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The Earth is Our Witness:
Loving Self and World Through the Climate Crisis Watch practice sessions & get resourcesDonate and support Home RetreatsWhat is a Home Retreat? (click to read)
Home Retreats can be tailored to your needs.
We provide:
- Live Home Retreat events daily
- Specially curated Dharma resources
- A chance to catch up each day on the event sessions by video if you missed them – so you can do the retreat in your own time
- Share your own inspiration and reflections on the private retreat Padlet space
- A chance to connect with the retreat leader to ask questions about your practice
Whether you have the time to engage with a full-on, urban-retreat style week at home – or are super occupied already with kids or work and just want some useful structure to book-end your days with a little calm and inspiration: this is for you.
Join the Home Retreat—online or in-person!
🧘🏽♀️ 🧘🏽♂️ Led by members of the Triratna Earth Sangha
You can access video recordings of all sessions below under each day’s resources.
📖 View the retreat programme and meet the speakers
📖 Download a practice diary to use during the retreat
Triratna Earth Sangha groups are emerging at different Buddhist Centres in the UK and around the world. Join them in-person and many other friends online for a 5-day Urban Retreat leading to a Dharma celebration of Earth Day 2022.
We’ll be connecting, meditating, studying, and creating ritual space together, online and at Buddhist Centres.
What is this retreat about?
What to expect
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Supporting you to be inspired and positive about your personal Dharma practice in relation to action around the environment.
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A space to unite all Buddhist practitioners who also want to care for the earth, with the Dharma as our shared basis.
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Looking at our emotions and thought processes around the environment—and how to transform them when they feel difficult. Dharma eco-activism should never promote unskilful mental states!
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Encouraging connection in small groups where we can explore our environmental actions in relation to Dharma practice and our mental states.
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Broaden our sense of positive concern for the earth. It’s not just about climate! All life counts in an ecological approach to the Dharma.
Led by members of the Triratna Earth Sangha, including Parami, Tejopala, Shantigarbha, Santacitta, Akasharaja, Akuppa, and Sarvajit, M J Moore and Claudia Ponath
the triratna earth sangha
The Triratna Earth Sangha is 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.
This conference from 2021 is a great resource for this retreat and brings you a full programme of talks, workshops, meditations and rituals exploring how we as Buddhists can respond to the climate and ecological emergency.
Suggested donation for the retreat:
£100 / $135 / €120 (or £20 / $30 / €25 per day
Welcome to the retreat
Day 1
Re-watch the Live PRACTICE sessions
Climate Doomism and the Four Reminders with Sarvajit
The retreat begins with a session live from Cambridge, England. Explore with Sarvajit how we can think about the question ‘what is the point of fighting for change when the odds are so stacked against us?
Gratitude and Connection: the Ecological Body with Akuppa
Akuppa leads the second session of our first day on retreat together, extending our sense of what our bodies are, an unbounded heartfelt love naturally arises. Listening to our bodies’ stories might help this unfold.
The Treasured Gold – From Climate Grief to Compassionate Engagement with Ananta
This session aims to harness the energy trapped in emotions like climate despair and grief, and channel it towards compassionate engagement with ourselves and others. This can support our resolve to keep going in the face of immense challenges.
Ananta leads this restorative session through reflection, meditation and ritual. There is time to to reflect on our sorrows, turning towards forgiveness and calling on deeper resources to nourish and sustain us in the fight for the survival of our planet.
retreat resources
Global Virtual Training: A Presentation by Ananta
To accompany the final session of our first day, this is the presentation that Ananta shared with us about climate change.
Day 2
Re-watch the Live PRACTICE sessions
The Five Liberations with Vajrashura
Vajrashura opens day 2 of the retreat, expanding on his theme that an ethical life is a Dharma life, and a Dharma life is a life of love for self and world. In particular, we look at the framework of the five liberations to see how we might journey to simplicity, connection and meaning.
Freedom, Respect and Kinship: the Human World with Akuppa
Harmony with the Earth is inseparable from harmony between people. Akuppa guides our exploration of the indivisibility of love, beginning with people.
Celebrating the Earth: Healing Through Poetry and Pujas with MJ Moore and Claudia Ponath
We need to acknowledge and work with our grief for all that we have lost or will likely lose soon. As a balance to our grief, we need to express our gratitude for what we have, and strengthen our resolve to connect with and preserve what remains.
