The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes - co-leading with Rijumitra - Vajraloka
2025-11-21 08:00 - 2025-11-30 17:00 (Europe/London) | 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.

The Awakening Body - An online weekend of embodied meditation and inquiry with Tejananda and Balajit
2025-11-14 16:00 - 2025-11-16 17:30 | ONLINE
We will start by clarifying a crucial distinction – that between mind and body. Mental contents, such as thoughts and images, cannot awaken. Our conceptual mind is not what, or who, we truly are. It is the immediate experience of our sensate body and the other ‘body senses’ that are our gateways to awakening.
This will lead us into an exploration of embodiment – literally, coming to our senses. Embodiment can take us deep into the experiential truths about our nature to which Buddhist teachings are pointing.
We can also discover subtler dimensions of embodiment in our experience, including the energy body and even the mentally unfabricated dharma body.
While our body is potentially a source of wisdom, we also have a ‘pain body’. This holds all the tensions, contractions and emotional avoidance patterns that have built up. These patterns, and the suffering associated with them, can gradually release through turning towards them.
We will be exploring how to deepen into this vital transforming work.
Join us from 4pm on Friday the 14th November to 5.30pm on Sunday 16th.
Please note this retreat is only open to people who have been practising within the context of the Triratna Buddhist Community for at least three years.
After you have reserved a space (click on ‘website’ below) you will be sent a confirmation email. Closer to the event, you will be sent an email with a Zoom link, where the event will be hosted.
Dana
This retreat is offered on a dana (donation) basis. Donations can be made either before, during or after the event. A link for dana will be sent closer to the start of the event. The dana is to support the retreat leaders in meeting their living costs and being able to organise and run these events.
Suggested donation:
£50-90 | $65-120 | €60-105
No one is turned away for lack of funds.

Session Timings
The session timings (UK) will be:
Friday 14th November
16.00 – 17.30
19.30 – 21.00
Saturday 15th November
9.30 – 12.00
16.00 – 17.30
19.30 – 21.00
Sunday 16th November
9.30 – 12.00
16.00 – 17.30

Deep Emptiness – online retreat
2025-11-01 08:00 - 2025-11-06 17:00 | Denbighshire
Deep emptiness is nothing other than compassion, leading to the end of suffering.
In the retreat on “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 emptiness teachings found in the Shorter Suññata Sutta. In this sutta, the Buddha shows us how to establish emptiness in a very direct and experiential way, by noticing that experience is empty of whatever isn’t right here in experience now. This may seem obvious, but we delude ourselves into thinking that although something isn’t ‘here’, it’s still really ‘out there’ even when we don’t experience it. We miss the main point – what we think we’re experiencing is just a mental fabrication. What we’re actually experiencing is empty of those fabrications.
The sutta outlines a progressive series of perspectives on emptiness. But there’s a slight problem with the Compassion and Emptiness retreats which is that we rarely have enough time to adequately explore them all. It may seem audacious to suppose that we can even approach these ‘elevated’ levels of emptiness. But they are all pointing to ways in which we fabricate ‘self’ and ‘world’ and, though subtle, they relate to aspects of our everyday, moment to moment experience.
We believe we’re experiencing separate forms ‘out there’, arising in space (and time), that there is a quality that experiences, namely ‘consciousness,’ in which really-existing ‘things’ arise, including ‘my-self’, and that what we perceive objectively exists along with ‘me’ the perceiver. All of these are mental fabrications and the sutta shows us the way to liberation by seeing and knowing directly that they are fabrications.
All of these contemplations will proceed from a heartfelt kindness and compassion, but the main focus will be on exploring the empty nature of space, consciousness and the sense of an independent, lasting and potentially satisfactory self. We’ll follow this through to signlessness, in which there are no reference points at all.
Ideally this would be a follow-up for anyone who has already attended a Compassion and Emptiness retreat, but it will stand in its own right, especially for those who wish to plunge more directly into these emptiness teachings.
Suitable for people with at least three years of regular meditation practice.
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The programme on each day will be (UK times):
8.00 – 10.00 practice, teaching and inquiry
15.00 – 16.30 ritual, chanting, meditation and the opportunity to join a breakout group to discuss your practice
19.00 – 20.30 – practice, teaching and inquiry
I won’t be able to offer one to one reviews during the retreat but if you would like to have one or more follow-up reviews (10 to 20 minutes), I’ll offer that possibility.
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This retreat and subsequent reviews or mentoring are offered on the principle of reciprocal generosity (dana). There is no charge, but your generosity in supporting my livelihood and work is greatly appreciated. If you are unable to afford anything at present, I would much prefer that you attend nevertheless.
To register interest in this online retreat, please email me at tejananda.online@yahoo.com. I will acknowledge your booking and send out full details including zoom link a week or so before the retreat starts.

