Here is a complete* set of the main teaching materials from the 2015 Urban Retreat for everyone. If you took part you can still access the full space, all posts, and comments. You can now get resources in French and German too.

It's no longer possible to sign up for this space to preserve the integrity of the retreat. You might want to re-enable your email notifications now! :)

Help us do this again online - and keep it free!

+ Follow our Buddhist Centre Features space | + Follow Community Highlights | + Follow Triratna News

*We have to make audio versions of some of the talks that were video only! While you're waiting you can always watch them here.

The Urban Retreat 2015 has now come to an end. Thank you for taking part and helping make it such an inspiring week! We really hope you have enjoyed the contributions and resources posted on this site - may they be of benefit for a long time to come...

If you have enjoyed the retreat and benefitted from the Dharma materials provided, please help us do it again! You can easlily do that by donating to the online dana bowl on our Just Giving website. 

Your donation will be looked after by the European Chairs Assembly (ECA), the charity responsible for running the event. From there we'll divide it between The Buddhist Centre Online, who have hosted this retreat, and the ECA Development Fund (which also helps fund Dharma projects beyond Europe). We'll gratefully accept anything you wish to give. Thank you for any contribution you are able to make! 

Thank you to everyone who made this retreat possible - including the many generous individuals who donated in the past and allowed this year's Urban Retreat to happen!

Yours in the Dharma,

The Triratna Development Team: Mokshini, Nandavajra, Munisha, Prajnaketu, and Amalavajra

The Coding & Content team at The Buddhist Centre Online: Candradasa, Rijupatha, Samudradaka, Will Elworthy

p.s. The talks and guided meditations from this Urban Retreat will be made publicly available after this retreat as a permanent resource on the buddhist centre online. Your comments and personal posts will remain private and available only to retreatants.

Generosity is highly contagious – when we are generous this releases generosity in others, which in turn releases generosity in an ever-widening circle. This is one of the most important ways we create the Sangha, the spiritual community.

This is a blog based on notes for a short talk I gave here on the New Hampshire Seacoast to help launch the Urban Retreat. It was supposed to be about internationality in our spiritual community and the conditions that support it. I hope, in the end, it was.

I've been working a lot of late. It's an amazing privilege - one I'd do well to recall at every opportunity - to get to travel around the Triratna world for my "work". But I've been away for 7 weeks of the past 3 months in connection with The Buddhist Centre Online, and spent much of the rest of the time working on the new version of Free Buddhist Audio, and on preparing this Urban Retreat (with the fabulous Mokshini). And I'm a bit tired!

A few weeks ago I was sitting in the shrine room of Chintamani Retreat Centre in Mexico at 7am, meditating - or trying to! I'd been up till midnight working on our coverage of the Pan American Convention via a 3G mobile connection. The material was great - fascinating interviews with lovely people, all in the most beautiful surroundings imaginable. I felt very lucky and it hardly seemed like effort to be documenting Dharma practice and inspiration while taking part in such a cool gathering of Order members from all over the American continent and beyond. Still, I was pretty tired.

So I sat there, drifting a bit after the echoes of the Tiratana Vandana died away. I was listening to the birds mainly. The birds in Mexico are not the same as the birds in Britain, where I grew up. Are not the same as the birds in New England where I live. Are not like any other birds I've ever heard outside of nature documentaries. Mesmerising. (They remind me now I'm writing it of the beautiful 'Song Of the Bell Bird', a translation of the extraordinary Paraguayan harp piece Pájaro Campana.) And suddenly some words came into my head. They were just a few words of dialogue from a book I hadn’t read in years - The Farthest Shore by one of my great heroes, Ursula Le Guin. They were words spoken by a dragon to a boy in greeting. Which is a rare thing. Then I saw in my mind's eye the eye of the dragon, amber and huge, and only to be glanced at sidelong. You should never look a dragon straight in the eye. I've no idea why these words appeared in my heart or in my "consciousness" or what have you. There is an old piece of lore that says if you eat the heart of a dragon you'll understand the languages of birds. But it was sort of like that in reverse. And suddenly I was so focussed, so deeply in touch with - something. Something personally important and earthing and deeply absorbing - and the birds were still carolling around the open shrine room and the world smelled of refreshing rain.

I went back to my room after the meditation bell rang some time later, and expended a bit of my data allowance on downloading the first of the Earthsea stories, A Wizard Of Earthsea. And since then I've basically done two things: work as hard as I could on the various Dharma projects I'm involved in (with my brilliant colleagues at Dharmachakra who make up the rest of the Triratna web team); and read my way through the six books of Earthsea. I haven’t had too much time for it, but the presence of that dragon hasn’t been very far away and it's been just the spirit ballast I needed to keep going with the more mundane side of setting up conditions for an online retreat. I'll let you investigate the wonders of those books for yourself if you like, but I'd like to say a few things about my deep admiration of Ursula (K) Le Guin and her evocation of dragons.

