Simply Being - at Vajraloka
2026-09-04 08:00 - 2026-09-13 17:00 (Europe/London) | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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 five wisdoms or ‘undivided awarenesses’ (jnanas), which are the essence of the five Buddhas. The mandala of the five Buddhas and their wisdoms offers a very practical map of our immediate experience, pointing to what has simply been here all along, unnoticed.

Dhyana and Insight 2026 - at Dhanakosa
2026-09-25 16:30 - 2026-10-02 10:30 | Dhanakosa, DHANAKOSA Buddhist Retreat Centre, Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, FK19 8PQ, Scotland, Balquhidder, Scotland, FK19 8PQ, United Kingdom
On this retreat, I will be offering embodied approaches to dhyāna (jhāna) that people have found to be helpful and effective. This may well involve questioning both our own views and approaches, as well as some of what the tradition has to say about dhyāna.
Dhyāna 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 dhyānas are, rather, states of deep, embodied mental unity, integrated with awareness of the foundations of mindfulness (satipatthana) and the factors of awakening (bojjhanga). Dhyāna is where insight takes place.
In practice, we’ll ask, ‘what, in our experience, is actually helpful?’ By becoming alive to the energetic immediacy of body experience, resources for entering dhyāna can be discovered as already present – just waiting to be noticed. We’ll explore this in direct experience and delve into the relationship between body, dhyāna and liberative insight.
This retreat is suitable for people with at least six months regular meditation practice and who have attended at least one full week retreat before.

Body, Heart, Mind Awake - taking the backward step - at Vajraloka
2026-10-23 16:30 - 2026-10-30 10:00 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
Body Heart Mind Awake – taking the backward step
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 discover what Zen Master Dogen was pointing to when he spoke of ‘taking the backward step’.
This is essentially a step ‘back’, from identification with our everyday mind of thoughts and imaginings, into the immediacy and presence of our body senses, just as they are.
Our body is not what we think it is – not at all! When we take the backward step, body is not the rather solid, rather weighty object we imagine it is. It’s more an unbounded, living, vibrating cloud of sensate energy.
This also opens the heart to rest in its own nature – limitless and boundless. Here, the stream of love and compassion which is already implicitly active becomes boundless and all-inclusive. Body, heart and mind are naturally and undividedly awake.
Booking can be made via the website link below

The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes - co-led with Rijumitra - Vajraloka
2026-11-06 16:30 - 2026-11-15 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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 on this retreat are all ways of opening our hearts and responding to the joys and sufferings of living beings – opening to the inseparable wisdom and compassion of the awakening heart itself.

Dhyana Through the Body — Reevaluating Dhyana — at Rivendell
2026-11-27 17:00 - 2026-12-04 10:00 | Rivendell, Chillies Lane, High Hurstwood, East Sussex, TN22 4AB, United Kingdom
“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

Realising the Heart Sutra
2027-01-15 16:00 - 2027-01-24 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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 mentally clear about the liberative import of concepts like emptiness, the five skandhas and the various other Buddhist teachings and categories that are mentioned in the text. Then we bring this understanding into relationship with our immediate experience.
This is the heart of the retreat. Emptiness implies absence of something. What is it that we expect to find in our experience that cannot, in fact, be found? This means really, deeply looking. Then we begin to intuit how emptiness lays bare the assumptions and delusions which bring us suffering.
This leaves us with simply what is, as it is. Living as the stream of becoming yet ‘holding to nothing whatever’ – not even emptiness itself. This is the realisation of Prajñāpāramitā. For us this means to relax, let-go, just be. There is nothing to achieve or adorn our ego with, ‘not even wisdom to attain’.

Satipaṭṭhāna – the Direct Path - Led by Tejananda and Prajnapriya
2027-05-14 16:00 - 2027-05-23 09:00 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
The Satipaṭṭhāna 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. As such, it will be helpful for all those wishing to deepen their mindfulness practice.
It is also suitable for for anyone qualified or training as teachers of mindfulness-based approaches such as MBSR, MBCT and Breathworks.
