Tag: somatic

Welcome - Meditating in the Mandala home retreat

What is a mandala? Symbolically, it’s a sacred circle that, if you enter and approach its centre, brings you towards Enlightenment or full Awakening. This week, during our latest home retreat, we will be meditating in the mandala, led by Tejananda, an Order member with over 25 years of teaching practice, as we deepen into our experience and learn to simply be.

Tejananda’s approach is rooted in Triratna’s System of Practice - integration, positive emotion, spiritual death, spiritual rebirth...

Day 5: Spiritual Receptivity - Final Day - Bristol Rains Retreat 2020: 'The Dynamic Mandala'

The fifth, and concluding, day of our Virtual Rains Retreat with Tejananda saw us exploring the Receptivity or ‘just sitting’ aspect of the System of Practice, seen as a ‘Dynamic Mandala’.  Tejananda introduced this aspect of practice as a transition from a ‘fabricated’ to an ‘unfabricated’ approach. 

In a period of meditation practice we had an ‘experiential resume’ of the material from the previous four days. Questions and observations followed, including how to work creatively with a ‘frozen heart’ and working with...

Day 3: Spiritual Death - Bristol Rains Retreat 2020: 'The Dynamic Mandala'

Day three of our Virtual Rains Retreat in Bristol with Tejananda saw about 50 of us exploring the aspect of Spiritual Death, through the ‘Dynamic Mandala’. Tejananda re-emphasised the fact that we can’t meditate unless we are able to know this sense of being embodied. He talked more about the value of engaging with our actual bodily sensations through which we may discover that soma or the ‘cloud’ of sensations of the body are less fixed than we may have...