I've always admired Ursula Le Guin for more than her literary merits, which are very many indeed. Whether I agree with what she writes with a deep sense of relieved assent, or wonder at some of her more challenging perspectives, I'm always stimulated by her mind as it flows through stories and worlds, galaxies and ages. That she does so, neatly avoiding cliché at every turn and refusing to cede the territory of fantasy writing either to sub-Tolkien, dully patriarchal warmongers (I'm looking at you, Game of Thrones) or to the patronising judgments of snobby literary reviewers who refuse to credit her 'genres' (she does astonishing sci-fi too) as capable of revealing important human truths – is in itself hugely creditable. But more that that. UKLG is a thinker, a sustained thinker, about societies. It's surely an odd comparison but I think there's something in it: you could write quite a lengthy piece on the similarities between aspects of her thinking about imagined societies and Sangharakshita's ideas on the subject of Buddhism's potential to impact and change the culture of the West. Discuss!

Whatever, it's important to say that UKLG doesn't do Utopias. She does flawed worlds, presumably because this one is. She does complex characters who don't behave the way they are supposed to, and not always well. Because her readers know what that is like too. And she has clearly thought a lot and in detail about all aspects of re-imagined universes: economic systems, folk traditions, cultural accretions, music, dance, poetry, song, mythologies, histories, futures, teleologies, gender relations, politics, power, religion, love, wisdom, foolishness, history, hope, oppression, liberation, ordinariness, cooking, making, animals, humans, loss, grief, depression, youth, age, psychology, death, magic, dragons. I could go on. But this is already long enough - so let's stop at dragons.

In the Buddhist tradition you have nagas, which are sort of like dragons. But in that shrine room in Mexico it was definitely Ursula Le Guin's dragons. Which like her wizards (as David Mitchell boldly and righteously points out) are arguably richer than Tolkien's. Regardless, having that dragon called back from the far west of my mind these past weeks has been very significant for me. I've no idea why it came, exactly. But it did come. I didn’t call it, it called me! But now I can call too, turn my attention to it whenever I need to. And that's all I really wanted to say with respect to the idea of the 'Greater Mandala' and carrying the work we do on retreats like this one on into the rest of our lives: you'll need your dragons. 

Perhaps your dragons won’t look like dragons. What do they look like? (It's also worth asking why you might not want to look them straight in the eye, however they appear to you). Still, you do need to call them forth - or let yourself be called. It's not going to be inspiration all the way. You might soon forget why you were ever bothering with more explicit Dharma practice this week. Maybe you have doubts about all sorts of things (I hope so!). As Joseph Brodsky once said, "Confusion is not a dishonourable position." But the presence of dragons from the farthest west (or east or north or south) is what I need to keep going through (and see the less obvious lessons in) the boring bits of living in reality, of "Buddhist work", of personal/communal commitment as part of a sangha. You can’t control them (if you mess with a dragon it's likely just to burn you up). But if you pay attention in the right way, they may just speak to you. And then their words should echo for a long time on the wind.

The verse "Transference of Merit and Self -Surrender" expresses the wish that the benefit that we have gained through the efforts of our practice may serve for the benefit of all beings, not just ourselves. It is the last verse of the Triratna Sevenfold Puja. 

Within Triratna, it is frequently recited at the end of a practice day, a meeting, or a retreat to conclude the event. You may wish to use it to dedicate you efforts for the wellbeing  of all every evening of the Urban Retreat, to 'seal' the day. 

Listen to this recited in many languages

Transference Of Merit And Self Surrender

May the merit gained

In my acting thus

Go to the alleviation of the suffering of all beings.
 

My personality throughout my existences,

My possessions,

And my merit in all three ways,

I give up without regard for myself

For the benefit of all beings.
 

Just as the earth and other elements

Are serviceable in many ways

To the infinite number of beings

Inhabiting limitless space;

So may I become

That which maintains all beings

Situated throughout space,

So long as all have not attained to peace.

Please help keep the Urban Retreat free

Parami gives the introductory talk for the 2015 Triratna International Urban Retreat live in Adelaide, Australia. Her theme - and the theme of the whole retreat - is 'Living in the Greater Mandala', and she brings this alive in the most human, poetic, and inspired of ways.

Her range is broad as she evokes the mandala itself, and the profound, playful path of the Bodhisattva. Calling forth Rumi and Hafiz, the great Buddhist Perfection of Wisdom texts, Keats, Yeats, Robert Hass, and Kenneth White, she illustrates what it looks and feels like to live dedicated to the wellbeing of all as the most natural thing in the world. 

Parami's great experience shines through in this talk - a terrific encouragement to anyone thinking of undertaking the Urban Retreat and integrating this perspective of joy into the challenge of everyday life... 

