Meditating on the Bahiya Sutta
With Padmasagara and Rijumitra
August 7 - 14, 2026
In the Bahiya Sutta of the Udana we not only find an inspiring story of one person’s spiritual quest and awakening, but also a simple yet profound guide to meditation. The Buddha instructs Bahiya: “…as regards things seen, heard, sensed or cognised, there will be in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognised only the cognised.” In other words, the Buddha invited Bahiya to remain present with what is, without overlaying, projecting or reading anything whatsoever into his experience. On this retreat we’ll cultivate clarity, metta and…
More info ...
Trikaya Embodied Awakening **Order Retreat**
With Viveka
August 15 - 29, 2026
**Please note that this retreat starts on a Saturday** Body like mountain… Breath Energy like the ocean’s waves… Heart Mind like the Sky. These 11 th century Vajrayana verses, sung by Dakini Niguma, are known as the “Three Naturals” They offer profound guidance for awakening to our essential nature, pointing to three simultaneous dimensions of being—the Trikaya. Nirmanakaya: coming home to presence and belonging within this body, this world Sambhogakaya: befriending the dynamic flow of feeling and energy and the relational dimension of being Dharmakaya: opening to boundless awakened heart and mind You are invited to directly experience the Three…
More info ...
Simply Being
With Tejananda
September 4 - 13, 2026
At any moment we can recognise, directly and viscerally, that we are alive and awake. With a settled and embodied awareness, this may open into an intuitive glimpse of what we truly are, beyond concepts. This might be evoked as a spacious yet embodied presence, a timeless awareness-emptiness, or unconditional love, compassion and pure energy. We’ll explore this by way of a somatic approach to just sitting meditation together with experiential inquiries – discovering aliveness, sensitivity, simplicity and clarity in our immediate experience. These subtle yet accessible qualities of our ordinary mind and being can act as gateways to the…
More info ...
Zen and Now
With Paramananda
September 18 - October 2, 2026
Often when we begin meditating, we have a good practice, but after a few years, we struggle not to be caught up in our habitual thinking and find that our meditation seems to become more superficial. In the Zen tradition, it is said that we should always keep a “beginner’s mind.” On this silent meditation retreat, we will be looking at ways to recapture our natural curiosity and openness, understanding that it is this state of beginner’s mind that is meditation—rather than simply a method of meditating. Through periods of stillness, simple teachings, and spacious practice, we will explore how…
More info ...
Embodying Love
With Rijumitra, Balajit and Kiranasri
October 9 - 18, 2026
Metta is seen as a great potential source of happiness in the Buddhist tradition – an openness to and love of life in all its forms – which spontaneously manifests as compassion and joy. Yet the cultivation of metta can sometimes seem very ‘heady’, at times forced and dry. How can our practice of kindly awareness gain fresh inspiration? On this retreat, we will explore opening to metta as an innate quality of our body, heart and being – literally embodying love. Becoming and being truly embodied is not just a preliminary practice, but integral to the whole path. We will look at…
More info ...
Body, Heart, Mind Awake
With Tejananda
October 23 - 30, 2026
Body, heart and mind are essential facets of our being. Mind is usually taken to mean all kinds of mental activity, but what we’re interested in here is ‘mind itself’ – the awake, aware quality of mind. Awakeness is here even when we feel sleepy and dull. How do we know that we're sleepy and dull? We are awake to it. We’re even awake to our dreams, despite the body being asleep. This quality of wakefulness, knowingness or clarity is intrinsic to all of our experience and yet it is mysteriously ungraspable and unfindable. To know it, we need to…
More info ...
The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes
With Tejananda and Rijumitra
November 6 - 15, 2026
Bodhicitta – the awakening heart – is both the heart–response of wisdom to the suffering of living beings everywhere and the urge to realise full awakening for the benefit of all. This retreat will focus on love, compassion, joy and equanimity – the four ‘divine abodes’ or brahmaviharas – in the context of cultivating bodhicitta. To support this, we’ll also introduce tonglen, the ‘sending and receiving’ practice which opens the heart to universal compassion. The divine abodes are also known as the ‘boundless states’,¬ because they are inclusive of all living beings without exception. The practices that we’ll explore together…
More info ...
Vajrasattva Sadhana Retreat **Order Retreat**
With Prakasha
November 19 - 29, 2026
**Please be aware that this retreat starts on a Thursday** 'In this state which is without meditation and without any distraction, you observe everything with a naked awareness. Your own awareness is inherently knowing, inherently clear, and luminously brilliant... At this time you will actually behold Vajrasattva.' (Self-LIberation) The purpose of the Vajrasattva Sadhana is to purify the mind, and at the same time, to realize that mind is primordially pure - pure from the very beginning. Vajrasattva embodies the Dharmakaya, the 'nature of mind' as well as the essence of the Sambhogakaya, the radiant luminosity. This Sadhana is so…
More info ...
