A Buddhist life
Welcome. This site reflects different aspects of my Buddhist life. You’ll find articles on meditation and Buddhism, as well as details of all my books, plus my teaching programme and various other things. Just browse the headings and see what you find. And below you’ll find my latest posts.
Wherever in the world you’re from, very best wishes to you,
Vessantara
This is a quick note to make you aware that I’m doing a series of events for Order members as part of the Nature of Mind programme that Adhisthana is running this year.
There is an introductory online evening on 1st April, an online day event on the 3rd, and a week’s retreat, residential and online, at Rivendell from the 17th – 24th of June. You can find more information on the Adhisthana website here. (Scroll down towards the bottom of the page and you’ll find them.)
I hope to see you on one (or all!) of them.
Very best wishes,
Vessantara
It has been a while since I posted here, mainly because I spent January and February leading a retreat for Order members at a venue on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. I thoroughly enjoyed the whole event. We had an excellent team, a great bunch of retreatants, the venue worked very well, and the scenery was stunning.
There were 33 of us altogether. It was quite something that we all managed to make it, as right up to the last minute there was uncertainty about whether we would be able to go ahead because of covid restrictions. Nearly all our foreign participants had already had to cancel. So it felt rather miraculous to watch everyone turning up. We had a week of mask-wearing and daily testing, after that we were a ‘bubble’ and could relax around one another.
We had lost one of our kitchen supervisors shortly before the retreat, so Vijayamala stepped in, which left me hogging all the teaching duties. We explored mental calm and insight, using a couple of texts from the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition. They use a lot of questions to encourage you to explore your experience in depth. I really enjoyed our group explorations, and it was great to watch people going deep into their experience and making new, liberating discoveries.
As in 2019, we took over a hotel called Parc le Breos. I feel very grateful to the owners for their trust in us, turning the place over to us and leaving us to look after it. We did our best to return it to them in good shape. I’m also grateful to our retreat team, who did a great job, and to all the participants. Someone commented that the retreat was an experience of our Order at its best, and that was certainly my experience.
We’re currently investigating whether it will be possible to go back to Parc le Breos again. I’ll keep you posted about what happens.
Very best wishes,
Vessantara
I’ve just revised the dates for the Order retreat that I’m leading at Adhisthana next April. It’s on the Six Element Practice, as the first in a short series of retreats on Unfolding Paths to Insight. I’m really looking forward to doing it, as I think the practice can be unpacked and approached in many different ways, both as a series of reflections and using a direct experience approach. I want to see how far we can take it. I also hope that both fans of the practice and those who have never done it or have been turned off by it will all sign up, in person or online, to help us find ways into the heart of the practice that can work for everyone.
The new dates are the 14th – 22nd April. So it goes over the Easter Bank holiday, starting on the Thursday evening before Good Friday (which in the UK is a bank holiday) and finishes on the following Friday morning.
You’ll find details of how to book on my Programme page.
All good wishes,
Vessantara
I’ve now finalised some more retreats for 2022, and if you look at my teaching programme you’ll find details of four more retreats.
In April, I’ll be back at Adhisthana, to lead the first of a planned series of retreats for Order members on some of the insight practices that Sangharakshita recommended. It’s not enough to learn a particular method of insight meditation, to have full confidence in it we need a clear sense that practising it sincerely will take us deeper and deeper into the heart of things. In each retreat, we’ll be looking at how a basic method can do this. The first retreat in the series, in April, will explore the Six Element Practice from this point of view. This retreat is currently advertised as residential, but I’m hoping that Adhisthana can add an online element to it, so that Order members who can’t make it to Herefordshire UK can still participate ‘live’.
Currently, the only retreat I’m doing for non-Order members next year is at Rivendell, in East Sussex, UK. It’s called Monkey Mind. Pre-pandemic, I led many retreats at Rivendell, and I’m really happy to be getting back there next June. I’m even happier that Ambaranta will be part of my team, as we’ve done many retreats together. (Sadly, Nagadipa can’t join us, but Vijayamala has agreed to step in and organise.)
My usual pattern has been to do two retreats back-to-back at Rivendell, and next year will be the same. Once we’ve gone beyond monkey mind the second week, for Order members, will explore the nature of mind. That will be a hybrid retreat, residential and online.
Then in October I’ll be back at Adhisthana to give talks and participate in other ways in their first Sadhana Convention for Order members. I’m really excited about it, and hope we can have a large gathering to explore the riches of sadhana together.
As I said, details of all these retreats can be followed up from my retreat programme. There are likely to be further additions to the programme, probably online retreats, although a large chunk of my time for leading retreats next year is taken up with leading a 2-month retreat in South Wales in January to February.
