Magnolia Grove Monastery is a residential monastery and is a Mindfulness Practice Meditation Center A place to sit and relax. "Breathe!
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We openly and warmly welcome the diversity of your experience to this place of refuge and healing - wherever you come from, however you look or identify, whomever you love. Magnolia Grove Monastery is a residential monastery and is simultaneously, Magnolia Grove Meditation Practice Center, a Mindfulness Practice Meditation Center in the tradition of Plum Village, founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi is the realization of a dream held by a compassionate community intent on establishing a center for mindfulness in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Deer Park Monastery in California and Blue Cliff Monastery in New York uphold his tradition. Now, his teaching and methods of practice are taking root in Mississippi. Ten years ago Magnolia Grove was little more than 120 acres purchased by a group of committed individuals and families. With hard work, dedication and coordinated effort they created a large meditation hall with an adjoining commercial kitchen to feed participants, and they built by hand a guesthouse to host 120 laypeople. The vision of the community that built this beautiful practice center was more fully realized when Thich Nhat Hanh accepted Magnolia Grove Monastery as a mindfulness practice center in October 2005. Today, more than thirty monastics from Thich Nhat Hanh’s monasteries are in residence. Magnolia Grove Monastery is a place to practice meditation and mindfulness. It is where every breath we take reminds us of the wonders of life. A place to walk and kiss the earth beneath our feet. A place to rest under a willow tree on an island in a lotus pond. A place to eat together and savor every bite. A place to listen deeply to the sounds of life and the sound of our hearts. A place to work together to build a community of love and understanding. Magnolia Grove is a place where we can stop running, and discover peace with every step we take. A place to remind each one of us that the present moment is a wonderful moment. You are alive"
Office Hours:
While you will continue to get the fastest and most efficient answers to your questions by contacting us by email through office@magnoliagrovemonastery.org, the office staff will be taking phone calls on the following days:
We joyfully invite you to come celebrate our Lunar New Year’s Day of Mindfulness on February 22, 2026.
Our day program is as follows:
8:30 am Walking Meditation
10:00 am Commencing the Lunar New Year with a Prayers for Peace Ceremony followed by Kiều Oracles
12:00 pm Spring Festival Special Lunch�(Savor a variety of Vietnamese Cuisine!)
With the Lunar New Year of the Fire Horse fast approaching, we wish you good health, prosperity, and boundless dharma joy!
Register soon! For more info, see link in bio or visit our website at magnoliagrovemonastery.org
#2026
02/01/2026
Dear Friends,
We have happy news: our power is back on!
Well, nearly completely, that is. Our kitchen and dining hall remain without power but thankfully we still have running water and gas. We now have power again everywhere else: the monastic residences in both hamlets, the big meditation hall, the cabins… etc.
What a wonderful reminder of impermanence to help us cherish the wonders of life we tend to take for granted—having an instant gush of running hot water with a little twist of a k**b or the warmth of an electric heater with a simple button or with a flick of a switch which instantly conjures flooding bright lights.
Our heartfelt and immense gratitude runs deep for all our countless first responders who provided help and safety; our National Guards who delivered supplies and aided stranded vehicles on icy roads and more; and thousands of linemen, even coming from out of state, who bore the extreme cold outdoors including hazardous icy roads and fallen trees… to restore power during one of Mississippi’s most severe winter storms in over 30 years.
We send our prayers and love to those who have sadly passed on from the storms, to everyone who is still without power and are heavily affected, to our neighboring states that also underwent grueling freezing temperatures and damages in the aftermath of the winter storm and some even bracing for more upcoming snow and harsh weather.
We are also grateful for your concern and care for our monastery and we would like reassure you that we are safe and well. Though the storm has passed, we still have icy roads, fallen branches, and trees which makes it still unsafe to reopen our monastery for the time being. We regret that we will not be hosting tomorrow’s Sunday Day of Mindfulness (2.1.26) and will remain closed until further notice. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and will keep you informed when it is safe for us to reopen again. Meanwhile, we invite you to join our Thursday Online Sessions which will still continue as usual (unless we experience another unexpected power outage).
We wish you lots of peace and hope you are all safe and keeping warm!
🙏🙏🙏,
Magnolia Grove Monastery
01/27/2026
Dear beloved community,
We wanted to provide an update to our community worldwide of the historic winter storm that had impacted area.
First of all, we want to express our deepest gratitude to all of the first responders and linemen who are giving their whole hearted efforts during this time. We send our peaceful energy so that they may continue to do so safely. We also want to send our peaceful and compassionate energy to those who are experiencing many challenges and difficulties during this time.