Compassion and Emptiness - Vajraloka
2025-10-17 16:30 - 2025-10-24 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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!

Body, Heart, Mind Awake – At Cardiff Buddhist Centre
2025-10-11 10:00 - 2025-10-12 16:30 | Cardiff Buddhist Centre, 12 St Peter's Street, Cardiff, Wales, CF24 3BA, United Kingdom
About the Retreat – 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.
Tejananda will be exploring the connection between the mind, the body and the heart over two days of meditation and discussion.

Pointing to the Moon of Non-separation
2025-10-03 08:00 - 2025-10-05 20:30 | ONLINE
A weekend exploring suññatā as non-separation
In my online retreat earlier in the year, the ‘moon’ to which I was pointing was the unfindability of a separate self. The kind of self that we think we are – persisting, potentially satisfactory and somehow ‘who and what I really am’ – is nothing but a mental fabrication. Our fabricating of this leads to suffering.
This weekend retreat explores the other ‘side’ of the equation: if there is ‘self’, there must be a separate ‘other’. And indeed, the sense of separation is a further, deep cause of unnecessary suffering.
Our nature is, in reality, whole and undivided. This non-separation is what we will be exploring, by becoming inquisitive about the question: what is the actual nature of our immediate sense experience?
It is not what we think.
These explorations stand in their own right and people who were not on the earlier retreat are welcome.
To view full details and book, click on Website link under ‘Details’ below, rather than ‘View Organiser Website’

Body, Heart, Mind Awake — taking the backward step - Triratna Highland Centre, Inverness
2025-09-20 10:30 - 2025-09-21 16:30 | Denbighshire
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 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 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.

Simply Being - at Dhanakosa
2025-09-12 17:00 - 2025-09-19 10:00 | Dhanakosa, DHANAKOSA Buddhist Retreat Centre, Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, FK19 8PQ, Scotland, Balquhidder, Scotland, FK19 8PQ, United Kingdom
‘Simply being’ points to the aliveness and awakeness that we can recognise at any moment. It’s an openness to full presence, our full being – in body, senses and awareness. It points to being what we really are, beyond conceptual fabrication. In recognising and opening to the steady and spacious aspects of experience here and now, we may glimpse a timeless awareness-emptiness that is inseparable from loving, compassionate energy.
We’ll explore all this through sitting meditation, experiential ‘lookings’ and by discovering our own direct experience as awareness, simplicity, intimacy and aliveness. These qualities are gateways to the five ‘undivided knowings’ (jnanas) which are the essence of the mandala of the five Buddhas. This offers a very practical ‘map’ of our immediate experience, pointing to what has been here all along, unnoticed – simply being

Body, Heart, Mind Awake — taking the backward step - Glasgow Buddhist Centre
2025-09-06 10:30 - 2025-09-07 16:30 | Denbighshire

Dhyana Through the Body - Vajraloka
2025-08-22 16:30 - 2025-08-29 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
Accessing dhyana (jhana), or absorption, seems to be very natural for some people, and a complete mystery to others. Dhyana is well worth cultivating as a way of deepening shamatha (mental tranquillity) as well as for the sheer psycho-somatic pleasure that some of these states afford. On this retreat, we’ll be suggesting approaches that people have found to be helpful and effective for entering into dhyana. This may well involve questioning both our own views and approaches, and some of what the tradition has to say about dhyana. We’ll proceed on the basis of asking ‘What, in our experience, is and is not actually helpful?’
We have found that by becoming alive to the immediacy of our sensate experience, particularly body experience, resources for entering absorption 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 and between body, awareness and insight.

