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Reflections on Mudita - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Mon, 27 Apr, 2020 - 11:04

Reflections on Mudita - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Mon, 27 Apr, 2020 - 11:04

Hi everyone, hope you’re enjoying your explorations of the Brahma Viharas - I am!  Here’s a few of my reflections on Mudita.  Somehow I feel like this is the Brahma Vihara I always forget about, and every time I rediscover it, I find it so delightful I wonder why! 

Ratnavandana and I would have been running ’Living in the Mandala: The Brahma Viharas’ retreat at Taraloka this very week (April 2020) - I’m so pleased it can happen in another form. ...

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A Day So Happy - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 4

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 27 Apr, 2020 - 08:31

A Day So Happy - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 4

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 27 Apr, 2020 - 08:31

A good few years ago I remember watching a film on TV with my sister. We generally don’t like the same type of films - and this one was a dance movie, not my favourite genre - so my attention was phasing in and out. But somewhere in the midst of the seeming silliness of the plot (a middle aged lawyer, played by Richard Gere, finds a dance teacher, Jennifer Lopez, and his life turns around for the better) something caught my...

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Community Highlights

Reflections on Metta - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 09:52

Reflections on Metta - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 09:52

‘Living in the Mandala: The Brahma Viharas’ retreat would have been happening at Taraloka retreat centre now - April 2020 - but then there was lockdown! So I thought I’d share some personal reflections around my own current practice of the Brahma Viharas to complement Ratnavandana’s online retreat.   

There’ll be a few more coming! 

love Maitrisiddhi 

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A temptation to fix suffering - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 3

By kusaladevi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 09:18

A temptation to fix suffering - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 3

By kusaladevi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 09:18

I’m a fixer. I’ve always been good at fixing things. I love the challenge of it and the satisfaction of something broken working again. I’m quite practical and my Dad is a plumber, so when I was young I used to watch him using tools and learn that I didn’t need to be afraid of trying many different ways to repair something. I remember when I was around 9 years old, my Dad’s internal cassette holder in his car had...

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Metta like the sun - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 2

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:10

Metta like the sun - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 2

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:10

In today’s Notes on the Metta Bhavana on the Being Divine Online home retreat, Ratnavandana speaks of Metta as being both a natural state that is present when we relax and open...

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Welcome - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 1

By Sadayasihi on Fri, 24 Apr, 2020 - 11:20

Welcome - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 1

By Sadayasihi on Fri, 24 Apr, 2020 - 11:20

As the end of another week approaches, it’s always a good moment to take stock of things. It’s the end of yet another week of lockdown for many of us across the world - another week of re-adjusting to the new normal: of social distancing but increasing online connection. And it’s vital in making that transition that we bring all the Dharmic tools we can with us so that our online connections are rich and satisfying.

So for this home retreat...

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Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: Living Like a River

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 25 Nov, 2019 - 14:00

Ratnavandana shares an intensely honest, psychologically intimate, beautifully forensic history of her personal relationship to the practice of upekkha (equanimity) throughout her spiritual life. We hear about ways to assess what is going on in the subtler realms of our experience - and how to look to move beyond them so we too can live like a river…

Excerpted from the talk A Personal Take On Upekkha given as part of the series Brahma Viharas - Bristol Rainy Season Retreat...

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Wednesday Meditation: Above, Below, and All Around - The Four Immeasurables

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 7 Oct, 2019 - 12:06

Wednesday Meditation: Above, Below, and All Around - The Four Immeasurables

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 7 Oct, 2019 - 12:06

Body like a mountain, heart like an ocean, mind like the sky.” - attributed to Dōgen, 13th Century Japanese Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō school of Zen

The Brahma Viharas are sometimes known as the four immeasurables because the number of living beings to whom they apply is immeasurable and the benefits of practising them are immeasurable. 

The Brahma Viharas meditation consist of cultivating loving-kindness (Metta), compassion / solidarity (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita) and equanimity (upeksha).

...

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Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: Creating New Pathways

By Sadayasihi on Thu, 10 Jan, 2019 - 11:00

Today’s FBA Dharmabyte is called Creating New Pathways from the talk Living In the Mandala Ratnavandana. This is her second talk of the 2015 Rainy Season Retreat in Bristol, UK.

Here Ratnavandana embarks on a personal sharing of how her life has been transformed by deciding to go and live in the mandala of the Brahma Viharas and the Jinas themselves. Her deep love of the practices represents both an inspired and...

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Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: The Fulcrum of Vedana

By Sadayasihi on Tue, 15 May, 2018 - 12:00

This FBA Dharmabyte is from a talk by Kulaprabha called The Alchemy of Happiness, a thoughtful take on the positive emotions cultivated in the ‘Brahma Vihara’ meditations.

This excerpt, called ‘The Fulcrum of Vedana’, takes a look at the relationship between mindfulness and positive emotion. Talk given at the Western Buddhist Order convention, 2007.

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