2026 Practice Retreat 1
With Vajraloka Team
December 21 - 28, 2026
**Please note that this retreat runs from Monday to Monday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
More info ...
2026 Practice Retreat 2
With Vajraloka Team
December 28, 2026 - January 4, 2027
**Please note that this retreat runs from Monday to Monday** The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with…
More info ...
Realising the Heart Sutra
With Tejananda
January 15 - 24, 2027
Retreats evolve, and I’ve been leading ‘Emptiness and the Heart Sutra’ for many years now. I love the Heart Sutra as a chant, a text to study and as an entryway into the wonderful territory of the Perfection of Wisdom sutras. However, I see it primarily as a pointer, a means, for transformative realisation. Realising the Heart Sutra means awakening to Prajñāpāramitā, which also means awakening from the delusions that underlie our unnecessary, self-caused, suffering. We’ll approach that realisation by cultivating the three levels of wisdom: First we listen. The sutra is expressed in concepts and we need to be…
More info ...
The Brahmaviharas: a complete path
With Rijumitra and Tejapushpa
February 5 - 12, 2027
Do we dare to turn towards suffering or even the joy of the world? Do we dare to remain open to experience and see the truth of situations unfold? Do we dare to respond? Subtly, we turn away from life and dull down. This retreat will challenge this habitual response and give you the tools to turn towards experience and embrace it with the love and responsiveness of the Brahmaviharas. We will engage with the Brahmaviharas drawing out both their active and receptive components and show how they can be a complete path to awakening.
More info ...
How To Be Happy
With Advayasiddhi
February 19 - 28, 2027
Buddhism offers a radically different approach to happiness than most of the world around us. Rather than consume, polarize and fix samsara, it speaks of happiness as a different kind of freedom, openness and ease, arising out of love and insight. Yet, what does this actually mean in direct experience? This is what we will explore on this retreat. Using both traditional Dharma teachings and more modern understandings from neuroscience, psychology and myths, we invite you to join us in an intensive meditative exploration of how to be happy the Buddhist way. We will play with what happens when we…
More info ...
Illumined by the Limitless: Shinran and re-imagining ‘practice’ **Order Retreat**
With Maitrisiddhi
March 12 - 21, 2027
What if we re-imagine ‘world’ as sacred, as ‘Buddha’, as compassionate towards us? What if we meet ourselves with total honesty, as flawed, karmically conditioned beings? What if we allow ourselves to deeply realise the ego’s failure to ‘manufacture’ awakening, no matter how hard we try? What if, instead, we entrust ourselves to our connection with the Dharma, and simply live our relationship with the sacred - with “Amida” or ‘the limitless’? And what if we awaken into knowing our finite selves to be illumined by the infinite? With his radical teaching of entrusting to Other Power, Shinran explored the…
More info ...
Entering Indra’s Net: Practising with Image
With Kavaradhi and Padmasagara
March 26 - April 2, 2027
The intriguing image of Indra’s Net depicts a vast net with a jewel woven into each knot. Every jewel reflects every other jewel in an infinite myriad of singular images. In our minds many images arise, but how do we engage with image in a way that is opening and creative rather than constricting and proliferating. How do we incline to images that liberate and resource us as opposed to images that entice and fool us. With our meditation firmly grounded in right view, embodied awareness and metta, we can open up to the potency of image. On this retreat…
More info ...
Wake Up, Just Sit
With Rijumitra
April 9 - 16, 2027
+ Cittamoksa & Akshayapradipa "Just Sitting" is perhaps the most regal of all meditation practices. It could even be said that it goes beyond meditation. When asked how to practice "just sitting," Sangharakshita simply replied, "You just sit." This captures the essence. However, many find that "just sitting" often turns into endless mental chatter. This compulsive, deluded thinking, known as prapanca, is not the true nature of just sitting. Clearly, this is not what Sangharakshita intended. How do we truly embrace this simple practice? During this retreat, we'll explore direct and effective methods to quiet the mental noise. This will…
More info ...
Freedom of Open Awareness
With Upekshanandi and Rijumitra
April 30 - May 7, 2027
Formless meditation invites us to discover the freedom that becomes available when the mind is no longer confined by habitual patterns of grasping and resistance. As awareness settles into its own natural spaciousness, qualities of presence, clarity and sensitive responsiveness begin to emerge with increasing ease. On this retreat we will explore formless meditation as an expression of confidence in awareness itself. Supported by Triratna system of practice, silence, ritual and Dharma reflection, we will cultivate a mind that is spacious without becoming diffuse, clear without becoming rigid, and deeply receptive to the unfolding of experience. This retreat is suitable…
More info ...
