Exploring the Buddha’s relationship with nature: a study practice weekend with Dhivan

The teaching of the Buddha is practical and concerned with the ending of dukkha or suffering. But the life-story of the Buddha shows him becoming Awakened at the foot of the Bodhi tree, encouraged and sheltered by the nāgas or mythical snakes, and having defeated Māra with the help of the Earth Goddess. These symbols of tree, snake and goddess tell us something on the level of myth and story about the animistic context of Awakening.

This weekend will offer an opportunity to study Buddhism with Dhivan, an Order member and Buddhist scholar who works in the area of early Buddhism as well as Buddhism and ecology. We will be looking at discourses from the Pāli canon and extracts from the traditional life-stories of the Buddha that show the Buddha in an intimate relationship with nature.  By entering into this story we start to understand how an imaginative relationship with nature as a living whole is an important condition for our own Dharma lives.

The retreat will start at 7.30pm on Friday 16th April and finish at 5.30pm on Sunday 18th April. For more information see the retreat information sheet.

Doing an online retreat, you'll be engaging on the retreat within the unique conditions of your day to day life. In order to get the most out of the retreat, we ask you attend as much of the programme as possible. Ahead of the retreat we encourage you to spend some time thinking about how you can create supportive conditions for practice within your day to day environment.

This retreat will be running online using the zoom meeting platform. This works in most web browsers, and you can also get free apps for all major mobile platforms too. You don’t need to pay for an account to take part.