Exercises and reflections for Tuesday: how’s it going? Learning to review our practice

The Urban Retreat is now well under way.  During the weekend we learnt about the worldly winds, how we might turn them from obstacles into spiritual opportunities, and then we made our own personal practice resolutions. Yesterday we set up various “reminders” to help us keep clear about our sense of purpose even when we’re in the thick of it.  Today we’ll explore the “review” section of the Urban Retreat diary.

This is the last main section of the...

The Worldly Winds and Wisdom

Insight, Wisdom and Enlightenment are big, impressive and rather scary words. It’s easy to think that they are far beyond the level of our daily practice and that what’s relevant right now is just simple ethics, mindfulness and trying to be kind. But digging a bit deeper into the issues we confront, and especially considering them in the light of the Buddha’s teachings, they often turn out to touch on deeper truths. The things that happen to us every day...

Vidyamala - Pleasure and Pain (extended version)

The Worldly Winds - Pleasure and Pain (Extended Version), International Urban Retreat 2011 by thebuddhistcentre

Listen on iOS or get the app. Here’s the extended version (twice as long!) of Vidyamala’s contribution to the retreat, as a Soundcloud.

Download this track

For more information about using Soundcloud see our notes on experimental Dharma discussion.

Taking the Buddha to the beach

Hi from Auckland New Zealand.

I forgot to take a picture of our Urban retreatants here. Not a large crowd, but we also have a few people doing the retreat online. Here is a picture of our beach meditation on Sunday. It was lovely but a little chilly. Great to spend time together meditating, surrounded by nature. Natural beauty makes a rich shrine cloth.