I hope our paths can cross on a retreat sometime next year!
With all good wishes,
Vessantara
As Vijayamala doesn’t have her own website, I put details of retreats she is leading on my Teaching Programme page, so people can follow her future plans.
So I’ll also announce here that she has had to cancel the retreat that she was due to lead at Taraloka next month on the Root Verses of the Six Bardos. She needs to have a foot operation, which isn’t anything major in itself, but it takes about 10 weeks to fully recover from. She has been offered a date for the operation that will be shortly before the Taraloka retreat, when she would still be recovering, and with a foot in plaster. She couldn’t postpone the operation as she needs to be fully fit for the 2-month Order retreat that she and I are doing in the Gower in Jan/Feb, and she wouldn’t have enough time.
Hopefully there will be more opportunities to practise with her next year…
All good wishes,
Vessantara
Well, after having to cancel the events I was going to do in June because of ill health, it was all the more delightful to get back in the saddle (or on the cushion) a couple of weeks ago. I was due to lead a 10-day retreat at Adhisthana at the end of July, and as the start date approached I could feel I was really looking forward to it — a sign that my health and energy were back to their normal levels.
I was particularly looking forward to the retreat as it was the first time for over 18 months that I was going to see some 3-D retreatants. Although during the pandemic lockdowns Zoom retreats have been a very good substitute for meeting in-person, still it was great to have some living breathing people sitting in front of me.
It was also the first time I’ve led a hybrid retreat, with 21 of us in person and 30 more online. The small numbers made everything very spacious. The Adhisthana Community put a lot into giving the online participants a good retreat experience. They had also really thought through how to make the online element as unobtrusive as possible for those attending physically. There were just a couple of small microphones and what looked like a CCTV camera attached to the ceiling at the back of the room. We were the only event happening at Adhisthana, so we had the run of the very beautiful gardens and the whole event felt very spacious.
The retreat itself went very well. We were exploring a sadhana of Avalokiteshvara (an embodiment of compassion and wisdom), that came into our Order via Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche. It was a privilege to unpack its riches for people on the retreat.
I’m devoting more time to writing and editing over the next few months, so I probably won’t be leading anything now until I go back to Adhisthana at the end of October to lead a retreat for Order members on The Shepherd’s Search for Mind, an episode from the Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa which gives essential instructions on Mahamudra and the nature of mind. You’ll find details of the retreat on the Adhisthana website. Again it will be a ‘dual’ retreat, so you can participate by Zoom or, if possible, come to Adhisthana and have the full experience. Whichever, I look forward to seeing some of you there.
All good wishes,
Vessantara
Sadly, I’ve just had to cancel what I was going to do for Rivendell online this month as I’ve had some health problems. I’m sorry not to be able to run anything for Rivendell this year, and not to see all of you who were booked to attend.
I should be through these health difficulties in a month or two, and am looking forward to the three retreats I’m doing in the second half of the year.
With all good wishes,
Vessantara
Sadly, I’ve just had to cancel the online Ocean of True Meaning retreat that was due to begin this Friday. I’ve had some health problems over the last few weeks, and am not currently in good enough shape to do it.
I’m hoping these health issues won’t take long to resolve, and that the rest of my programme for the year can go ahead as planned. It includes another retreat on the Ocean of True Meaning at Vajraloka from the 19th – 28th November.
All good wishes,
Vessantara
I
I am very much looking forward to the second of the 2 retreats I am leading for Order members at Adhisthana on 7 point mind training, which starts next Thursday, the 18th March. (Although it’s the second of two, you don’t need to have attended the first one. )
In this retreat will be looking more deeply into the wisdom aspect, as well as themes like how to practice at the time of death, how you know your practice is on the right track, and lots more practical pieces of advice on bringing bodhichitta into daily life.
If you would like to join us you can book with Adhisthana by clicking here: seven-point-mind-training-part-2
I hope to see you there!
All good wishes
Vessantara
(Geshe Chekawa, compiler of the Seven-Point Mind Training)
I spent the days up to New Year co-leading the online Love Without Limits retreat with Advayasiddhi. It was great that over 180 of you could join us. I also really enjoyed our meditation after the retreat to see in the New Year at midnight UK time. It was very good having some Australians, who were already 11 hours into their New Year, coming to join us for a second celebration!
Now I’m doing a few weeks of personal retreat at home. I’ve mainly been meditating, but today I dug out some books and folders of notes on the Seven-Point Mind Training. I’ll be reading a little each day to feed that inspiration into my retreat. It will prepare me for the two online retreats for Order members that I’m leading soon on this material. (Dates are 30 Jan – 04 Feb and 18 – 23 Mar).
