Tag: rainy season retreat 2015

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 7: Guided Brahma Viharas Meditation (With Notes on Bhavana)

By Centre Team on Sat, 11 Apr, 2015 - 20:27

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.

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 7: Introductions, Inspirations and Mantra

By Centre Team on Sat, 11 Apr, 2015 - 20:12

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!

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Jvalamalini talks about Rainy Season Retreat

By jvalamalini on Mon, 30 Mar, 2015 - 16:23

What is a rainy season retreat?

How did you come to have Ratnavandana lead the retreat on Living in the Mandala?

How did it go?

How was it to share the retreat online?

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Ratnavandana talks about the Living in the Mandala Retreat

By jvalamalini on Mon, 30 Mar, 2015 - 16:20

Ratnavandana talks about the Living in the Mandala Retreat

By jvalamalini on Mon, 30 Mar, 2015 - 16:20

On the last day of the 2015 Rainy Season retreat, Ratnavandana talks about how it was to lead a retreat in an urban Buddhist Centre.

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: A Puja To Ratnasambhava

By Centre Team on Tue, 24 Mar, 2015 - 22:46

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… 

Complete with flute-accompanied mantra!

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

equanimity in its ultimate sense

By jvalamalini on Mon, 23 Mar, 2015 - 13:16

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.

(Sutta Nipata seminar 1976)

Sangharakshita
Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: Guided Upekkha Bhavana Meditation (Cultivation of Equanimity)

By Centre Team on Sun, 22 Mar, 2015 - 18:59
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…

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: Guided Meditation - Sitting In The Mandala (With Ratnasambhava Mantra)

By Centre Team on Sun, 22 Mar, 2015 - 15:31
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…

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Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 8: meditating, rejoicing, puja to Bhante, and clear up!

By jvalamalini on Sat, 21 Mar, 2015 - 20:53

Day 8: meditating, rejoicing, puja to Bhante, and clear up!

By jvalamalini on Sat, 21 Mar, 2015 - 20:53

Late post today - it’s been a full last day.

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...

Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 5: A Personal Take On Mudita by Sanghaketu

By Centre Team on Sat, 21 Mar, 2015 - 20:43
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.

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