Emptiness and the Heart Sutra - Vajraloka
2025-07-11 16:30 - 2025-07-20 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
The Heart Sutra is one of the most well-known and loved of all Buddhist texts. Inevitably, there are innumerable takes on what it ‘means’. Early western commentators treated it as philosophy or even poetry. But what if it actually points us towards our own immediate experience as the way to “sunder the bonds that cause us suffering”?
Whatever could practising this involve?
First, there are questions that need to be addressed. What is ‘emptiness’? What does it mean to say that our psycho-physical constituents – the skandhas – are ‘empty’? And how can it be that ‘in emptiness’ there are no skandhas, no senses, even no conditioned arising?
Going deeper, we’ll open to our direct experience of the body, senses and skandhas. We’ll explore whether an intrinsic, substantial, separate ‘me’ can be found in “form, feeling, thought, choice and consciousness”, Does this “me” have any basis in experience? Or is experience ‘empty’ of such an entity?
In this way, we’ll begin to discover how the emptiness teaching of the Heart Sutra can compassionately awaken us to our deepest nature, Prajñāpāramitā, from which we are never truly apart.

Wisdom Energy - co-leading with Padmadrishti - Vajraloka
2025-06-20 16:30 - 2025-06-29 09:30 | Denbighshire
Our ‘precious human body’ is the first and most important foundation not just of mindfulness, but of meditation and Dharma practice as a whole. The teaching of the Buddha’s ‘Three Bodies’ (trikaya) suggests that there is far, far more to the body than meets the eye. These could be summarised as the bodies of truth (dharmakaya), of living energy (sambhogakaya) and of manifestation (nirmanakaya). While they are fully realised with awakening, we can attune and open to them right now through meditation and Dharma practice, especially body and heart-based practice.
Tejananda and Padmadrishti will guide explorations into the extraordinary nature of our ‘ordinary’ body experience, including the energy aspect and the value of bringing awareness into the ‘core’ or central channel, and the three centres of hara (lower abdomen), heart and head. They will offer a mix of complementary approaches including meditative explorations, Qigong practice and somatic practices, to the same embodied insight
This retreat will be an opening to the possibility that the wisdom energy of our true nature is here to be discovered.

Pointing to the Moon - Online retreat with The Buddhist Centre (Live)
2025-05-02 08:00 - 2025-05-08 17:00 | ONLINE
The well-known metaphor of ‘a finger pointing at the moon’ is itself a pointer to something essential in dharma practice. It suggests ‘don’t mistake the finger for the moon’. But what is the moon, and what is the finger? The finger could be taken as whatever gets us looking and going in the ‘right’ direction. For example, the eight ‘right’ perspectives on dharma practice that the Buddha taught.
But neither these nor any other dharma practices are ‘right’ (or ‘wise’) if we’re relating to them literally, as ends in themselves. That would be ‘attachment to rules and religious practices’ – believing that it’s enough to do our practices by rote, and losing touch with that to which they are pointing us.
What they are pointing us to is ‘waking up’ – bodhi. Waking up from the delusions that give rise to suffering. Bodhi is the ‘moon’ of our true nature, which is always here, even when obscured by clouds.
In this retreat, we’ll focus on the ‘moon’ by addressing a core delusion – that “I am separate”. This is better known as anatta, ‘not-self’, but this core pointing-out on the Buddha’s part isn’t suggesting that we’re somehow non-existent! Rather, it is pointing us back to our essential non-dividedness.
We’ll approach this by first cultivating calm, embodied, aware presence and opening to unconditional love. With that as our ground, we’ll explore our experience directly and interactively, using pointers as to how we create and sustain the delusion of separation and a self-other dichotomy. Seeing through such delusions wakes us up from our self-view and to an essential truth of the dharma, the ‘moon’ of our undivided nature here and now.
Link for booking below

This, just this - Vajraloka
2025-04-04 08:00 - 2025-04-11 17:00 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
In Zen, a sesshin is a period of especially intense all-the-time formal practice. For three days on this retreat, we will adopt – and adapt – this approach. Each day, there will be several two-hour periods of sitting and walking, and we’ll be opening to the presence of awareness in all of our activities throughout the day.
This will be preceded by two days for us to arrive in our bodies, our senses and the beauty of Vajraloka’s environment. The main practice will emphasise undivided mental calm (shamatha) and clear-seeing (vipashyana) – or ‘silent illumination’.
During the ‘sesshin’, there will be some input suggesting how to orient your practice but there will be no leading-through during the practice sessions. Each day will end with a ritual including chanting and further sitting. In the context of silent practice, short one-to-one reviews will be available each day.
The final day will offer the opportunity to relax, enjoy the fruits of our practice and, coming out of silence, sharing with others.