The Mind training is a treasure trove of skilful methods for working with your thoughts and emotions, especially in difficult times, which have been used for a thousand years. So it feels very appropriate to be doing retreats on it now. I’ve practised aspects of it since the 1970s, and at times it has felt like a lifesaver, or a ‘mindsaver’. I also spent the first six months of my three-year retreat working intensively with it, and came to appreciate its subtlety, practicality and power even more.
So I hope to see many friends in the Order (and some of you I haven’t met yet!) on one or both of these retreats. The retreats will be run from Adhisthana, and if you want to know more or would like to book you’ll find details in their programme.
With all good wishes for your health and Dharma practice,
Vessantara
Kathleen Raine:
“Amo Ergo Sum”
Because I love
The sun pours out its rays of living gold
Pours out its gold and silver on the sea.
Because I love
The earth upon her astral spindle winds
Her ecstasy-producing dance.
Because I love
Clouds travel on the winds through wide skies,
Skies wide and beautiful, blue and deep.
Because I love
Wind blows white sails,
The wind blows over flowers, the sweet wind blows.
Because I love
The ferns grow green, and green the grass, and green
The transparent sunlit trees.
Because I love
Larks rise up from the grass
And all the leaves are full of singing birds.
Because I love
The summer air quivers with a thousand wings,
Myriads of jewelled eyes burn in the light.
Because I love
The iridescnt shells upon the sand
Takes forms as fine and intricate as thought.
Because I love
There is an invisible way across the sky,
Birds travel by that way, the sun and moon
And all the stars travel that path by night.
Because I love
There is a river flowing all night long.
For years now, I’ve spent two very happy weeks each June at Rivendell Retreat Centre in Sussex, with its beautiful garden. Next year, I shall be doing my two weeks for them as usual, but with Covid and the uncertainty about how things will be next year, even with vaccines being rolled out, I’ve agreed to do them online.
As usual, one of the two retreats will be for experienced meditators, which is one of the very rare opportunities for me to share a retreat with those of you who aren’t Order members. It will run from the 12th – 17th June, and is called Centre of the Sunlit Sky. For more details, see here.
The other online retreat, for Order members, will be a new departure for me, taking extracts from a Mahayana sutra as the basis for a meditation retreat. We’ll be looking at one of the great classics of the Mahayana tradition, the Vimalakirti Nirdesa, on which Sangharakshita gave an important series of lectures in the 1970s, and taking some of its images and insights as deeply as possible into meditation. Dates are 19th – 24th June, and you’ll find full details here.
I’m hoping that I shall be able to go to Rivendell and do the retreat from there. I’m sorry that we won’t have a full house of people there, but it’s great that the catchment area for the retreats is now the whole world…
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
A little note to remind those of you who are Order members that the 5-day online retreat on The Ocean of True Meaning, starts on Monday. It’s a classic meditation manual from the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition, and we’ll be using extracts from the shamatha and vipashyana sections as the basis for our explorations together. If you want to know more, or you want to book then the details are here.
After that, the next public event I’ll be doing will be an online retreat for experienced meditators in the days leading up to New Year. I’m really happy to be able to offer something that isn’t just for Order members, and also that Advayasiddhi will be joining me. The theme is Love Without Limits, which feels very appropriate at this time. Many of us are faced with physical constraints because of Covid, so it’s vital that we discover how our hearts can expand and become increasingly free, whatever the conditions. To find out more about the retreat, go here.
Both retreats are being run on a dana (donation) basis. I hope to see many of you online!
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
After thoroughly enjoying leading the online retreat on the Bodhicitta Practice last month, I’ve signed up to do 3 more online retreats. There’s one I’ve already advertised here, for Order members under the auspices of Adhisthana, starting next Saturday. For full details see here.
Then early in December I’ll be exploring sections from The Ocean of True Meaning, one of my favourite Buddhist texts, again for Order members. You can find out more about that here.
And in the period leading up to New Year I’ll be doing the main teaching on a retreat with Advayasiddhi for experienced meditators called Love Without Limits. (Details here.)
As the UK and other places go back into lockdown, the connecting thread of all 3 retreats is going deeper into our hearts, finding the openness, freedom and connection with others that is always there, even when we’re physically isolated from one another.
I’m really looking forward to these three events, and hope to see many of you there.
With all good wishes,
Vessantara.
Next month I shall be leading another online retreat for Order members, following on from the very successful one on the Bodhicitta Practice we held last month, which had 135 participants. Dates are the 7th – 12th of November, and we’ll be going deeper into meditation practices on the bodhisattva path. (For full details see here.)
