What does a Buddhist Order have to offer the world in times of conflict, violence and environmental destruction? How is the creation of spiritual community relevant to wider society? What would a genuine, adequate and radical response to the cries of the world look like? How do we ground a burning aspiration for liberation from suffering in a tangible path of practice? 

The Buddha’s teachings have both profound and pragmatic implications for living our life, addressing the root causes of suffering and calling for a transformation of self as a way to a corresponding transformation of world. 

Through exploring the practice of the six paramitas, or transcendental virtues, we will approach this sublime and challenging ideal of the Bodhisattva, who is dedicated to awakening for all beings, in a series of talks from a line-up of experienced practitioners within our tradition.

A home retreat to inspire and enrich your imagination

The mind liberated from the pressure of the will is unfolded in symbols

W.B. Yeats

Following last year’s successful Mindfulness and Imagination retreat, The Heart of Imagination offers a week of meditation and creative practice, drawing inspiration from poetry, art, nature and Buddhist symbols.

The focus of the retreat will be on cultivating awareness as a gateway into more expanded and enriched states of mind. We will reflect on what the imagination is, what it means to us individually and what it can serve in our lives. There will be an emphasis on meditation and mindfulness with periods of creative exploration – drawing and writing. You’ll receive a rich body of resources to stimulate your imagination and help you access images/themes of significance to you. We will also explore the transformative power of the imagination to enrich our lives and open our mind to new ways of seeing and being.

To deepen our understanding of the transformative power of the imagination we’ll draw on a body of teachings called the ‘System of Spiritual Practice’ that outlines a naturally unfolding process, as awareness deepens through dedicated practice. This can help us to navigate our unique way, with more confidence and freedom. We’ll explore:

• Integration, meaning embodied awareness
• Positive emotion: an open, loving and empathic heart
• Spiritual Death: releasing limiting attitudes, and finding a more authentic way of being
• Spiritual Rebirth: the realm of imagination that brings an expanded experience of ourselves and opening to a sense of mystery
• Spiritual Receptivity: resting in the freedom of open, spacious awareness and creative flow

These are doorways to a more creative experience that we can access whatever our circumstances.

Enlightenment is the state of irreversible creativity

Urgyen Sangharakshita

Friday September 13 – Thursday September 19, 2024

First daily session (2 hrs): USA PDT 2:00 am | México CST 3:00 am | USA EDT 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 daily session (1.5 hrs): USA PDT 7:30 am | México CST 8:30 am | USA EDT 10:30 am | IE & UK BST 3:30 pm | Europe CEST 4:30 pm | India IST 8:00 pm | Australia AEST 12:30 am (next day) | New Zealand NZST 2:30 am (next day)

Third daily session (1.5 hrs): USA PDT 11:30 am | México CST 12:30 pm | USA EDT 2:30 pm | IE & UK BST 7:30 pm | Europe CEST 8:30 pm | India IST 12:00 midnight | Australia AEST 4:30 am (next day) | New Zealand NZST 6:30 am (next day)

Event images by Amitajyoti

This eight-week online course follows Shantigarbha’s book The Burning House: A Buddhist Response to the Climate and Ecological Emergency (Windhorse Publications) and explores the most pressing questions of our times.

Buddhists give great importance to mindfulness, wisdom, compassion and interconnectedness, qualities that often make them deeply concerned about the environment and climate change. So what does Buddhism have to say about the climate emergency? How can we see it for what it really is, a crisis of empathy?

This is a course for Dharmafarers concerned about the climate, Triratna Earth Sangha members, and eco-activists wishing to ground their work in a spiritual context. The sessions follow the Buddhist path from self-development to social change, inspired by the profound principle of nonviolence or love.

Tuesdays 24 September; 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 October; 5, 12 November 2024.

Sessions (2 hrs 15 mins, with break): USA PST 11:00 am | México CST 12:00 noon | USA EST 2:00 pm | IE & UK BST 7:00 pm | Europe CEST 8:00 pm | India IST 11:30 pm | Australia AEST 4:00 am (next day) | New Zealand NZST 6:00 am (next day)

Sangharakshita has said we should be aware of our minds at all times – but how do we do this? How do we really engage with mindfulness in a way that doesn’t feel contrived and ‘added on’, leaving us feeling stiff and unnatural? How can we connect with awareness that is completely natural, unfabricated and uncontrived?