Body, heart, mind awake; taking the backward step - Online retreat
2025-03-14 08:00 - 2025-03-19 21:00 | Denbighshire
Body Heart Mind Awake – taking the backward step
This is my first ‘personal’ online retreat, exploring the title I’ve given to my website.
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.
Suitable for people with at least three years of regular meditation practice.

The programme on each day will be (UK times):
8.00 – 10.00 practice, teaching and inquiry
15.00 – 16.30 ritual, chanting, meditation and the opportunity to join a breakout group to discuss your practice
19.00 – 20.30 – practice, teaching and inquiry
I won’t be able to offer one to one reviews during the retreat but if you would like to have one or more follow-up reviews (10 to 20 minutes) then check out details [to be posted].
————
This retreat and subsequent reviews or mentoring are offered on the principle of reciprocal generosity (dana). There is no charge, but your generosity in supporting my livelihood and work is greatly appreciated. If you are unable to afford anything at present, I would much prefer that you attend nevertheless.
To register interest in this online retreat, please email me at tejananda.online@yahoo.com. I will acknowledge your booking and send out full details including zoom link a week or so before the retreat starts.

Emptiness and the Heart Sutra - Online retreat for Australia and New Zealand
2025-02-22 08:00 - 2025-02-28 17:00 | Denbighshire
Seven days of meditation, lively exploration, and strong, supportive friendship: a space to explore why the wisdom of emptiness is, precisely, compassion.
Led by Tejananda, with Kusalacitta leading ritual and meditation in the afternoon slot
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The Heart Sutra is one of the most familiar of all Buddhist texts and, inevitably, there are innumerable takes on ‘what it means’. How do we square the opening statement that the skandhas (our psycho–physical constituents) are ‘empty’ with the following one that ‘in emptiness’ there are no skandhas, no senses, no conditioned–arising? Early western commentators saw the sutra as full of paradox – but what if it is not an attempt to bamboozle our minds, but a hands–on method of practice and realisation?
For people with at least 3 years of regular meditation experience
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Booking now available – please click here
– – – – – – – – – – – –
Daily sessions will be at the following times
Morning, with Tejananda:
QLD 6:00 AM
East Coast Australia 7:00 AM
New Zealand 9:00 AM
Afternoon, with Kusalacitta (including breakout groups): To be confirmed
Evening, with Tejananda:
QLD 5:00 PM
East Coast Australia 6:00 PM
New Zealand 8 PM

Simply Being - Rivendell
2025-02-07 16:30 - 2025-02-14 09:30 | Rivendell, Chillies Lane, High Hurstwood, East Sussex, TN22 4AB, United Kingdom
In essence, ‘simply being’ evokes the effortless flow of embodied presence. Presence is this ‘timeless moment’, where there is no observer nor observed, no subject or object. It is always unconditionally ‘here’. Yet, we remain ignorant of it owing to the deep conditioning of our self-narratives. Nevertheless, it is what we are and we can never depart from it.
The mind cannot grasp presence – it is our mind-identification which covers it up. It is not any-thing, so it can only be evoked by terms like ‘suchness’, ‘just this’ or ‘no-mind’. Yet, it is utterly simple and direct, vibrantly awake and alive, and intimately, always, here,

Discovering and resting in presence, there is a lightness of touch and being. Over time, our self-stories, conditionings and painful emotions begin to lose traction and can increasingly be seen and known directly as like phantoms, illusions or dreams – without any true substance. With this, we wake up to the freedom which is our birthright.