Like last time, we’re making special arrangements for people in Australia and New Zealand. I’ve shifted one of the teaching sessions to make it easier for you to participate live. And Dharmananda will again be ‘convening’ and helping arrange things so you can meet in groups at times that work for you. Last time, he and Maitripala did it between them, but this time she isn’t available (hope the house move goes well!), so Dharmananda will have another sidekick.
It was great seeing so many of you on the last retreat, I hope you’ll make it this time.
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
In my last post I talked about the online Order retreat that I’d just done at Adhisthana. I appreciated the retreat so much that I promptly signed up to do another one. So I’ll be back online from Adhisthana , from the 7th – 12th of November, doing a retreat that I think will follow on well from the one last month.
The essence of bodhicitta is learning to escape the prison of narrow self-concern, and find the freedom that comes with wisdom and an open heart. That involves learning to fully engage, to give ourselves to life, but without being naive or neglecting ourselves. (We’re part of life too.) There are Buddhist meditation practices that are specifically designed to help us do this, and we’ll be exploring some of them over these 6 days. We’ll focus especially on the principles behind them, because once we’re grounded in those principles we’ll be much freer, more alive and flowing in how we practise.
Although the theme of this retreat follows on from the Bodhicitta Practice retreat last month, you don’t need to have been on that one to join and benefit from this one. Again the retreat will be on a dana basis. And we’ll do our best to do the impossible, and find session timings that work for people from around the world. Here you will find full details of the theme, and how to book.
All good wishes,
Vessantara
Last week I led a 6-day online retreat for members of the Triratna Order, exploring a practice we use for developing bodhicitta. Bodhicitta is the heart of Buddhism, the combination of profound wisdom and great love and compassion that motivates someone to follow the bodhisattva path of gaining Awakening in order to be able to help others become free from suffering.
There were 135 of us on the retreat, scattered over many different time zones from San Francisco, to Europe, India, and Australia and New Zealand. Scheduling teaching sessions was a tricky business! Inevitably some people outside Europe were asleep during some of them, and had to catch up with the video recordings. Nonetheless, it did feel as if all of us in our different bedrooms, living rooms and meditation rooms around the globe were very definitely participating in one shared practice, one meditation on wisdom and compassion.
The retreat was hosted by Adhisthana, the centre a few minutes’ drive from where I live. So I was able to travel back and forth between sessions. Adhisthana is a very large retreat centre and inevitably it has been very badly affected financially by the effects of the Covid epidemic. They are set to lose a 6-figure sum this year. So I was delighted that, due to the open-hearted generosity of the participants, we were able to raise over £10k in donations from our retreat.
Many thanks again to all those at Adhisthana who were involved in making the retreat happen, at a very demanding time for them. And thanks and all good wishes to all those of you who participated. I’ve really appreciated all the stimulating questions you asked during the retreat and the messages of appreciation since!
Although the retreat was for Order members, anyone can watch the recordings. If you’d like to do so, you’ll find links to nearly all the sessions here, along with various materials that I shared with the retreatants.
I enjoyed leading the retreat very much, and was pleasantly surprised at how easy and effective it was to do online. So at the end I announced that I planned to lead another 6-day online retreat for Order members from the 7th – 12th November. It will be at Adhisthana again, and I hope to announce the theme here by this weekend at the latest. For now, please put the dates in your diary.
Wishing you good health and ever-deepening wisdom and compassion,
Vessantara.
Over the months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Bodhicitta Practice has been a powerful cohesive factor for the Triratna Order. Every Sunday, at 7.30 and 2.30 UK time, Order members from around the world have been meeting online, meditating together to contact the deep power of love and compassion and channel it into the world with all its suffering. I’ve been moved by this shared practice, and in response I wanted to offer Order members the opportunity to explore the Bodhicitta Practice together more deeply on an online retreat. So I shall be leading a six-day retreat from Monday 28th September to Saturday 3rd October.
Over those 6 days, I’ll give presentations on different aspects of the Bodhicitta Practice, do some guided meditations and answer questions. There will also be the chance for breakout discussion groups. The content of the evenings (UK time) will vary, with some guided meditation, mantra recitation and puja.
It’s impossible to schedule things so that Order members all around the world can participate live (without some very sleepless nights!). We’re in the process of making special arrangements for those of you in Australasia, so you can participate as fully as possible.
I’m very pleased that the idea has been taken up by Adhisthana. They will be hosting the event, and we can join their morning meditation session online. I’ll be leading the other 3 sessions from their shrineroom, which has a strong atmosphere. I’m very grateful for all their help in making it possible.
You will find full details and the opportunity to book for the retreat, which is being offered on a dana basis, on the Adhisthana website here.
I look forward to seeing many of you there!