Satipaṭṭhāna – the Direct Path
With Tejananda and Prajnapriya
May 14 - 23, 2027
The Satipatthana Sutta, one of the most influential of the Buddha’s discourses, shows how wakeful, insightful attention to body, feelings and mind can enable us to wake up to our true nature. This radically transformative teaching is described as a ‘direct path’ to the cessation of suffering. Offering effective approaches that address the alienation and disembodiment which characterise life today, it can restore a deep integrity of body, heart, mind and being. In this retreat, we’ll explore a number of practice approaches inspired by the original mindfulness teachings attributed to the Buddha that take awareness, insight and compassion ever deeper.…
More info ...
Uncontrived Mindfulness & the Unreliable Witness
With Vajradevi and Tejananda
May 28 - June 6, 2027
Central to our dharma life is a simple yet profound distinction; between our direct experience mediated through the senses, and the thoughts and ideas we have about those experiences. We are usually unaware that the concepts we base our sense of self on and navigate our world by, are frequently flawed in a deep and on-going way. We look through the distorted lens of our own views and assumptions, making us an unreliable witness to our own inner experience. On the retreat we'll cultivate Awareness and Right View, to become mindful of, and curious about, what is actually happening in…
More info ...
Compassion and Emptiness
With Tejananda
June 18 - 27, 2027
The Buddha taught the divine abodes – unconditional love, compassion, joy and equanimity – not just as states of calm, but as ways to liberate the mind. The Brahmavihara practices enable us to cultivate these qualities and to engage with our afflictive emotions – craving, hatred and ‘ignoring’ – in relation to them. In doing so, we’re already engaging with insightful perspectives. Sooner or later, we’re likely to start glimpsing the uncultivated, unlimited, unconditional nature of these qualities, free from afflictions. We’ll explore these possibilities in the first part of the retreat from a perspective of deep, embodied awareness and…
More info ...
Meditating on the Bahiya Sutta
With Padmasagara and Rijumitra
July 2 - 11, 2027
In the Bahiya Sutta of the Udana we not only find an inspiring story of one person’s spiritual quest and awakening, but also a simple yet profound guide to meditation. The Buddha instructs Bahiya: “…as regards things seen, heard, sensed or cognised, there will be in the seen only the seen, in the heard only the heard, in the sensed only the sensed, in the cognised only the cognised.” In other words, the Buddha invited Bahiya to remain present with what is, without overlaying, projecting or reading anything whatsoever into his experience. On this retreat we’ll cultivate clarity, metta and…
More info ...
Dhyāna as Insight
With Tejananda
July 16 - 25, 2027
Dhyāna (jhāna) is far more than samatha, or mental calm. Recognising the liberative potential of the first dhyana was the key to the Buddha’s own awakening and he taught dhyāna as inseparable from insight. Only later did the tradition come to regard the dhyānas as ‘just’ states of concentration. The four dhyānas are, rather, states of deep, embodied mental unity, integrated with awareness of the foundations of mindfulness (satipatthana) and the factors of awakening (bojjhanga). Insight emerges inseparably from dhyāna, hence the title ‘Dhyāna as Insight’. On this retreat, I will be offering embodied approaches to dhyāna that people have…
More info ...
Holding to Nothing Whatever
With Singhashri and Balajit
July 30 - August 13, 2027
In a world intent on keeping us constantly distracted, one of the most radical things we can do is develop a deeper and more authentic relationship with our direct experience. The authenticity we develop supports us to see ever more clearly both the arising of suffering and the ever present potential for deepening into freedom. Together we’ll pay close attention to what supports an individual and collective felt sense of safety, dignity, and belonging. This includes learning some simple neuro-sensory techniques and practising self and co-regulating skills. Then we’ll be delving into the pithy meditation instructions of the Indian mahasiddha…
More info ...
Deep Emptiness
With Tejananda
August 20 - 29, 2027
Deep emptiness is none other than deep compassion, leading to the end of suffering. In “Compassion and Emptiness” we explore the teachings that Bhikkhu Analayo highlights in his book of the same name. These combine the divine abodes with the progressive series of emptiness contemplatins found in the Shorter Suññata Sutta I’ve found that on these retreats we rarely have sufficient time to adequately explore all of the contemplations. It may seem audacious to suppose that we can even approach the emptiness of the formless attainments (ārupa dhyāna). But they are all pointing to ways in which we fabricate ‘self’…
More info ...