To attend this retreat you will need to have been regularly meditating for at least two years

https://www.rivendellretreatcentre.com/retreats/simply-being-tejananda-feb-2025

Satipatthana: the Buddha’s teaching on mindfulness - co-leading with Prajnapriya - Vajraloka
2025-01-10 16:30 - 2025-01-19 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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. As such, it will be helpful for all those wishing to deepen their mindfulness practice as well as for those qualified or training as teachers of mindfulness–based approaches such as MBSR, MBCT and Breathworks.
This retreat is suitable for people who have been meditating for at least 3 years

Weekend Urban Retreat at Manchester Buddhist Centre
2024-12-14 10:30 - 2024-12-15 16:00 | Manchester Buddhist Centre, 16-20 Turner Street, MANCHESTER, M4 1DZ, United Kingdom
Flagging up these dates for my forthcoming December weekend workshop for Order members and mitras at the Manchester Buddhist Centre. I’ll share full details as soon as the theme is settled.
Both days will start at 10.30 am and finish at 4.00 pm. Booking is now available on the website link below.
Watch this space!

Dhyana Through the Body - residential retreat at Rivendell
2024-12-06 16:30 - 2024-12-13 10:00 | Rivendell, Chillies Lane, High Hurstwood, East Sussex, TN22 4AB, United Kingdom
Accessing dhyana (jhana), or absorption, seems to be very natural for some people, and a complete mystery to others. Dhyana is well worth cultivating as a way of deepening shamatha (mental tranquillity) as well as for the sheer psycho-somatic pleasure that some of these states afford. On this retreat, we’ll be suggesting approaches that people have found to be helpful and effective for entering into dhyana. This may well involve questioning both our own views and approaches, and some of what the tradition has to say about dhyana. We’ll proceed on the basis of asking ‘What, in our experience, is and is not actually helpful?’
We have found that by becoming alive to the immediacy of our sensate experience, particularly body experience, resources for entering absorption 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 and between body, awareness and insight.
This retreat is now fully booked but you can join the waiting list

Form is empty - is it? - Online retreat
2024-11-29 19:00 - 2024-12-01 17:30 | ONLINE
Online weekend retreat with The Buddhist Centre (Live)

Earlier this year we explored how the Buddha’s teaching in the Shorter Suññata Sutta establishes emptiness in a very direct and experiential way, by noticing absence. Experience is empty of whatever isn’t right here in experience now. This seems obvious, but we delude ourselves into thinking that although something isn’t ‘here’, it’s still ‘there’ in some way, even when we don’t experience it.

Say you’ve been somewhere away from home (even just out shopping) – where is that place in experience now? Quite simply, it’s nowhere, other than in our imagination. This is not suggesting that the place ‘doesn’t exist’, it’s about directly knowing the distinction between what is experienced and what is imagined or mentally constructed. Once we gain clarity around this, the liberating path of insight (prajñā) can unfold.

We’ll use the Buddha’s method to explore areas of our experience of bodily form, space and consciousness – gaining clarity about what is actual experience, what is imagined or constructed and what the emptiness teachings are actually pointing to.

Click here for the booking details

The Awakening Body - Online weekend co-led with Balajit
2024-11-22 16:00 - 2024-11-24 17:30 | Denbighshire
The Awakening Body – Online Retreat!
An online weekend of embodied meditation and inquiry with Tejananda and Balajit
Our mind – all our conceptual faculties – is not what, or who, we truly are. It cannot awaken.
It is our sensate body and the other ‘body senses’ that are our gateways to awakening.
On this weekend we’ll start by clarifying the distinction between mind and body. This will lead us into an exploration of embodiment – literally, coming to our senses. Embodiment can take us deep into the experiential truths about our nature to which Buddhist teachings are pointing.
We can also discover subtler dimensions of embodiment in our experience, including the energy body and even the mentally unfabricated dharma body.
Our body is potentially a source of wisdom. At the same time, we have a ‘pain body’. This holds all the tensions, contractions and emotional avoidance patterns that have built up. These patterns, and the suffering associated with them, can gradually release through turning towards them. We will be exploring how to deepen into this vital transforming work.
Join us from 4pm on Friday the 22nd November to 5.30pm on Sunday 24th.
Please note this retreat is only open to people who have been practising within the context of the Triratna Community for at least three years.
After you have reserved a space you will be sent a confirmation email. Closer to the event, you will be sent an email with a Zoom link, where the event will be hosted.
Dana
This retreat is offered on a dana (donation) basis. Donations can be made either before, during or after the event. A link for dana will be sent closer to the start of the event. The dana is to support the retreat leaders in meeting their living costs and being able to organise and run these events.
No one is turned away for lack of funds.
Session Timings
The session timings (UK) will be:
Friday
16.00 – 17.30
19.30 – 21.00
Saturday
9.30 – 12.00
16.00 – 17.30
19.30 – 21.00
Sunday
9.30 – 12.00
16.00 – 17.30
Click on ‘website’ below for booking details

