North London Buddhist Centre
North London Buddhist Centre

Metta Day on Sunday

By Ratnaprabha on Thu, 23 Apr, 2020 - 11:40

Metta Day on Sunday

By Ratnaprabha on Thu, 23 Apr, 2020 - 11:40

Metta Day with Karunagita & Maitrisambhava

This Sunday 26 April, a free day, but you need to book, and please donate if you can, £30 suggested.

A nourishing day retreat at home, immersed in metta, the intention of friendliness, kindness or unconditional love. During the day Maitrisambhava and Karunagita will lead four online sessions of about an hour using Zoom. Meditation, gentle bodywork, teaching and discussion, also touching on Karuna (compassion) and Mudita (joy). These sessions will...

Free Buddhist Audio
Free Buddhist Audio

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...

Portsmouth Buddhist Center
Portsmouth Buddhist Center

Community Morning - Keeping Things in Perspective

By Candradasa on Wed, 6 Jul, 2016 - 16:49

Community Morning - Keeping Things in Perspective

By Candradasa on Wed, 6 Jul, 2016 - 16:49

The world isn’t always a garden of delights, life isn’t always a holiday. We know this, right? Yet it’s so hard sometimes to remember it - and harder still to stay positive when we do! That’s where we need an active element of imagination in our meditation and Dharma practice. Remembering, imagining, perceiving things differently - and a whole world opens up…

This week as part of our ongoing series on practical imagination, we’ll be exploring the practice of ...

Community Highlights
Community Highlights

Complete Archive Of Teaching On The Brahma Viharas

By Candradasa on Fri, 17 Apr, 2015 - 18:57

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...

Free Buddhist Audio
Free Buddhist Audio

Dharmabyte: Setting Intention for Equanimity

By Rijupatha on Thu, 16 Apr, 2015 - 11:00

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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...

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 6: A Personal Take On Upekkha

By Centre Team on Mon, 23 Mar, 2015 - 21:27

Continuing the series of personal talks on each of the Brahma Viharas from the 2015 Rainy Season Retreat, 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’s 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…

View all...

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…

View all posts from ‘Living In The Mandala’
Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

trying to control the uncontrollable

By jvalamalini on Thu, 19 Mar, 2015 - 15:20
Equanimity’s strength derives from a combination of understanding and trust. It is based on understanding that the conflict and frustration we feel when we cannot control the world doesn’t come from our inability to do so, but rather from the fact that we are trying to control the uncontrollable. We know better than to try and prevent the seasons from changing or the tide from coming in. Following autumn, winter comes. We may not prefer it, but we trust it because we can understand and accept its rightful place in the larger cycle, a bigger picture. Can we apply the same wise balance to the cycles and tides of pleasant, unpleasant and neutral experiences in our lives?
Sharon Salzburg
Bristol Buddhist Centre
Bristol Buddhist Centre

Day 6: Upekkha & Ratnasambhava

By jvalamalini on Thu, 19 Mar, 2015 - 15:17

Day 6: Upekkha & Ratnasambhava

By jvalamalini on Thu, 19 Mar, 2015 - 15:17A cold bright day in Bristol, and a deep quiet atmosphere in the Buddhist Centre, as we move into cultivating upekkha (equanimity).

As a brahma vihara, equanimity is more than the dictionary definition of ‘calm and composed especially in adversity’. It is a composite of metta, karuna and mudita pervaded by Dharmic understanding, like metta with a wisdom eye. It sees joy and suffering, their conditionedness and the constant flux of everything.

After just sitting in the mandala,...

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