Tag: Ratnavandana

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Additional Resources - Being Divine Online Day 4: Mudita and Amoghasiddhi's All-Accomplishing Wisdom

By Sadayasihi on Mon, 27 Apr, 2020 - 09:46

Mudita is often translated as “sympathetic joy” but here Maitrisiddhi uses “gladness”, and sets out the benefits of cultivating this state, particularly needed if we tend towards the negative. She explains how Amoghasiddhi - the green Buddha known as “unobstructed success” - can help us transform the poison of envy (the enemy of gladness) and release our energy into vibrant life.

A talk brimming full of delight and laughter, Maitrisiddhi demonstrates the importance of Mudita in the...
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Reflections on Karuna - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 12:11

Reflections on Karuna - Being Divine Online home retreat

By Maitrisiddhi on Sun, 26 Apr, 2020 - 12:11

Hi folks, ‘how to respond to suffering with compassion’ is quite a live question for me at the moment - and probably for many of you too - so here’s a few of my reflections. Ratnavandana and I would have been running ’Living in the Mandala: The Brahma Viharas’ retreat at Taraloka this very week (April 2020) - how amazing that instead it can happen online! 

Wishing you all very well in your practice,      

...
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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
  • Image by Ray Bilcliff on Pexel

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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Additional Resources - Being Divine Online Day 2: Metta and Akshobhya

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:55

Here’s a talk from Maitrisiddhi at Taraloka retreat centre - if it weren’t for the lockdown, Ratnavandana would be at Taraloka right now, leading a Brahma Viharas retreat, with Maitrisiddhi on the team.

In this talk, Maitrisiddhi helps us make the link between the Brahma Vihara of the day, Metta, and the associated Buddha (or Jina) in the Mandala, Akshobhya.

Why is Akshobhya associated with Metta, and how does clarity help us to open up to love? Maitrisiddhi also explores the active and receptive aspects...
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Additional Resources - Being Divine Online Day 2 - Beauties and Downfalls: Structure and the Metta Bhavana

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:27

Additional Resources - Being Divine Online Day 2 - Beauties and Downfalls: Structure and the Metta Bhavana

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:27

Here’s a talk from Maitridevi at Taraloka retreat centre - if it weren’t for the lockdown, Ratnavandana would be at Taraloka right now, leading a Brahma Viharas retreat.

In this talk, Maitridevi explores this fascinating area around how to stay creative with the metta bhavana practice. Do you find the structure of the metta bhavana like a great tree that supports you, or an oppression that dries up metta?

This talk is part of a series of talks given on The Heart Unbound: Metta...
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Metta like the Sun - Being Divine Online Home Retreat: Day 2

By kusaladevi on Sat, 25 Apr, 2020 - 09:10
  • Image by Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

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...
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Dharmabytes Podcast: Live Like a River Flows

By Sadayasihi on Thu, 2 Apr, 2020 - 14:00

Ratnavandana offers a personal sharing of her reflections on a six month solitary retreat where she was focussing on the Heart Sutra. 

With Avalokitesvara as her guide, she was hoping to deepen her understanding of the emptiness of the five skandhas as well as exploring how to bring all the ordinary everyday activities of life into the realm of the sacred.

This excerpt includes a reading evocation on the Five Buddha Mandala.

From the talk Glimpses of...
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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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