Retreat Title: Compassion and Emptiness - Online Retreat
Led by Tejananda with Advayasiddhi
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 in a spirit of openness and curiosity.
This will provide us with an excellent basis for our contemplations of emptiness. Based on the ‘Shorter Discourse on Emptiness’, an early Buddhist text, this approach to emptiness is less analytical and more experiential than many of those developed in later Mahayana schools. Starting with our everyday experience, it enables us to ‘experience’ emptiness progressively in relation to some subtle states of formless meditation and the liberation of ‘signlessness’. It doesn’t matter how far through this progression we manage to get – emptiness is emptiness and discovering it in relation to our ordinary experience now can be quite profound enough!
The Retreat will start with the morning session at 9:30 am (UK time) on Saturday 27 August and finish after the last session at 20:15 (UK time) on Friday 2 September.
As a new feature we will offer the chance to meet daily in smaller groups. It’s a chance to talk more about the input and to enhance the sense of being with sangha. If you want to join a group, simply turn up at 15:15 on the first day (subsequent days at 15:20 for 15:25 start). You are also welcome to organise your own group.
The online retreat sessions will be as follows (UK times):
09.30 - 11.30 - Input on the practices and meditation
15.20 - 15:55 - Groups (optional)
16.00 - 17.00 - Ritual and meditation with Advayasiddhi
19.00 - 20.15 - Input on the practices and meditation
This retreat is suitable for people who have been meditating for at least 3 years
Start Date: 27th Aug 2022
End Date: 2nd Sep 2022
Please note: This retreat is on a dana basis. Even if no payment is needed to book, please consider to donate to help us continuing running events like this one.
Sorry, this retreat is now full. If you would like your name to be put on a waiting list please contact us.