Live Events
THE CALL OF ANXIETY: DEVELOPING A FEARLESS COMPASSIONATE HEART
LED BY SINGHASHRI AND BALAJIT
FRIDAY 13TH TO SUNDAY 15TH JUNE, 2025

Friday 13th to Sunday 15th June, 2025
Weekend retreat: Singhashri & Balajit guide practical Buddhist methods to meet anxiety and grow a fearless, compassionate heart.
Many meditators come to practice in the hope of reducing or even getting rid of difficult feelings like stress and anxiety. Yet, to feel anxiety about our lives and especially the current state of our world is a completely understandable and even appropriate response. So how do we learn to listen deeply to our anxiety without allowing it to overwhelm us?
Anxiety can have a debilitating effect on our lives. Popular techniques that emphasise trying to calm or relax, whilst having a place, on their own provide surface and temporary relief. Buddhism teaches that contracted mental states are driven by deeper underlying causes and conditions that through practice can be seen through and released.
Anxiety is also sending us an important message: that we are struggling to tolerate our current bodily experience. It is a messenger of information. On this practical and experiential weekend retreat, guided by the core teachings of the Buddha, we will be exploring effective and creative ways of responding to this.
How in relationship with others, can we resource ourselves to stay present to our body of experience that includes others and the world? How do we build emotional resilience and therefore be less vulnerable to overwhelm? How can we show up in the world with a more fearless compassionate heart?

Singhashri
Singhashri (she/her or they/them) is a queer, Latinx-American dharma teacher and writer. They teach mindfulness and compassion as means to awakening to love, beauty and truth and have committed their life to supporting collective liberation for all and the joy and freedom found there. They teach at various retreat and urban centres across the UK, Europe and the USA, and support a number of projects aimed at creating greater diversity and inclusion within Buddhist sanghas and the secular mindfulness field. They currently live in London with their partner.

Balajit
Balajit (he/him) has been leading retreats and events across the UK for around 15 years. For several years he lived and worked at Vajraloka Retreat Centre in North Wales.
He is currently based in Birmingham, where he mixes Buddhist teaching responsibilities with work as a trauma therapist. He has studied the newly emerging psycho-biological approaches to trauma work- and is qualified in Somatic Experiencing, NARM therapy and SHEN Therapy.
In the past few years, Balajit has been exploring correspondences between these emerging approaches and the canonical Dharma, as aids to becoming more embodied and the arising of the bodhicitta.
SOWING SEEDS OF COMPASSION IN THE WORLD
LED BY TRIRATNA EARTH SANGHA
SATURDAY 7TH JUNE

Triratna Earth Sangha – Online day retreat
Members of the Triratna Earth Sangha are offering this retreat as part of BAM (Buddhist Action Month) 2025. This year’s theme is the same as the the theme if this retreat: Sowing seeds of compassion in the world.
Buddhist Action Month (BAM) is an annual opportunity to put our Buddhist values into action. It’s a time to reflect on how our compassion manifests in the world, celebrate what we are already doing, and challenge ourselves to do more. Founded by the Network of Buddhist Organisations in 2012, BAM quickly grew into a month-long initiative every June, inspiring practical action throughout the year. Individuals, groups, and Buddhist Centres across the world participate each year, making a collective impact.
This year the theme is ‘Sowing Seeds of compassion in the world’, which includes creating stories of positive ecological and climate action to inspire others so we can face the future together more joyfully. We invite you to get involved in ecological and climate action in your local communities by joining already existing groups and creating your own.
To act with gentleness and endeavour towards the collective wellbeing of all life, is to follow the Buddhist path and our aspiration to address suffering. The future emerges from our present actions and therefore sowing seeds is the most important thing we can do – both literally and metaphorically.
Join us for our day retreat online on 7 June as we explore this theme!

Who are the Triratna Earth Sangha?
A group of Triratna Order members, Mitras and Friends worldwide who are deeply concerned about the climate and ecological crises we face and see it as part of their practice to do something about them. We are all too painfully aware of the Buddha’s core teaching that actions have consequences. The accelerating destruction of ecosystems in the natural world caused by greed, hatred and ignorance is causing untold suffering to beings of many kinds, and we feel that it is our duty as Buddhists to do what we can to raise awareness of the plight of the planet, demonstrate an alternative way of life based on stillness, simplicity and contentment and act to relieve suffering where we can.
BREATHE, WRITE AND CONNECT
A REFLECTIVE WRITING DAY RETREAT WITH YASHOBODHI
SUNDAY 29TH JUNE, 2025

Join Yashobodhi on this day retreat for a breath of fresh air through meditation and reflective writing.
The writing we’ll do together is about process rather than product. We are not crafting polished texts, but using our writing for reflections and explorations.
It would be ideal if you attended both parts of the day, but you are also welcome to only come to the morning or the afternoon.
What to expect from the day:
-
guided meditation
-
prompts for reflective writing
-
some interaction in friendly, optional small groups (3-4 people)
-
hopefully some new insights!
Come along and delve a bit deeper: explore reflective writing with us to connect with yourself and others.
Sunday 29th June, 2025
First session (3 hrs): USA & Canada PT 2:00 am | México CST 3:00 am | USA & Canada ET 5:00 am | IE & UK BST 10:00 am | Europe CEST 11:00 am | India IST 2:30 pm | Australia AEST 7:00 pm | New Zealand NZST 9:00 pm
Second session (2.5 hrs): USA & Canada PT 6:30 am | México CST 7:30 am | USA & Canada ET 9:30 am | IE & UK BST 2:30 pm | Europe CEST 3:30 pm | India IST 7:00 pm | Australia AEST 11:30 pm | New Zealand NZST 1:30 am (next day)