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
I’ve spent nearly the whole of 2020 doing personal retreat at home. I had a personal retreat scheduled anyway for January to March, which went well. Then I emerged just in time for Prime Minister Boris Johnson to announce the beginning of the Covid 19 lockdown. My plans to co-lead a 2-month retreat in Sweden in May-July bit the dust. So I decided to make a virtue of necessity and go back into personal retreat. This period will end in the middle of this month, after which I’ll be available until the end of August. During that time, I’ll lead a couple of online events: for the Nordic Order Region and Buddhafield in the Web. (See here for dates.)
Vijayamala and I are hoping that our next 2-month retreat for Order members will go ahead in Jan-Feb 2021. We’ll make a decision by the beginning of September, and will be consulting beforehand with all those of you who have booked.
If that retreat is happening, then I’ll probably spend September-November this year in personal retreat as well. It feels strange to be so out of contact this year, after doing so much teaching over the last 8 years. Hopefully it will be worth it, so that next year I can move back into activity from a deeper and richer basis , and teach from the experience I’ve gained through taking time out this year.
My hope is that in 2021 things will become more stable again, and it will be possible to lead face-to-face retreats. I’m now finalising details of a programme of events for next year. I look forward to sharing them with you.
With all good wishes,
Vessantara.
My good friends at Windhorse Publications are responding to the current pandemic by giving you the chance to download a free book every week, in an initiative they’re calling Free the Dharma. This week’s offering is my book Tales of Freedom.
You can take up the offer by going here.
You can also sign up to receive email notifications about their future weekly free offers here. And finally they also have a special ‘stay-at-home Book Sale on, with up to a third off selected titles and free postage. Enjoy!
Wishing you very good health wherever you are,
Vessantara.
It’s been a while since I’ve posted any news here, so I’ll give a short overview of last year, which saw some big changes on the material level. It started with getting married on the 2nd of January, mainly for financial reasons, although it was good to have a chance to celebrate my relationship with Vijayamala. Nonetheless, it was it was rather squeezed into a busy time. We went to the Cambridge Registry Office in the morning, had a brunch at home to celebrate with a few family and friends, and then later in the day drove to Wales to prepare to lead a 3-month Order Retreat.
The retreat was held in a hotel we had hired on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. The venue worked very well, and the surrounding area is very beautiful, with woods that were once an old deer park, the sea within easy walking distance, and a ridge from which there were views across to the hills, the Brecon Beacons, as well as down the coast and across the Bristol Channel to Devon and Cornwall.
There were getting on for 40 of us on the retreat, including some old friends. I enjoyed it very much, although it was quite hard work doing such a sustained period of teaching and meditation reviews. It went very well overall, although there are some things I would want to try doing differently next time to see if we can take people even deeper.
Then there was the usual round of shorter retreats at different retreat centres: on bodhicitta, sadhana, breathing meditation, the White Tara practice (which I co-led with Moksanandi), and a weekend for the men I’ve ordained into the Order, plus a couple of friends we’ve taken into the group over the years.
However, I did fewer short retreats last year, as I had made plans to begin a series of 3-month personal retreats at home. I did the first one from September to November. It was a valuable time, although not in ideal circumstances, because in the middle of it Vijayamala and I moved from Cambridge to a place in Herefordshire. We hadn’t planned it to be like that, but buying and selling property in the UK is a very uncertain business…
I’ve thoroughly enjoyed being in a new environment. Our new house is only a few minutes’ drive from Adhisthana, where I do a lot of events, and I have good friends in the area, as well as being closer to friends in Stroud and Bristol. The place we bought is big enough to run small retreats, for 6 or 7 people, in the future.
Future Plans
Talking of future plans, 2020 and the first half of 2021 will be taken up with doing three more personal retreats of three months each, as well as two Order retreats of two months each. The first of these happens in Sweden from May to July, and a couple of places have recently become available. So I won’t be leading any of the shorter retreats I usually do at retreat centres until the second half of next year. I’m sorry about that, but I hope my time devoted to my own meditation practice will bear fruit in deeper teaching in the future.
As I’m so much on retreat during this time, I also won’t be able to do much keeping up with people. My main periods of unprogrammed time this year are in mid-April to mid-May, August (including attending the Order conventions), and December. In the first half of next year, I’ll have some free time in March to mid-April.
After all this, we’ll see what the future holds, but my current plan is to return to leading some shorter retreats and being more outward-going again.
And while I’m doing these personal retreats I shall be holding in my heart my friends and all those I have personal connections with .
Wishing you all well,
Vessantara.
Vijayamala and I will be leading a 2-month retreat, open to all Order members, at Dharmagiri, Triratna’s Swedish retreat centre, from the 15th May to 13th July this year. Some people have recently dropped out and there are now 2 places available. If you’re interested in coming, then please contact Prasadacarin (info@stockholmsbuddhistcenter.se) for details.
