Title
The green buddha - appreciative awareness in troubled times
We live, it seems, in increasingly troubled times. Yet if we fall prey to fear, hatred, blame and conflict, things only get worse. Somehow we need the resources to find our feet, rise up and meet the challenges we face with courage and confidence, with strength and dignity, with creativity and compassion, with wisdom and the harmonising speech that builds concord and co-operation.
Seeking resources? Well, the Buddhist tradition has much to offer. It offers mindfulness and the practices of consciously appreciating what we love and trust. It offers meditations to work skillfully with our emotional states, so as to move beyond fear into courage, beyond hatred into compassion, beyond habitual old views into insightful new perspectives. This retreat makes such practices readily available within a supportive daily programme which includes meditation, mindfulness, daily discourses and imaginal practices such as mantra, puja and inspirational poetry.
‘The Green Buddha’ refers both to the historical Buddha who spent most of his time living with appreciative awareness in the forests of ancient India ... and to the archetypal Buddha ‘Amoghasiddhi’ - ‘Green Buddha of the North’. Of the five buddhas depicted in the Buddha Mandala, Amoghasiddhi stands especially for: harmony and concord within ... harmony and concord without. This is not the superficial harmony that compromises truth. It is the hard-won harmony that courageously faces conflict - both inner and outer - searching for the deeper truths that show a way to lasting resolution
For more information see the retreat information sheet.
2022 Covid-19 update: We expect to be running this retreat with a maximum of 21 people including the team. Before booking please read our Covid Pre-retreat information sheet here for more information about what to expect.