wrong’. Kai Xin quickly helped to bring our website back online!

March Topics you may have missed:

1. Your ultimate guide to visiting UK monasteries

2. Relooking our relationship with Food

3. How a dental visit taught me about Dhamma and my lack of readiness to die

4. Dhamma ways to deal with imposter syndrome

5. Balancing ambition and inner peace

April Topics you may have missed:

1. 5 common errors to avoid when trying to share the Dhamma

2. A widow, a Buddhist text, and my learnings from her

3. Places to start learning Zen in Singapore

4. Buddhist leadership burnout

5. Reflections from working the elderly

Thank you folks for reading thus far. We also wish to share that our HOL Community day for our supporters and readers is coming up on 14th June! Meet other fellow like minded people by registering here!

Topics we are looking out for article writers!

1. Ghost month

2. Post General Election Reflections

3. National Day

Do drop us an email if you are keen!