Ratnavandana has given much of her later life to the cultivation and teaching of Brahma Viharas meditation - helping inspire many people to move towards spending more of their time in the ‘divine abodes’ of love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity.
Here is the complete archive of teaching from her Spring 2015 Rainy Season retreat in Bristol, UK. The theme was ‘Living In The Mandala’, looking at the Brahma Viharas in the context of the five Buddha mandala. Talks, readings, guided...
In today’s FBA Dharmabyte, “Setting Intention for Equanimity”, 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...
In today’s FBA Dharmabyte, “The Boundlessness of Metta”, Jvalamalini gives a very personal and helpful take on the metta bhavana (loving kindness) practice, recounting her history with it and the kinds of areas she has worked with over the years in order to learn to love herself and others as deeply as she can. Here she speaks on...
Ratnavandana introduces and guides us through a composite practice of all four Brahma Viharas at once - loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity.
She sets the scene perfectly with an introduction to the notion of cultivation/development within the context of a Buddhist spiritual life, showing how each of these qualities may be called forth whenever needed in the face of our experience, just as the flower is called forth from the seed in springtime.
A selection of beautiful lead-ins to meditation from Day 7 of the Rainy Season Retreat from Spring 2015 which took place in Bristol and around the world online!
We are delighted to share this week’s FBA Podcast entitled, “Introduction to the Brahma Viharas.” Here, Ratnavandana beautifully introduces the Brahma Viharas as an integrated set of practices flowing from metta – loving kindness. Her central image is that of a tree, deep rooted and spreading its canopy wide as she evokes a profound, personal connection to the cultivation of the sublime...
Rounding off day 6 of Living In The Mandala we have another puja that steers to the deep when it comes to evoking the guardian Buddha of the moment, in this case Ratnasambhava - the Jewel-Born, archetypal Buddha of abundance, spiritual riches and the South…
