• Loose clothing (and, even in summer, a fleece coat or sweater)
  "Quiet" clothing for meditation is best; e.g. nylon sports clothing can be disruptive to others
  when used for walking meditation or settling into the meditation hall.
• Heavy Socks for indoors
• Outdoor Footwear
• Toiletries (unscented products, please)
• Bath towel
• Alarm Clock
• Flashlight
• Earplugs (your roommate may snore)
• PLEASE NO hairdryers or other heavy users of electricity; we're aiming for a green monastery, please help us!
• Do not bring bedding; we have plenty for your use while you are here

For meditation

• The monastery has a good supply of cushions and stools for guests. However, please feel free to bring personal "sitting gear" from home if you would prefer.

To copy Dhamma talks

• USB key, USB drive, or portable hard drive. Visitors are welcome to copy Dhamma talks from Birken's large collection. The monastery normally has a good supply of CDs and DVDs for copying purposes.

Note: If you have a portable hard drive, you may choose to copy our entire collection of Dhamma Talks. It requires about 50 GB. Unfortunately, copying cannot be done onto portable hard drives formatted with Apple Mac OS X (that is, with the HFS+ filesystem).