During the 2 sessions of the day retreat we will introduce mindfulness as a path to wisdom. There will be input sessions and led meditations to work with awareness and right view to ‘watch the mind’ through all five physical senses as well as the mind sense. The focus will be on how we use mindfulness as a support to see more clearly, kindly and wisely.

We will look at the role of receptivity in mindfulness and the ‘wise’ or ‘unwise’ attention we bring to every aspect of our experience. And explore how continuity of mindfulness can touch and transform our experience through simple presence and intelligent awareness. This allows us to develop both steadiness of mind and heart and insight into the nature of all things.

Sunday 29 September

First session (3 hrs with a break): USA PST 06:00 | México CST 07:00 | USA EST 09:00 | IE & UK BST 14:00 | Europe CEST 15:00 | India IST 18:30 | Australia AEST 23:00 | New Zealand NZDT 02:00 (next day)

Second session (2 hrs): USA PST 11:00 | México CST 12:00 | USA EST 14:00 | IE & UK BST 19:00 | Europe CEST 20:00 | India IST 23:30 | Australia AEST 04:00 (next day) | New Zealand NZDT 07:00 (next day)

Event images by and machines

An embodied opportunity to explore meditation in community

Following on from last year’s successful Home Retreat ‘Forces for Good: Challenging Emotions as Portals to Liberation’, our friends Balajit, Singhashri and Viveka are back and joining forces again to offer another wonderful embodied opportunity to explore our system of meditation in depth and in community.

This year we’re all invited to draw inspiration from the Mahayana Trikaya (“three body”) teaching that points to who we actually are via three simultaneous dimensions of reality:

• Nirmanakaya: coming home to presence within this body, this world

• Sambhogakaya: befriending the dynamic flow of feeling and energy, and the relational dimension of being

• Dharmakaya: opening to the luminous, boundless dimension of awakened being

We will delve into poetic themes of “coming home” and “belonging” as an emotionally engaging and relational approach to insight that allows:

• Respect and appreciation of core human needs – belonging, safety and dignity

• Holding of the tension between our ideals and our current (often messy) experience

• Healing the illusion of separation and the habits of dualism

• Learning to feel sensations of belonging at the levels of self, community, place, world
  and to express compassionately responsive activity

• Deepening of mindfulness and metta as practices capable of helping us see the true nature of reality

This retreat will include meditation, movement (somatics), music, chanting and ritual, exercises and discussions, teacher input and practice reviews.

If friendship in community is the whole of the spiritual life, here’s your chance to go deeper in your own practice in the supportive company of others.  

“The Dharmakaya is… the embodiment, or the perfection of mind. Mind meaning here the deepest part of oneself, because it is with that deepest part of oneself…that one realises the ultimate. So Dharmakaya corresponds to mind, what in us is mind, in a Buddha is Dharmakaya.

In the same way Sambhogakaya corresponds to speech, what, in us is speech or communication, or communication principle, in a Buddha is Sambhogakaya. So in his Sambhogakaya form, in his ideal form, his archetypal form, he communicates with others on the same spiritual level, communicates with other Buddhas and with highly advanced Bodhisattvas.

And then Nirmanakaya corresponds with – it literally means ‘body of transformation’ – …what is Nirmanakaya in a Buddha in us is physical body. Our physical body determines where we are. The fact that we have a physical body means that we exist at a certain point in space and a certain point in time…”

Sangharakshita, Seminar on the Songs of Milarepa

Friday October 25 – Thursday October 31, 2024

The retreat will start at the time of the second session on October 25. This is to allow the full team to begin the retreat together. All other days will feature three sessions at the times shown on the booking page.

N.B. This retreat is for peole with at least six months’ meditation experience. Please get in touch if you have any questioins about attending: support@thebuddhistcentre.com