Vessantara.
This year Vijayamala and I held a 3-month Order retreat in a rented hotel on the Gower Peninsula in South Wales. The retreat and venue worked very well, so we are now planning to hold another one, this time for 2 months, in Jan. and Feb. 2021. However, we are still looking for the best solution for the catering (see below). We are about to open bookings for the retreat. We already have a list of people interested from previous years, but there may be places available for others. If you want to know more, or wish to express interest in coming, please contact us at gowerretreats@gmail.com.
Cooks/kitchen overseers needed. We are still looking for someone, or a couple of Order members, who would like to take on the catering. We have had some partial offers, but would like to throw it open to as wide an audience of Order members as possible, to see if there are others interested. The role would involve: 1. either overseeing the kitchen or doing some of the cooking yourself if you prefer, and 2. food ordering. There are likely to be 33 or 34 people to feed. We have menus and suppliers in place from the last retreat, but you can also come with your own ideas. We have had some offers of help, so you would be able to have regular days off over the 2 months. If necessary, we can give you £2000 in support for performing this role over the 2 months. If you’re interested, or know of someone else who we could ask, please contact us.
Vessantara.
Earlier this year I had the chance to record my book about Loving-Kindness meditation, The Heart, which I wrote as part of Windhorse Publications’ series on The Art of Meditation. Now you can listen to it here on Audible.
The book gives an introduction to ways of meditating to open your heart. Although it is suitable for newcomers, I also aimed to put some depth into it, so even if you’ve been practising this meditation for years hopefully you’ll still learn something and find fresh inspiration for your practice.
The world needs loving, empathetic people if we’re to meet all the current challenges. So I’m grateful to Jinamitra (Nicolas Soames) for helping to make the book available in audio, including several guided meditations.
Vessantara.
Over the years I’ve taught a lot about tonglen – the practice of love and compassion combined with awareness of the breath. Usually I’ve taken the teaching deeper with guided meditations. Now Nagesvara has kindly gone through many of the recordings of these guided meditations made between 2015-17 and indexed them for easy reference.
The index is currently only available to members of the Triratna Buddhist Order. You will find it if you use your Order login to access the free buddhist audio site and then go to this page.
Tonglen is a wonderful way of working with bodhicitta which you can use in any life situation, right up to your last conscious breath. I hope these recordings will give you several helpful ways to approach the practice.
Vessantara.
I’m just back from leading a 3-month retreat in South Wales. (I’ll aim to post something about that very soon!) For now I want to recommend 2 talks that Taranita gave recently at the Bristol Buddhist Centre. They’re based on my article about ways to avoid overwhelm, and they provoked some lively discussion. You’ll find them on Free Buddhist Audio. The first one and the second one.
I hope you find them useful.
Vessantara.
Last year I visited the Dublin Buddhist Centre and gave a talk called Padmasambhava Practice – a Personal Unfolding. As the title suggests, it was quite a personal take on the experience of practising visualization and mantra recitation – in this case focusing on Padmasambhava, the great teacher who was instrumental in establishing Buddhism in Tibet, and who is a kind of archetypal guru figure.
The talk was recorded, and is available to stream or download from free buddhist audio.
I recently spent a very enjoyable day with my friend Jinamitra (Nicolas Soames). He runs Dharma Audiobooks, which has some very good recordings of Dharma material.
We were making an audio recording of my book The Breath, which is an in-depth introduction to the practice of meditating on the breath. The result is now up on Audible. You’ll find it here.
Next week we’ll finish recording The Heart, my book on loving-kindness meditation, which is a companion to The Breath. I’ll post here when it becomes available on Audible.
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
There is a lot of audio material that you can listen to online from retreats that I’ve led over the last few years. That includes a set of 5 retreats I did at Adhisthana, exploring the different aspects of the mandala of practice that was outlined in his teaching by Sangharakshita. These are: integration, positive emotion, insight (or ‘spiritual death’), spiritual rebirth, and spiritual receptivity.
The recordings of all 5 retreats are all available on freebuddhistaudio. (The retreat on spiritual rebirth contains a lot of material on sadhana, and is restricted to Triratna Order members only.)
My friend Nagesvara has listened to the audio from all these 5 retreats and kindly put together a list of all the guided meditations from them. So if you don’t want to listen to the entire teaching, or you’re looking for a guided meditation on a particular topic, you can refer to his list.
With many thanks to Nagesvara for putting this together for us!
All good wishes,
Vessantara.
31st October 2018.
My teacher and friend since 1973, Sangharakshita died yesterday at the age of 93.
