This Precious Life - Reflections on Spiritual Death

Led by Kulaprabha, team

Wednesday 20 February - Friday 29 February

For OMs and women who have asked for ordination into the WBO

Kulaprabha writes:
This year's Going for Refuge meditation theme of spiritual death is being approached through the traditional Four Reminders from the Mahayana tradition, explored as aspects of our spiritual life and meditation practice. The Four Reminders are: our precious human birth; impermanence; suffering; and that our actions have consequences. Contemplation of these four is said to lead to the act of Going for Refuge. Within our context of the WBO's system of meditation this corresponds to spiritual death, and in particular to the occasion of our private ordination ceremony.

The reminders are sometimes referred to as "thoughts that transform the mind". They help persuade our mind of the spiritual futility of much that the world suggests has meaning and instead guide us to what the Buddha pointed to; not only as meaningful, but also as the ultimate source of joy and satisfaction for human beings. The central, crucial teaching of the Buddha is conditioned co-production and he called upon us to rely on this teaching of conditioned co-production. What we actually do is rely on our sense of an inherent substantive self within us ... looking to that self as the source of lasting happiness; grasping it protectively; defending its interests; longing for its fulfillment. It is this kind of mind-grasping after self that the four reminders help weaken and dissolve, eventually allowing our mind to rely on its dependently-arising nature. This is no easy task!!

There are many sources of these four reminders and this retreat is partly based on material from the book "This Precious Life" by Khandro Rinpoche, currently one of the most highly-trained women teachers in the Tibetan tradition. She is head of a Tibetan Buddhist nunnery in India and divides her time between there and teaching in the West. Her book is published by Shambala, ISBN 1-57062-307-4. Some of the reflections are inspired and will be taken from the "Jewel Ornament of Liberation" by Gampopa (translated H V Guenther), also published by Shambala ISBN 0-87773-378-3.

Code: 200209

Suggested donation: £340/270/200