The urban retreat begins Thursday 1st June

USA PDT 11:00 | México 12:00 | USA EDT 14:00 | IE & UK 19:00 | Europe CEST20:00 | India IST 23:30 | Australia AEST 04:00 (next day) | New Zealand NZST 06:00 (next day)

Join the Urban Retreat—online or in-person!

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We’re really looking forward to this retreat and exploring how the Dharma can support us in relation to the Climate and Ecological Crises. As Buddhists we have something unique to offer the world in this area.

This retreat will be important not just for climate activists but everyone in the Triratna Community who wants to practise the Dharma in the face of these issues.

Part of Buddhist Action Month 2023, and in fulfilment of the European Chairs Assembly’s strategic priority of ‘Dharmic engagement with social and ecological issues’, which is now also a Triratna International Council priority.

The retreat begins a 30-day habit challenge, which extends throughout June.

We hope you can join us at home or with a group at your local centre for the meditations, talks, study and pujas.

See the full programme and meet the speakers

Suggested donation for the retreat:
£100 / $135 / €120 (or £20 / $30 / €25 per day

Come to any sessions you wish on this Home Retreat – catch up online with all the teachings throughout the week!

Like all our events, this retreat is offered by donation rather than charging a compulsory ticket price. If you can, please donate today to help us continue with our work and support others to attend who cannot afford to pay. Thank you!

Meandering River by onformative

Mindfulness is the ground. Let’s look up at the sky.

“Imagine an enormous subterranean chamber all lit up from within. We are living in a tiny chamber next to – indeed, part of – the larger one. We can see nothing at all of what’s going on in the large chamber. In fact, we have no idea that the large chamber is even there.”

Sangharakshita

Awareness, or mindfulness, is an essential foundation for all spiritual growth. Through knowing experience directly we can transform difficulties and become happier, calmer and more fulfilled.

But awareness offers much more: it also provides a doorway to other dimensions in the large chamber of our experience. Awareness of the body, heart and mind can blossom into awareness of boundlessness, love and mystery, as Buddhist teachers have taught down the millennia.

Imagination is a key to this opening. When our minds are clear and we’re alive to what’s within us and around us, our imaginations wake up to new possibilities.

Vidyamala and Vishvapani invite you to join an exploration of mindfulness and imagination through talks, meditation, creative activities, discussion and shared ritual, particularly focused on the richly evocative symbol of the mandala.

This Home Retreat is an opportunity to live for a week with mindfulness, kindness, poetry and creativity, even in the midst of our daily lives.

“If the doors of perception were cleansed, we would see the world as it really is – infinite.”

William Blake

We offer all our classes by donation. Please give generously so others who can’t afford to pay can attend more events like this.

Suggested donation for the whole retreat:
£125 / $175 / €150 or £25 / $35 / €30 per day.

Event image by Jr Korpa

Our deepest and truest nature, right now, is the Dharma. We can imagine – and ultimately experience – this as the total openness of the ‘Dharma body’, which is pure emptiness: empty of any divided-ness whatsoever.

Our world is literally made up from this total openness, together with the illuminating clarity of awareness and unlimited, spontaneous ‘compassionate energy’. Traditionally, the union of these is referred to as ‘mind itself’ or ‘the nature of mind’.

Of course, if we’re caught up in the bewilderment of delusion, we don’t realise that the true nature of our mind is these three ‘bodies’. We identify with our own very solid-seeming body and with our sense of ‘me’ as a substantial ‘self’ separate from everyone and everything else. This very natural mistake is a product of our deluded mind, and is the source of so much unnecessary suffering.

Over the five days of this online retreat we’ll be exploring our own body, just as it is, and the relationship between deluded mind and its true nature. As we settle and relax into this open perspective, we may well discover that the ‘compassionate energy’, the love and sensitivity of our deepest heart is – and always has been – informing every moment of our Dharma practice. Indeed, our whole life…

We offer all our classes by donation. Please give generously so others who can’t afford to pay can attend more events like this.

Suggested donation for the whole retreat:
£125 / $175 / €150 or £25 / $35 / €30 per day.

Photo by Ameer Basheer on Unsplash