Poetry and pujas offer a powerful way to connect and heal. As part of this celebration, participants were invited to share poems they love in a breakout session.
retreat resources
Celebrating the Earth: A Presentation by the San Francisco Green Sangha
A presentation by the San Francisco Green Sangha accompanying the closing ritual on the second day of the retreat.
Day 3
Re-watch the Live PRACTICE sessions
Living Ethically with the Climate and Ecological Emergency with Akasharaja
The environmental crisis we’re experiencing can trigger very strong emotional responses including fear, anger, blame and othering. Yet the Dharma is utterly uncompromising in its insistence on our taking responsibility for our own mental states and the inevitable suffering that will follow if we don’t. So how can we respond skilfully to the challenge? And how can we make the shift from an appropriative to an appreciative attitude to the world, seeing beauty and potential even in those whom we feel inclined to blame for our plight?
Freedom, Respect and Kinship: the More than Human World with Akuppa
After yesterday’s talk on the human world, Akuppa goes beyond to reflect on the loveability of animals and trees.
An Evening of Meditation: Meeting the Bodhisattva Ksitigarbha with Santacitta
Ksitigarbha is popular in East Asia, but perhaps not so well known in the West. He is depicted as a young Buddhist monk carrying a staff to force open the gates of hell and a wish-fulfilling jewel. His name can be translated as ‘earth womb’ or ‘earth store’ and he is known for his vow to take responsibility for the instruction of all beings in the six realms between the death of Sakyamuni Buddha and the coming of Maitreya, the future buddha. He has also vowed not to achieve Buddhahood until all the hells are emptied. He is much needed in these chaotic times.
Day 4
Re-watch the Live PRACTICE sessions
Entering the Burning House with Shantigarbha
The climate and ecological emergency is Buddhist ‘business‘ and no one gets to sit this one out.
Harvesting the Gifts of the Ancestors with Santacitta
Drawing on gratitude and respect for the generations of people who have gone before us, this exercise takes us back in time, through the generations of our ancestors back to the beginning when we humans first emerged in central Africa.
You’re encouraged, if possible, to meet with others in your local Sangha at your local centre and participate in this exercise together. However do not be put off if you are not able to do this, please try it anyway!
This session work is based on Joanna Macy’s network ‘The Work that Reconnects’.
Puja based on Shambhala Warrior Mind-Training Verses by Akuppa, with Shantigarbha and Diana
May I firmly establish my intention
to live my life for the healing of the world.
Be conscious of it, honour it.
Nurture it every day even in small ways…
Putting down the leaden burden of saving the world alone,
I join with others of like mind,
Aligning myself with the forces of resolution.
Day 5
Re-watch the Live PRACTICE sessions
In the Face of the Climate Crisis, How Can We Have Faith? With Tejopala
The climate crisis is not only the biggest challenge humanity has ever faced, but possibly the biggest challenge Buddhism has faced too. Our confidence in the path can get badly shaken, or worse. Tejopala explores how we can keep our trust and confidence in the Three Jewels at this time.
Triratna Earth Sangha Groups
- Karunahridaya leads a “smile meditation” featuring a poem by Spike Milligan.
- Angela Lombardi speaks from the heart about radical regeneration.
- Shantigarbha explores the idea of climate comedy.
Closing Ritual by Candlelight with Parami
An evocation of the earth Buddha, Ratnasambhava, with mantras. Hosted by Parami and the Glasgow Buddhist Centre Social Action Kula.
Everything we offer is by donation – give today and help us keep it free for everyone!
We hope you find the Home Retreat helpful. As we all take care of each other through this extraordinary time we are committed to staying online with you for as long as it takes – and beyond.
If you can, donate and help us reach more people like you.
Thank you from our team and from the online community around the world!
May you be well!
Stay connected to community
Subscribe now to get the Triratna Highlights newsletter and we’ll keep you posted by email on new resources as they become available.
If you prefer to get your inspiration on social media, we’ll be there too: connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr.
With deep thanks to all the members of the Triratna Earth Sangha, including Parami, Tejopala, Shantigarbha, Santacitta, Akasharaja, Akuppa, and Sarvajit, M J Moore and Claudia Ponath.
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