At the monastery, we are still without power, however, we still have water and cooking gas. Many trees and power lines are down but the monks and nuns are still in good spirits and are prepared to be without power for the upcoming days. We are grateful to all of our friends who have been keeping us in their thoughts. We will continue to do what is necessary to ensure the wellbeing of our community.
Given the current conditions, we have decided to unfortunately cancel this upcoming weekend activities (personal retreats and Day of Mindfulness). We see that this would be the safest option for all of our friends who would like to visit the monastery at this time. We will provide an update on when the monastery will be open again at a later date. We thank you for your understanding and patience.
01/01/2026
Dear Friends,
Today is the second to last day of our annual Holiday Retreat.
As we come to a close, both for our Holiday Retreat and 2025, to joyfully welcome 2026, we would like to wish you a very Happy New Year from all of us at Magnolia Grove Monastery!
(Don't forget to tune into Brother Phap Trien's live
Dharma Talk tomorrow! See link in bio.)
year
To start the New Year of 2026, we joyfully invite you to join our Live Dharma Talk on January 1, 2026 offered by our dear abbot of Bamboo Hamlet, Magnolia Grove Monastery: Brother Phap Trien.
Also known as Brother Alan or affectionately called, “Brother Boo," in our Children's Program, he ordained as a monk in 2009 in Upper Hamlet, Plum Village, at the age of 17. He received his dharma lamp transmission in 2019 at Blue Cliff Monastery, NY. A Native Mississippian, he is well loved by children, teens, and adults, both young and old.
Tune in to his Live Dharma Talk at 9:30 am CT either online or in person at Magnolia Grove Monastery.
May the New Year bring about good health, fresh dharma joy, and inner peace to you, your family, and friends!
(See link in bio.)
12/27/2025
Dear Friends,
Annually, each of our Plum Village Practice Centers gathers together to make egg rolls to offer to our neighbors and local communities.
This year, our monastery made and delivered 2,200 fresh chả giò (egg rolls) to our dearest neighbors, healthcare providers, first responders, and local businesses. It’s a tiny gesture in expressing our heartfelt appreciation for the wholehearted love and support we’ve received these past 15 years since our monastery was established in Batesville, MS.
We are truly grateful for everyone who has lent a helping hand in building our monastery to become the growing sanctuary that it is today, offering meditation retreats for children, teens, young and mature adults, from all backgrounds, both far and near.
We would like wish everyone a lot of good health, peace, and joy during this holiday season!
Thank you for being there! Don’t forget to visit us: we are here for you too!
With Profound Gratitude,
Magnolia Grove Monastery
12/21/2025
Dear Friends,
May we continue to cultivate our inner peace and joy today and beyond in our daily sitting meditation sessions and with our local sanghas!
Happy World Meditation Day!
12/13/2025
Dear Friends,
We warmly invite you to join our Christmas Celebration on December 24, 2025.
Our program for this day is as follows:
9:00 Gift Preparations
11:00 Walking Meditation
12:00 Lunch
15:30 Dharma Talk in the Big Meditation Hall
17:00 Dinner
19:00 Be-In
Program concludes.
We wish you much inner peace and love during this holiday season!
*Please bring a small gift (if possible, preferably handmade to encourage creativity and fun or of less than $10 value) for a gift exchange game.
For our monastics and long term retreatants, if you pick a name, we are encouraged to observe the person who’s name we picked to better understand them and offer an appropriate gift that suits their needs or personality.
Please don’t worry too much about the materialistic aspect of the gift–it’s the heart that counts!
Let our seeds of creativity be watered; we can offer a poem we made, perhaps a photo of nature we took, or a handcrafted gift… and go beyond the boxes of conventional thinking. Our spirit of gift exchange is not to nurture the culture of consumerism but to see how creative we can be with our gifts in a joyful way. We can still offer gifts without watering the seeds of consumerism in each other. (If it’s easiest for you to buy a gift, something we can use in our everyday life or food gifts are also perfectly fine.)
**Please kindly note that we are unable to accommodate overnight stays as we are also preparing for our upcoming Holiday Retreat which begins Dec. 28th.
Come deepen your mindfulness with our community in 2026!
We also have varying dates for personal retreats and Sunday Days of Mindfulness on our website: www.magnoliagrovemonastery.org
Whether you come alone, with family, friends, or with your local sangha, come bask in mindful living and heal in nature!
We hope to see you!
11/12/2025
Dear Friends,
Have you ever attended our annual Holiday Retreat?