About Yashobodhi
Yashobodhi has been teaching Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness in different settings for over 15 years. She is also a writer and published a variety of articles and two books. For a number of years she has facilitated reflective writing groups, both for the TBCO and elsewhere. Yashobodhi is originally from the Netherlands, but has lived and worked in the UK since 2010 and happily continues to do so.
THE RIVER UNDERGROUND
A MEDITATION HOME RETREAT LED BY PARAMANANDA
FRIDAY JULY 11 – THURSDAY JULY 17

Connecting and engaging with whatever truly moves and sustains us!
“We heal through the imagination, through images and fictions.”
James Hillman, ‘Healing Fiction’
At its best, meditation practice and Dharma reflection can be a means to help us gain access to the unseen underlying currents and forces that shape our lives. Yet, as practitioners in day to day life, many of us can still have an experience of somehow being ‘out of touch’ both with ourselves and with the world in all its fullness.
On this Home Retreat, Paramananda will bring his usual rich blend of meditation, magic, warmth, encouragement, challenge, poetry, authenticity and diamond-sharp clarity to help us contact something deeper that can transform this feeling of loss and restore our sense of agency with the mysterious reaches of our being.
We’ll share the space online together: listening internally; paying attention to what’s arising and passing away; sharing and questioning with a profound curiosity; and activating our imagination to try to connect and engage with whatever truly moves and sustains us. You never know what you’ll find under the surface of things! By learning to settle and rest in an experience of ‘soul’ we can begin to feel the flow of the ever-changing river that runs through it and mysteriously nourishes us in ways that are genuinely restoring for the heart.
Join us for an emergent space that will include meditation, poetry, reflections, small and large group discussions and enquiry, teaching input, drumming, guided practices, and creative Buddhist ritual.
This retreat is presented in collaboration with Melbourne Buddhist Centre. The second session each day will be broadcast live from the Centre shrine room in Melbourne. Come and practise in truly international community!
FRIDAY JULY 11 – THURSDAY JULY 17

Paramananda is an inspirational and much loved Buddhist teacher who has written a number of books on Buddhism and the craft of meditation, including ‘Change Your Mind’, ‘A Deeper Beauty’, and mostly recently ‘The Myth of Meditation: Restoring Imaginal Ground through Embodied Buddhist Practice’.
He worked for a number of years as a psychiatric social worker and did voluntary work in the community for the Samaritans, in drug detox, and in a hospice. Having co-founded the San Francisco Buddhist Center, Paramananda is now based in West London where is time is dedicated to teaching.
UNCONTRIVED MINDFULNESS;
FROM AWARENESS TO WISDOM
LED BY VAJRADEVI
FRIDAY 1ST AUGUST – TUESDAY 5TH AUGUST

A home retreat exploring awareness, acceptance, and wisdom.
Awareness is crucial to Insight, but a Dharma perspective is even more important. Without ‘Right View’ informing what we’re aware of, we run the risk of reinforcing ‘wrong views’. Wrong views are naturally present in the unenlightened state, but we can train ourselves to become aware of those ideas and distortions through learning to watch our minds. Mind watching reveals how we are relating to whatever is happening in experience, whether it be a thought, an emotion, or an arising through one of our senses.
We can relate to experience with acceptance, interest, and impartiality. Or we can resist and proliferate around what is happening, seeing a painful state grow before our eyes, feeling that we are seemingly powerless to stop it. All our dukkha; our dis-ease, dissatisfaction and disappointment come from this resistance.
We can see Right View as a ‘curative’ perspective. It helps us see how we cling and how through that clinging we create our own suffering. Mindfulness and Right View give us tools to relate to ourselves in ways that don’t create further suffering for ourselves or others. We have freedom from fixed views and wise attentiveness in the palm of our hands.
There will be talks and led meditations, using the framework of the Satipatthana Sutta, the Buddha’s primary teaching on Mindfulness. We’ll relate the sutta to the aspects of Spiritual Death and Spiritual Receptivity in our Mandala of Practice.
We will meditate using all 4 postures (walking, sitting, standing and lying down). The emphasis is on continuity of awareness outside of formal practice times. You will receive encouragement to stay present to whatever is happening, and whatever is needed, in any moment. This is a receptive and flexible approach to awareness with kindness as an implicit thread running through it, and understanding and wisdom, a potential in every moment.
Friday 1st August – Tuesday 5th August

Vajradevi has been meditating since 1985 and has been ordained for almost 30 years. She has been practising and teaching mindfulness with a strong insight dimension for over 20 years. To further her practice she has been on a number of long retreats with specialists on Satipatthana, in Myanmar and the US.
She has spent much of her adult life working in Triratna Right Livelihood settings and between 2000-2007 she helped set up Akashavana, our women’s ordination retreat centre, in Spain.
You can read her meditation blog at www.uncontrivedmindfulness.net
Daily Meditation

We offer two open meditation spaces Monday to Saturday every week.
Please be aware that there will be seasonal time changes for the US, India and Oceania in spring and autumn/fall.
First sit (45 mins):
USA (PDT): 00:30
México: 01:30
USA (EDT): 03:30
IE & UK: 07:30
Europe (CET): 08:30
India: 13:00
Australia (AEDT): 18:30
New Zealand (NZDT): 20:30
Second sit (45 mins):
USA (PDT): 06:00
México: 07:00
USA (EDT): 09:00
IE & UK: 13:00
Europe (CET): 2:00 pm
India: 6:30 pm
Australia (AEDT): 00:00 (next day)
New Zealand (NZDT): 02:00 (next day)
Donations