Taraloka

Awareness is Revolutionary: meditation

Led by Vidyamala, Saddhanandi

Friday 21 November - Sunday 30 November

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

Vidyamala writes:
I am very excited about leading the 'Awareness is Revolutionary' retreat with Saddhanandi this year, based on the Satipatthana Sutta. I have been exploring this text as a guide to my own meditation practice and teaching for several years now and am utterly committed to it as a path of practice. It is pragmatic and yet deep and profound and I know that it works, both in my own life and when I witness the power of awareness in the lives of others.

Saddhanandi is an old friend of mine and I enjoy and appreciate working with her. We both love mindfulness and have co-led several mindfulness retreats, as well as leading others individually, over the past few years. In August 2007 we led 4 morning workshops on the Satipattana approach to meditation at the International Convention of the Western Buddhist Order.

Speaking personally, my love of mindfulness has grown out of a very long journey of seeking peace within a damaged and painful body. I have had on-going back pain for 30 years following a spinal injury in my teens, and I marvel at how mindfulness and meditation have enabled me to find a rich and fulfilling quality of life despite this pain. For me, mindfulness as a quality is about becoming intimate with all aspects of my experience on a moment by moment basis. In 2004, along with Sona and Ratnaguna, I founded Breathworks, a project offering mindfulness-based approaches to anyone living with pain, illness and stress. This is broadly based on the Satipatthana approach to meditation, although it is taught in secular settings. Breathworks is rapidly expanding and we now have trainers running courses in many countries.

Personally I am fascinated by several different aspects of mindfulness:

• The 'non-doing' aspect of awareness, which I experience as a letting go into the moment and resting with the content of the moment in a non-interfering, non-judgemental way - 'being' not 'doing'. I am fascinated by the mysteriously transformative dimension to this non-doing. As the Satipatthana Sutta points out, if we shine the light of awareness on any experience then that experience subtly changes, moving from being blind or reactive to an experience that has some objectivity. Often I find this is enough. I don't need to get into a battle with my momentary experience but, in the light of awareness, I immediately am less reactive, less driven by habit, less blind and ignorant.
• The second aspect of mindfulness that I'm intrigued by is slightly more active. It is the element of choice that arises when we are awake and present to the thoughts, feelings and sensations of the moment. It is only on the basis of awareness of what is actually happening that we are able to make choices as to how we respond. I personally see this is the point of creativity in the spiritual life and I find this aspect of mindfulness practice exciting and intriguing.
• The third aspect of mindfulness that I'm particularly fascinated by is what I call the loving, interconnected, other-regarding dimension of mindfulness. If one is awake to the moment and aware of how things truly are, then one finds impermanence, insubstantiality and unsatisfactoriness running through the very fabric of all aspects of the moment. And, of course, if things are impermanent and insubstantial this also applies to one's sense of self! If I am made up of change and you are made up of change, then where are the hard edges between us? Here is a quote from a book on mindfulness and love: 'A student asked an Indian teacher, Dipa Ma, if she should be practising mindfulness or lovingkindness. Dipa Ma replied "From my own experience, there is no difference between mindfulness and lovingkindness". For her, love and awareness were the same thing. Think about it. When you are fully loving, aren't you also mindful? When you are fully mindful, is this not also the essence of love?' [1]

We will be exploring all these different aspects of mindfulness through the context of the four foundations of body, sensations, thoughts/emotions, and dhammas or Reality as presented in the Satipatthana Sutta. We will do this sequentially over the 10 days, but will start with dhammas and then move on to the foundations of body, sensations and thoughts/emotions. We have decided to start with dhammas so each of us can emotionally engage with our own personal vision and deepest dharmic values that we can then take into the rest of the retreat. We explored the Satipatthanas in this order on the convention and it seemed to work very well.

The retreat will be mostly held in silence and a typical daily programme will be:

Most of all the retreat will be an opportunity to rest more and more deeply in the tremendous richness of moment by moment experience and to wake up to life, as it is, in each moment.

[1] Knee Deep in Grace: The Extraordinary Life and Teaching of Dipa Ma, by Amy Schmidt.

For more information on Breathworks go to: www.breathworks-mindfulness.co.uk

This meditation retreat explores the aspect of 'integration' within the WBO System of Meditation of integration, positive emotion, spiritual death and spiritual rebirth.

Code: 200855

Suggested donation: £340/270/200