This year is particularly special to us because it marks Magnolia Grove Monastery's 15th anniversary and this is the last themed retreat of 2025. If you haven't yet, register soon and join our annual Holiday Retreat!
This year's theme is: Love is Presence.
This 5-day retreat from 12.28.25-1.1.26 is open to families, couples, and anyone interested in mindful living and participating in mindful communities.
This retreat offers a Children's Program (6-12) and a Teens' Program (13-17), alongside a program for adults.
Everyone will have a chance to be with their respective age groups for part of the day and we'll regroup for meal times which we call eating meditation and for certain activities such as walking meditation and our New Year's Eve Celebration.
In this retreat we will learn the art of establishing True Presence, in the spirit of Thay's quote: "When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence.
How can you love if you are not there?"
Thich Nhat Hanh, No Death, No Fear: Comforting Wisdom for Life.
As a mindful community we will hone the art of enhancing our everyday life with mindfulness in every moment: sitting, walking, eating, washing dishes, resting...etc. as we learn to be fully present for ourselves and each other.
Aside from our Dharma talks and Dharma sharing circles, we will also welcome the New Year with a peaceful midnight ceremony and offer a Five Mindfulness Trainings Transmission Ceremony for anyone who wishes to receive them.
7:30 am Breakfast
9:00 am Dharma Talk
10:30 am Walking Meditation to Beloved Community Garden followed by a Gratitude Ceremony
12:00 pm Special Lunch with 5 contemplations
November 28th:
Departure Day.
Please note that our only arrival day for this week is Wednesday, in lieu of our regular Friday arrival days.
Today officially marks the first day of our 90-day Rains Retreat!
We commenced our Rains Retreat with a Counting Sticks Ceremony last night (10-18-25). This serves both as a traditional means of counting how many participants will be present for 90-days whilst also being a reminder and symbol of our commitment to stay in a designated place to delve deeper into our spiritual practice and enrich our monastic studies.
During our ceremony last night there was thunder, lightning, and a heavy downpour. Even after the ceremony was completed, it poured so heavily we had to share our umbrellas to return to our quarters. What an auspicious, fresh start!
This morning, we were graced with a sunny day and after walking meditation we had more rain—this time, dharma rain offered by Br. Pháp Chứng who shared about the spirit of rains retreats and offered concrete steps to take care of ourselves both inside and out, through a self inventory of our material goods and inside our mind.
(Stay tuned for his dharma talk in our YouTube channel!)
Our Face-to-Face Ceremony, or Varṣāvāsa Ceremony (“Rainy-Season-Peaceful-Dwelling) this morning took place in the Rising Tide Meditation Hall with a little over 100 people on attendance. In the end, our happy news is: we have 29 nuns, 9 monks, 4 laywomen and 1 layman who have committed to this 90-day retreat!
We thank everyone who came out to support us today and wish everyone a wonderful peaceful-dwelling, wherever you are.
We hope to see you one of these days!
(www.magnoliagrovemonastery.org)
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Magnolia Grove Monastery is a residential monastery and is simultaneously, Magnolia Grove Meditation Practice Center, a Mindfulness Practice Meditation Center in the tradition of Plum Village, founded by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who was nominated for a Noble Peace Prize by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr..
Magnolia Grove Monastery in Batesville, Mississippi is the realization of a dream held by a compassionate community intent on establishing a center for mindfulness in the tradition of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. Deer Park Monastery in California and Blue Cliff Monastery in New York uphold his tradition. Now, his teaching and methods of practice are taking root in Mississippi.
Ten years ago Magnolia Grove was little more than 120 acres purchased by a group of committed individuals and families. With hard work, dedication and coordinated effort they created a large meditation hall with an adjoining commercial kitchen to feed participants, and they built by hand a guesthouse to host 120 laypeople.
The vision of the community that built this beautiful practice center was more fully realized when Thich Nhat Hanh accepted Magnolia Grove Monastery as a mindfulness practice center in October 2005. Today, more than thirty monastics from Thich Nhat Hanh’s monasteries are in residence.
Magnolia Grove Monastery is a place to practice meditation and mindfulness. It is where every breath we take reminds us of the wonders of life. A place to sit and relax. A place to walk and kiss the earth beneath our feet. A place to rest under a willow tree on an island in a lotus pond. A place to eat together and savor every bite. A place to listen deeply to the sounds of life and the sound of our hearts. A place to work together to build a community of love and understanding. Magnolia Grove is a place where we can stop running, and discover peace with every step we take. A place to remind each one of us that the present moment is a wonderful moment.
