Compassionate Warrior

Session times:

• 7am - 8.30am teaching session 1 with Vidyamala
• 11am - 12pm meditation with Suvarnadhi
• 7pm - 8.30pm teaching session 2 with Vidyamala

In the midst of these challenging times – Covid, terrorism, climate change etc - we have a choice. We can be cowed by anxiety and overwhelm and turn away, or we can use these conditions to develop the strength and courage to be with change, which is, after all, a fundamental truth of life. We can use these times as a gateway to empathy and love.

Touch into and strengthen the compassionate warrior within on this day retreat, offered by Vidyamala, a senior Order member based in the UK.

A Kiwi who has been living abroad for around 25 years, Vidyamala generously offered to lead an event for us as soon as we went into lockdown again in August 2021.

“I can think of no better person to help us contact the compassionate warrior within than Vidyamala. She has lived with chronic pain since she sustained a spinal injury as a teenager and developed the first mindfulness-based pain management programme in the world so she could share what she had discovered through Buddhist teachings with as many people as possible, whether Buddhist or not. She brings a wealth of practice of the Buddha’s early teachings on mindfulness, as well as the love and outward-focussed compassionate activity of lojong, or mind training, a much later development in the Buddhist world.” – Suvarnadhi

Across two 1.5 hour teaching sessions, we will develop our skills to turn towards body and vedana (feeling tone), loosen our habitual reactions to life and open to something much more fluid and boundless - open to love.

Zoom links will be emailed to you the afternoon before the event. Bookings essential. Suitable for all those who have learned and practised the metta bhavana and mindfulness of breathing meditations.

“Be fully present in our time. Find the courage to breathe in the suffering of the world. Allow peace and healing to breathe out through you in return.” - Akuppa