Recorded in Adelaide, Australia, October 2015.

View all posts from the 2015 Urban Retreat

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Hi all, from the folk here at Dharmachakra. We're the Right Livelihood team who provide The Buddhist Centre Online and Free Buddhist Audio, and who look after most Triratna social media spaces. Amongst other things!

We wanted to share a few notes about getting the best out of this online space as a support for your practice during the Urban Retreat. If you have any questions, please feel free to add to the comments here, or email us at support@thebuddhistcentre.com. We hope you have a great week!

Privacy
This online space will be largely private for the duration of the Urban Retreat and afterwards. You'll see that we've already made a set of public posts (including this one, and Parami's introductory talk) to set the scene, promote the event, and give you the materials you need to get started. Once the retreat starts, most of the posts - including all the rest of the retreat teaching materials - will only be visible to those participating. That way your retreat comments, thoughts, discussions, and sharings of all kinds will be kept private and secure. After the retreat is over we will make the teaching materials publicly available in another form, but the archive of posts from the retreat itself will remain accessible only to those who took part.

If you'd like to make sure you see the retreat materials and can take part fully, you'll need to register with the site, and once you have logged in click + follow above.

Retreat materials and getting notified of new posts by email
You'll see from the Urban Retreat programme that there is a lot of great Dharma material being prepared behind the scenes to help you go deeper with your practice all week. We'll group some of these resources together so you won't get completely bombarded by email notifications from us. We aim to make around 4 retreat material posts a day...

That said, there are a lot of us taking part this week. And it might mean a lot of posting in general (see below)! So we'd recommend considering turning off instant email notifications for the duration of the retreat and switching to a digest. 

If you do want to turn off notification emails and just check the site daily, you can do this easily by clicking here. Or just hover over your name at the top right of any page (you need to be logged in to see this). Choose 'my profile' and scroll to the bottom of the settings page. You can turn off notifications completely and just use your My Sangha stream. Or you can set email notifications to come once a day - or once a week (on a Sunday) - as a digest.

N.B. Retreat material posts have been scheduled to appear 7am Sydney, Australia time each day. That's 8pm UK and 3pm EST the day before.

If you join the retreat, when you come to this space we'll automatically show you the retreat materials. If you want to see everything else that's going on around the retreat online, view latest & updated.

What can you do on this space?
Once you've clicked + follow, you'll see the + post something bar on the page (top left of the banner image above). You can make several different kinds of post. Here are a few key ones that might be useful if you want to connect with others online:

1. + discussion. Start a new discussions thread for any burning questions you have - or just to explore an idea in response to the retreat as it unfolds.

2. + pictures. We'd love to see pictures of you and your shrine/meditation space! If you add the tag 'metta wave' (without the single quotes) it will appear under the Metta Wave menu, which is the focal point for seeing who else is taking part.

3. + blog. If you want to share longer reflections on how the retreat is going for you, add your own blog posts. As with other blog spaces, you can include text and images and links. You can even share your own retreat poems if you like! :)

+ other stuff: You can also post audio talks, videos, share files (+ resources), etc. If you don't immediately see the corresponding menu item for any kind of post, try the filter button next to the menu. 

N.B. If you plan on posting or commenting during the week, please read our Community Guidelines for the site. It's a good overview of our policies on harmonious interaction online and the kinds of material you can share here.

One more thing: mobile support for posting on this platform isn't currently brilliant... We're working on the next version of The Buddhist Centre Online to radically improve this. Commenting should be fine, but for now we'd recommend using a laptop or desktop if you want to write a post of any length. 

OK, that's it from us. We're here to help all week - and we really look forward to meeting you online as we practise together for this Urban Retreat. May all be well! 

So many Triratna sanghas from every corner of the world are participating in this year's Urban Retreat! You can see a gallery of everyone waving hello from their corner here...

Download the posters to print!

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Here is a copy of the Full Retreat Programme for the  Fourth International Triratna Urban Retreat, 21- 28 Nov 2015

The theme is "Living in the Greater Mandala" - title taken from the book Wisdom beyond Words by Sangharakshita, a commentary on the Ratnaguna Samcayagatha sutra. 

“The aim… is to bring an attitude of pure aesthetic appreciation to whatever circumstances that come our way”

“The Enlightenment of the Buddha was not a cold detached knowledge. He saw with warmth; he saw with feeling; what is more, he saw everything as pure, or subha,… because he saw everything with compassion. ... When out of metta, you see things as beautiful, you naturally experience joy and delight. And out of that joy and delight flow spontaneity, freedom, creativity and energy. This flow from metta to joy to freedom and energy is the constant experience of the bodhisattva.”  

