Buddhist Centre Features

Buddhism and Meditation for Parents - Online This Weekend!

On Fri, 25 September, 2015 - 18:08
Candradasa's picture
Candradasa

Update: we’ve had so much great material from Taraloka we’re going to keep going with this well into the week! Meditations and talks coming soon…

This weekend we’re focussing on how to practice Buddhism and meditation as a parent (or parent-to-be!), and we’re delighted to be able to bring you resources live from the Retreat for Mothers that’s just getting started on at Taraloka Retreat Centre for women. We hope mums and dads everywhere will get lots of helpful input through what emerges from the retreat - and from the other material we’ll post to complement it. Feel free to join in with your comments - we’d love to hear your experience!

View all posts from this weekend

Read ‘A Path for Parents’ by Karunagita

Join the Triratna Buddhist Parents Network on Facebook (private group)

Click +follow above to be notified when we post content and stay tuned to this space. And if you’d prefer to get less email notifications you can also choose a daily digest under your account settings (hover over your name at the top right of any screen when you are logged in and choose ‘my profile’).

Here’s what two of the weekend retreat leaders - Amaragita and Karunagita - have to say about their intentions for this weekend:

There’s a real call for parents, mothers in particular, to have a chance to talk about practice in the context of being a parent, so this retreat is meeting a real need.
 
The retreat will specifically be looking at the possibility of practice.
 
Karunagita will talk on Saturday morning - introducing the aspects of practice as a parent.
 
Amaragita will do a workshop after that looking at the balance between vipassana and samatha and how we can take it off the cushion into daily life. She will do a talk on Sunday morning on the theme of “little and often” and how we can make practice work in micro hits.

Amaragita

Building on the success of 2014, I am delighted to be leading this weekend retreat for mothers at Taraloka, with Amaragita and Suryagupta. It is open to all mothers and mothers-to-be with an interest in meditation and Buddhism.
 

This weekend will offer an opportunity to take time out and relax, away from immediate family demands. We will have meditation, talks, a workshop and discussion group and short periods of silence.  You will be invited to contribute one simple task a day to help the retreat run smoothly and will be fed and looked after in the welcoming environment of Taraloka, with space in the programme to go for walks, catch up on sleep and chat to other mothers.
 

The team are all mothers. Twenty of my twenty-four years of Buddhist spiritual practice have been within the context of raising children, as a working mother and largely as a single parent. Long ago I needed to go beyond any lurking views that we need acres of solitude and silence to be a proper Buddhist.
 

I have a strong conviction, based on experience, that the context of motherhood offers many invaluable opportunities for insight, heart-opening and personal and spiritual growth. This includes invitations from small children to dwell in the here and now and opportunities for letting go and responding creatively to not getting what we want. We will focus on the inherent opportunities and challenges of motherhood during the weekend.

I was inspired to write this book for myself and for other mothers questioning how to make the teachings and lifestyles associated with Buddhism relevant to our own lives. I was really keen that it would be ‘warts and all’ rather than present an idealised, soft focus view. I’m always touched when people tell me it resonates with their own experience and helps gives them confidence in their own spiritual practice.
Karunagita

Many thanks to Amaragita, Cait Hughes, Karunagita, Sheena MacKenzie, Suryagupta, and Upayavira for their help in making this weekend’s coverage happen!

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