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. […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 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 […]
“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 dhyāna (jhāna) that people […]
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 […]
“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, I’ll be offering embodied approaches to dhyana (jhāna) […]
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. […]
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. […]
‘Wings to Awakening’ is a poetic rendering of ‘bojjhaṅgā’ - seven ‘limbs’ or factors that support bodhi - awakening. The bojjhaṅgās are highlighted in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta as crucial to the fourth contemplation, that of dhammas. They are experiential qualities that we cultivate and are integral to entering and deepening into the four dhyānas - […]