Sangharakshita, Wisdom Beyond Words

Need help or information? Contact us: support@thebuddhistcentre.com

Get the Resolve - Remind - Review Toolkit | Get the Urban Retreat Practice Diary

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"Resolve - Remind - Review" is a practical toolkit for keeping your practice on course day-to-day, in the midst of a busy life. It is about creating the conditions that support practice. The handout explains what to do. 

You will see that there are also "resolve" and "remind" sections on each page of the Urban Retreat Practice Diary: it helps you be clear what you resolve to do and how you'll remind yourself to do it each day! 

Download the Program | Get the Urban Retreat Practice Diary

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The Urban Retreat Diary 
On November 21, at the beginning of your Urban Retreat, we suggest you take the time to reflect on what you specifically want to practice during the coming week. What supportive conditions do you want to set up? What practices do you want to do? 

It really helps to make these aims as concrete as possible, and to write them down. Writing your practice aspirations down is an important ingredient of the event, and will help you implement your intentions.   

You can use this template to keep a record of each day’s practice, appropriate to what you are going to do that day. You don't have to fill in every box for every day. At the end of the week, It can be really helpful to reflect on what you did each day in order to see what lessons you can learn for the future. 

You may start off by writing too many commitments down on the first day of the retreat –  don't worry, it is absolutely OK to change the diary during the week. One reason why we are doing this retreat is to learn about how to bring our practice into our lives in a realistic and kindly way – and part of that learning process is to be flexible. 

Of course, it is definitely not helpful to feel as if you have somehow "failed", even if you set expectations you couldn’t fulfil. So it might be good at the end of each day to reflect on how the day went, write down something in that day’s diary, and look at the next day’s diary, adjusting in whatever way seems appropriate.

Download the Program | Get the Resolve - Remind - Review Toolkit

Please help keep the Urban Retreat free

Here are the photo posters of nearly all of the Triratna Sanghas around the world which are taking part in the Urban Retreat 2015. Many thanks to Rijupatha from the team at Dharmachakra (who are behind The Buddhist Centre Online and Free Buddhist Audio) for creating it! 

There are two versions as you will see - version one is a multi-sheet A4 PDF that can be printed out on a home printer, and then stuck on some card to create one big poster; version 2 is the full sheet that can be printed professionally at a large size. Happy printing! We've also included web only versions for those who don't want to print.

The idea is to print this poster out and display it either prominently in your reception or have it on your shrine to celebrate our international sangha. 

On Saturday 21st November ​around 4pm you and your urban retreatants are invited to do a special Urban Retreat Metta Bhavana. As part of this you can read out the list of all the centres and groups participating in the Urban Retreat 

​There will be a Metta Wave going around the world as our individual Sanghas allowing metta to radiate to ​all Triratna sanghas around the globe, and of course to all beings everywhere. The wave will start with Australia, move on via Moscow and Finland and over the rest of Europe and end in the Americas - so there will be a 19 hr period when the world is suffused with our waves of metta! 

​And please encourage your participants to ​continue this metta wave throughout the week 21-28 November by posting photos of their urban retreat shrines or of their rupas. 

There is just over a week to go before the start of the International Urban Retreat 2015. Please do also encourage members of your sangha who are unable to attend your introductory day retreat or other events at your Centre to take part by participating in the Urban Retreat online - an excellent opportunity not just to deepen their Buddhist practice but also to get a delightful sense of our world-wide Triratna Community.

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Here is the first chapter of Sangharakshita's commentary on the ratnaguna-samcayagatha, the text on which this Urban Retreat is based. 

Don't let the long title put you off! What it is all about is exploring how we can live a live with more appreciation, more spaciousness and engagement,  a greater eye for beauty, and developing a more non-utilitarian attitude to places and people around us. 

The chapter is taken from the following book written by Sangharakshita - if you want to read the whole text and support Buddhist publishing you can buy it from Windhorse Publications:

Buy in print | Buy the eBook | Listen to the community audiobook

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The Greater Mandala - in Finnish 

Elämä suuren mandalan piirissä
Johdanto Sangharakshitan ratnaguna-samcayagatha -suttan kommentaariteoksesta Timanttisutra ja buddhalainen viisauden perinne, (Wisdom Beyond Words), jossa Sangharakshita tutkailee arvostamisen ja kauneuden keskeistä asemaa; taito asioista ja ihmistä nauttimiseen niiden itsensä takia, eikä vain hyötynäkökohdista lähtien. 

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The introductory chapter to Sangharakshita's commentary on the ratnaguṇa-saṁcayagāthā auf Deutsch 

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La Ceremonia De Dedicación en Español.

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La Ceremonia De Dedicación de l'Orden Triratna

Urban Retreat 2015

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Introducción - 'El Gran Mándala' - de Sangharakshita.

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A translation of Living in the Greater Mandala in Russian  - Великая мандала 

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For the francophiles among us and French speakers, here is Living in the Greater Mandala en francais 

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