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.

About the day retreat
Join experienced writer and meditator Yashobodhi for this day retreat tuning into joy through meditation and reflective writing.

We cannot force joy to come, but we can certainly invite it to enter our experience as we delve gently into the realm of things waiting to be discovered.

The writing on this day is about process rather than about a product. We are not writing texts, but using the writing for our personal reflections and explorations.

It works best if you attend both parts of the day, but you are also welcome to only come to the first or second session. And you won’t have to share your writing with anyone if you’d rather not!

The ingredients of the day:

• Guided meditation
• Reflective writing
• Some optional interaction in small groups (3-4 people)

Do come along if you want to regroup, refresh and reinforce yourself. We will be looking forward together…

Sunday May 19 2024

First session (3 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 session (2.5 hrs): USA PDT 6:30 am | México CST 7:30 am | USA EDT 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)

Event image by Liz Sanchez-Vegas

A home retreat to enrich and inspire the heart of wonder

The mind, freed 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.

Over the seven days we’ll engage in a variety of mindfulness practices, reflections and creative explorations to access the potential of the imagination to awaken the heart and enrich our lives.

Bringing mindful awareness to the whole of our lives, we’ll explore how being grounded and embodied can open a space for curiosity, receptivity and connection.

To deepen our understanding of creativity and the imagination as gateways to awakening, we’ll draw on the great themes of spiritual life as formulated by Sangharakshita:

• 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

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