After hearing the news, last night I dreamt that I was in a large garden with several people. I looked around and there was Sangharakshita, walking down a flight of stone steps to the lawn. He looked all of his 93 years, frail, and unsteady on his feet. I was very concerned, as he clearly needed someone to help him down the steps. Before I could get to him, he arrived at the bottom step, tripped, and pitched forward on his face. As he was so frail, I felt at once that he couldn’t have survived the fall.. Several people started moving towards him to help, but I was first to get to where he was lying on his face, unmoving.
Then to my amazement, he got up, unaided. Even his glasses were still in place, unbroken. Not only that, he looked younger. The only negative effect from his fall was a slight bruising on his nose. We began talking in an animated way. He seemed to have more energy than before.
I woke up feeling light-hearted, with a strengthened feeling that for a deep Dharma practitioner the death of the body isn’t such a major event. It’s perhaps one of the reasons why my mind has felt very steady on hearing of Sangharakshita’s illness and death. I was also helped by knowing that he died in a peaceful situation, surrounded by friends who have devoted years of their lives to his care, and they reported that there was an atmosphere of profound peace around him.
I’m currently on retreat, which feels like the right place to be. It gives me a chance to absorb the death of my teacher, a friend I’ve known for 45 years, and to have some space to appreciate the fullness of his Dharma life, his practice, and the scale of his achievement. I shall be out of retreat in time to attend the funeral, and hope to see many of you there.
Sending love to all of you around the world, especially those for whom his death feels like a loss.
Vessantara.
As we all know, modern life can be overwhelming, especially as we move into very troubled times. It’s an issue that comes up often when I’m teaching, and I’ve found myself responding by coming up with a number of ways of working with it from a Buddhist point of view. Now I’ve put them together in a new article: 20 Suggestions for Dealing with Overwhelm.
I hope you find some of them useful.
A central principle of mindfulness and meditation is staying in the present and not letting mind speed off into the future. However, being a meditation teacher involves quite a bit of future planning, in my case up to two years ahead. So for those of you who also need to organise your lives well in advance, here is my teaching programme until the end of 2019. I’ve also added in details of a couple of smaller events for this year.
As Vijayamala doesn’t have her own website, I’ve included her teaching schedule as well.
As usual, most of these events are for members of the Triratna Buddhist Order. I do this with regret, as it means that many people who could benefit aren’t able to attend. However, by and large, Order members have the experience to really benefit from them, and to pass on what they learn. Often I’m able to make recordings of the retreats available more widely, so at least others have access to the material. You’ll find a good collection on freebuddhistaudio.
Some of the retreat centres where these events will be held haven’t published their programmes yet, and may not be open for bookings. But you can at least put the dates in your diary…
I look forward to seeing you on an event somewhere.
I’ve recently added a couple of weekend events at Buddhist centres to my teaching programme for next year. Most of my teaching is done within the Triratna Order, so I try to highlight opportunities for mitras and others within Triratna to come along and practise with me.
Also Vijayamala doesn’t have her own website, so I include all her teaching engagements on my site. It’s handy to have them all in one place for reference. I’ve now put up her 2018 events.
You can find all this in my teaching programme .
Back in the summer I led another retreat for Order members on Spiritual Receptivity. The retreat focused on formless meditation/just sitting, exploring it from different angles.
The recordings are now all available here.
Many thanks to Padmakumara, Akasajoti and the folks at freebuddhistaudio for making this possible.
Vessantara.
I’ve now updated my teaching schedule with all the retreats of more than a weekend that I have planned for 2018.
As usual, most of what I do is for Order members. I feel sad that I’m not offering more for other people, but at the moment the Order is where I feel I can have the most beneficial effect. However, at least there is a week in June that I’m doing on the Heart Sutra, the classic Buddhist wisdom text, that is open to anyone with a reasonable amount of experience of meditation. Ambaranta and Nagadipa will be my team again for this retreat, and I hope that we shall see several of you who have been on these retreats before. That week will be followed immediately by an Order retreat on The Shepherd’s Search for Mind, a classic story from the life of Milarepa.
I’m pleased to be returning to Vajraloka in North Wales, after a few years’ absence, and excited to be exploring The Ocean of True Meaning. Written by the Ninth Karmapa, it’s my favourite meditation manual, a wonderful collection of advice for teachers and students, with some fantastic quotes from great meditators of the past. I plan to go in depth into the sections on calming the mind and insight — I suspect that it may take me a few years to do, but at least I can make a good start on exploring the text in February.
Once again, I’ll be doing three weeks at Adhisthana, which allows for large numbers. In particular, the retreats I’ve led on different aspects of the mandala of spiritual practice have been very popular. So in May I’ll do another one, exploring the insight aspect of practice. I’m also delighted to have the chance to team up with Saddhanandi in September, for a retreat exploring how dukkha can become a doorway to freedom. In November, I’ll be doing another sadhana retreat, this time on Vajrasattva, and am very pleased to be co-leading it with Punyamala.
