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!
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…
It’s on account of equanimity, in its ultimate sense, that you’re balanced - even with regard to Samsara and Nirvana, even those two extremes don’t disturb you. Subject and Object are, the same - or not different, so far as you’re concerned. You are in a state of absolute equanimity or, as I have said elsewhere, you are in a state of axiality and centrality. You have reached what the Chinese mystics call ‘the unwobbling pivot of existence’. As the Mangala sutta says ‘you are one whose mind does not shake when touched by the eight Loka Dhammas.
Do you know what I mean by axiality? You feel as though you are the axis upon which everything turns though not in an egoistic sense. You are absolutely stable and unshakable, immovable, though at the same time you’re extremely mobile, even dancing all over the place. You don’t need to have your centre fixed in any particular spot. Your centre is everywhere.
Ratnavandana introduces and guides us through the practice of cultivating equanimity. Not a cool, detached state but a deep warm engagement with the practice of love, compassion and joy held in the perspective of the Buddha’s insights into the nature of reality itself…
Ratnavandana introducing Day 6 of the urban retreat on the Brahma Viharas - Living In The Mandala. Today we’re sitting with the great golden Buddha of the South, archetypal Buddha of abundance and spiritual richness. A good way to start things off…
We had our usual silent meditative morning, with more beautiful words from Ratnavandana. The shrine room felt very still as we sat with her open approach to practising with all the brahma viharas again.
After lunch - and much rejoicing in Ratnavandana, the team, and the retreat - we did a puja to Sangharakshita, ending with dismantling the central five Buddha shrine. I found it...
An infectiously delightful talk by Sanghaketu on the subject of joyful resonance with others (mudita). He really gets into his subject here! And his sense and experience of gladness comes across beautifully through laughter and reflection on the boon of good friends.