The Awakening Heart and the Divine Abodes - Vajraloka
2024-11-08 16:30 - 2024-11-17 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
Co-led with Rijumitra

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.
This retreat is suitable for people who have been meditating for at least 3 years

Entering the Mandala of Awakening: The Four Great Stages of the Path - residential Order Retreat - Vajraloka
2024-10-04 16:30 - 2024-10-25 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
Co-led with Prakasha
This retreat is for members of the Triratna Buddhist Order only
This retreat will introduce the four principal stages of the spiritual path. Firstly, the contemplation of the three lakshanas. Secondly, entry into the three liberations. Thirdly, the exploration of the perceptual situation. Fourthly, entry into the Mandala of Awakening. Through this approach we gain a deeper understanding of the four levels of Sunyata that Sangharakshita introduces.
Prakasha will give a series of presentations that clarify the stages of the Path leading to Awakening. Tejananda will introduce a parallel series of integrated, somatic and meditative inquiry-based approaches to calm and insight based on the principles of the Triratna system of practice.
The retreat will mostly be in silence with meditation reviews, pujas and ritual.
Currently full, but check with Vajraloka in case places become available at short-term notice

Meditation and inquiry weekend at Triratna Highland Buddhist Centre, Inverness
2024-09-21 10:00 - 2024-09-22 16:30 | Denbighshire
Mind, Body and the Three Marks
Distinguishing our mental activities (‘mind’) from immediate sense experience (‘body’) is vital to all kinds of meditation. If we can develop clarity about this, we can become increasingly embodied and no longer try to ‘think’ ourselves into meditation.
This clarity is essential to mindfulness of breathing, metta bhavana, and ‘clear-seeing’ (vipashyana) practice, such as contemplating the first two ‘marks’ of conditioned existence, impermanence and unsatisfactoriness. On day one, we’ll explore all of this.
On day two, we’ll focus more on the third ‘mark’ – that “I am separate”. This is better known as anatta, ‘not-self’, but this core pointing-out on the Buddha’s part isn’t suggesting that we’re non-existent! Rather, it is pointing us back to our essentially undivided nature.
As Sangharakshita commented: “delusion may … be there in the form of a belief in a fixed, unchanging self or essence or soul, but that … is not there, it never was and it never will be.”
On the basis of unconditional love and calm, embodied, aware presence, we’ll explore our experience to see how we create and sustain the delusion of separation and a self-other divide.
Each day will run from 10.00 – 4.30

Simply Being - Dhanakosa
2024-09-13 16:30 - 2024-09-20 09:30 | Dhanakosa, DHANAKOSA Buddhist Retreat Centre, Balquhidder, Lochearnhead, FK19 8PQ, Scotland, Balquhidder, Scotland, FK19 8PQ, United Kingdom
‘Simply being’ points to the aliveness and awakeness that we can recognise at any moment. It’s an openness to full presence, our full being – in body, senses and awareness. It points to being what we really are, beyond conceptual fabrication. In recognising and opening to the steady and spacious aspects of experience here and now, we may glimpse a timeless awareness-emptiness that is inseparable from loving, compassionate energy.
We’ll explore all this through sitting meditation, experiential ‘lookings’ and by discovering our own direct experience as awareness, simplicity, intimacy and aliveness. These qualities are gateways to the five ‘undivided knowings’ (jnanas) which are the essence of the mandala of the five Buddhas. This offers a very practical ‘map’ of our immediate experience, pointing to what has been here all along, unnoticed – simply being.

Compassion and Emptiness - Vajraloka
2024-08-30 16:30 - 2024-09-06 09:30 | Vajraloka, Tyn Y Ddol, Corwen, Denbighshire, LL21 0EN, United Kingdom
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!
Currently full, but check with Vajraloka in case places become available at short-term notice