In July, I’ll head for Sweden to lead another Nordic Order Retreat, the third one I’ll have attended in recent years. I’m very much looking forward to seeing my friends in that part of the world again. Vijayamala will be coming with me for this. The theme is yet to be decided; let’s see nearer the time what feels appropriate.
At the end of September, I led a retreat about insight practice, for 90 Order members, at Adhisthana. Most of the sessions were recorded, and they have now been made available on Free Buddhist Audio. (You don’t have to be an Order member to listen to them.) So if you’d like to eavesdrop on my teaching on that retreat you can follow the link here.
Very best wishes,
Vessantara.
My plans for 2017 are now shaping up. I’ve been commissioned by Windhorse Publications to write a book about some aspects of meditation. Writing requires quite a bit of focus, so I’m reducing the number of retreats that I shall be leading next year. I’m only doing seven, but they include quite a variety of topics.
Sadly, as usual there are hardly any for non-Order members: just a week at Rivendell in June called Love Without Limits, and then a slightly longer retreat at Metta Vihara in Holland over Xmas/New Year. (I’m still mulling over a theme for that one; it isn’t always easy to choose over a year in advance.)
That leaves five retreats for Order members. Since Sangharakshita recently encouraged the Order to return to a focus on the sadhanas (visualization and mantra recitation practice of a buddha or bodhisattva figure) that he received from his teachers, I’m doing three retreats in that area:
Probably the biggest gathering of the Order clans will be for a Just Sitting retreat that I shall be leading at Adhisthana in July/August. That will go back into the territory of, and hopefully go deeper than, a retreat in that area that I did there in 2014.
Lastly, I’m doing an Order retreat at Rivendell in June based on a very challenging and inspiring Mind Training text called Flattening All Concepts. It’s one of the texts that I studied on my long retreat in France, and I’ve never tried to share it before, so that should be interesting.
You will find dates and details of all these retreats here on my teaching programme page.
I’ve just heard that there have been some cancellations for the retreat for Order members that I’m doing at Rivendell from the 17 – 24 June. The theme is The Four Immeasurables — so lots about the open heart and positive emotion, as well as exploring how this can lead into insight territory. It would be very good to have a full house. If you’re interested, then please contact Rivendell:
rivendellbookings@googlemail.com
Tel: 01825 733 764 (Monday to Friday, 1.30 pm – 5.30 pm.)
Bookings,
Rivendell Buddhist Retreat Centre,
Chillies Lane,
High Hurstwood,
East Sussex,
TN22 4AB.
Here are details about the retreat from the Rivendell website:
with Vessantara
June 17 – 24 | £340/310
Immeasurable love emerged as a theme in the Order retreat Vessantara led at Rivendell in 2015. In this retreat we’ll take things further, exploring all four of the Immeasurables (less commonly known in the Pali Canon as the Brahma Viharas): love, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. We’ll look at what holds us back from fully experiencing them, how to set up conditions so that they come more naturally, and how much effort we need to develop them or whether we can simply open our hearts and relax into them. We’ll also look towards the horizon of our practice, to see what’s possible for us in fully experiencing them and living a life based on them. An opportunity, with the support of Rivendell with its beautiful gardens and special atmosphere, to open our hearts as wide as the sky.
I recently gave 4 talks on sangha nights at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre. They were on Aspects of Going for Refuge, and you can find short descriptions of them and the audio recordings on the Free Buddhist Audio site. It’s been a while since I’ve given more formal talks like these, and although I missed being able to speak completely spontaneously, I enjoyed crafting them a little, including the stories and imagery about the Pacific Ocean that linked together the Dharma points.
I hope you find them helpful.
In February I led the fourth of a series of retreats for Order members at Adhisthana on our System of Spiritual Practice. This theme of this one was Integration, and we focused on deepening motivation and inspiration for practice, and I used meditation on the breath as a golden thread running through the week, using different meditation methods all of which include awareness of the breathing. The retreat was well-attended, with 67 of us. In the natural order of things, you would start a series on the system of spiritual practice with integration, rather than doing it fourth. So it felt a bit like putting in solid foundations after we had already built the house! Still, it worked well, and people got a lot from it.
Most of the sessions were recorded, with the exception of my introduction to the Parinirvana Day celebration, and some of the last day. It is all up on Free Buddhist Audio, although it isn’t immediately obvious how to follow the recordings through the week. The best thing is to go here.. That will give you a listing of the recordings, and then you can just follow the numberings of the days and sessions.
I hope you find them useful!