Dhyana Through the Body — Reevaluating Dhyana — at Rivendell

“Quite secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states… one suffuses, fills, and permeates one’s entire body with rapture and pleasure born of seclusion, so that there is no part of one’s whole body that is not pervaded by it.” AN 5.28

On this retreat, we’ll be offering embodied approaches to dhyana (jhāna) that people have found to be helpful and effective. This may well involve questioning both our own views and approaches, and a good deal of what the tradition has to say about dhyana.

Dhyana 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 dhyana as inseparable from insight. Only later tradition came to regard the dhyanas as ‘just’ states of concentration.

The dhyanas are, rather, states of deep, embodied mental unity, integrated with awareness of the foundations of mindfulness (satipatthana) and the factors of awakening (bojjhanga).

In practice, the leading question is ‘what, in our experience, is actually helpful?’ We have found that by becoming alive to the energetic immediacy of body experience, resources for entering dhyana can be discovered as already present – just waiting to be noticed. We’ll explore this in direct experience by delving into the relation between body and breath as well as between body, awareness and insight.

About the retreat: 

Each day, there will be two main input and practice sessions led by Tejananda. These will include opportunities for making observations on your practice and asking questions. There will also be plenty of time for ‘open practice’, where you can use the shrine room, do walking meditation or whatever else feels appropriate. Ten-minute practice reviews will be offered to everyone. From Saturday evening to Thursday after lunch we’ll observe complete silence, excepting reviews and any discussion in the input sessions.

Each day will end with some devotional activity – chanting, recitation or puja – and then open practice.

SUMMARY

This retreat explores embodied approaches to dhyana, encouraging participants to question some traditional interpretations and personal assumptions. Rather than viewing dhyana as merely concentrated calm (samatha), we’ll explore it as a deeply unified, embodied state integrated with mindfulness and the factors of awakening. Through experiential practices involving body, breath, and awareness, participants will discover resources for dhyana already within their experience.

This retreat is now bookable on the Rivendell website, link below