Relaxing into the Ground of Being
With Tejapushpa and Silabodhi
September 3 - 10, 2027
This formless ground is variously called mind-as-such, big mind, awareness, no-self, source, true nature, Self, sunyata, Buddha-nature. Drawing on Dzogchen and Mahamudra texts to guide us, our starting point will be grounding ourselves in embodied meditation. As Padmasambhava said "Relax - do not force your mind or body' and "Know this one thing and everything is freed - remain within your inner nature, your Awareness". Recognising that we are trapped in self referential thoughts and beliefs that cause our suffering and separate us from the peace and freedom of our true nature: we will offer somatic and heart-based practices and…
More info ...
Zen and Now
With Paramananda
September 10 - 24, 2027
Often when we begin meditating, we have a good practice, but after a few years, we struggle not to be caught up in our habitual thinking and find that our meditation seems to become more superficial. In the Zen tradition, it is said that we should always keep a “beginner’s mind.” On this silent meditation retreat, we will be looking at ways to recapture our natural curiosity and openness, understanding that it is this state of beginner’s mind that is meditation—rather than simply a method of meditating. Through periods of stillness, simple teachings, and spacious practice, we will explore how…
More info ...
Padmasambhava Sadhana Retreat – Guru Padmasambhava and the Four Remainings **Order Retreat**
With Prakasha
October 1 - 15, 2027
Dilgo Khyentse says about the Four Remainings: 'They are four ways of leaving things in their natural simplicity.' This two weeks retreat offers a precious opportunity to receive a full introduction to the Padmasambhava sadhana and engage with the myth that he embodies and the profound teachings that he gave. Born from the heart syllable HRIH from the Buddha Amitabha on the Dhanakosha Lake, Padmasambhava embodies the archetype of the realized Tantric Guru who transforms obstacles into opportunities and has fully awakened to wisdom and compassion. We will be bringing his sadhana to imaginative life, and reciting mantras, invocations and…
More info ...
The Transformational and healing power of Jinas **Order Retreat**
With Vijayamala and Moksanandi
October 22 - 31, 2027
This retreat is grounded in a deep appreciation of the dynamic, open and connected nature of mind. Following on from previous retreats exploring Emotional intelligence and Working the kleshas, (afflictions that both stir us up and narrow our view of ourselves and life). We will take a deep dive into later stages of the path, freeing caught energy by bringing it into connection with the transformative power of the colours, mantra and Awakened resonance of the Jinas, and coming into direct relationship with the wisdom they embody. The retreat will be mostly in silence and supported by devotional practice. Having…
More info ...
Embodying Love
With Rijumitra, Balajit and Kiranasri
November 5 - 12, 2027
Metta is seen as a great potential source of happiness in the Buddhist tradition – an openness to and love of life in all its forms – which spontaneously manifests as compassion and joy. Yet the cultivation of metta can sometimes seem very ‘heady’, at times forced and dry. How can our practice of kindly awareness gain fresh inspiration? On this retreat, we will explore opening to metta as an innate quality of our body, heart and being – literally embodying love. Becoming and being truly embodied is not just a preliminary practice, but integral to the whole path. We will look at…
More info ...
The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes
With Tejananda, Rijumitra and Upekshanandi
December 10 - 19, 2027
Bodhicitta – the awakening heart – is both the heart–response of wisdom to the suffering of living beings everywhere and the urge to realise full awakening for the benefit of all. This retreat will focus on love, compassion, joy and equanimity – the four ‘divine abodes’ or brahmaviharas – in the context of cultivating bodhicitta. To support this, we’ll also introduce tonglen, the ‘sending and receiving’ practice which opens the heart to universal compassion. The divine abodes are also known as the ‘boundless states’,¬ because they are inclusive of all living beings without exception. The practices that we’ll explore together…
More info ...
2027 Practice Retreat 1
With Vajraloka Team
December 24 - 31, 2027
The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with chanting and ritual in the evening. Daily meditation reviews with…
More info ...
2027 Practice Retreat 2
With Vajraloka Team
December 31, 2027 - January 7, 2028
The main feature of these popular retreats is that they allow retreatants to follow the themes and rhythms emerging in their own meditation practice. In some ways they can be compared to going on solitary retreat while offering the support and structure that practising in the company of others can bring. While the practice retreats have no formal teaching input, the daily programme can be tailored to meet the needs of the individual, with support from Vajraloka team members. The simple programme has periods of morning and afternoon meditation with chanting and ritual in the evening. Daily meditation reviews with…
More info ...