Six Element Practice

Led by Kamalashila and Bodhiketu

Retreat exploring the Six Elements Practice
Led by Kamalashila and Bodhiketu

Our core vision for Adhisthana is to communicate the Triratna presentation of the Dharma, originating from Sangharakshita.

Meditation on the Six Elements is Triratna’s central approach to insight (spiritual death and rebirth). It’s our recommended way to maintain and develop ‘depth’ in every aspect of our practice: insights that transform our activity, inner cultivation, and view of reality.

Making the practice accessible
We’ll begin with Sangharakshita’s original introduction of the practice, the way we all learned in common. The elements are first recalled as external sense experiences, then the same experiences are recognised in the body, there is a reflection next that since at death the elements within will return to the elements without, we might as well give up any lingering sense of ownership of them or identification with them as me or mine.

Exploring helpful approaches
As the retreat intensifies and communication deepens, we’ll explore some supplementary approaches designed to help bring the practice alive in everyday life.
Overall we will range through the three prajnas of assimilating information, reflecting deeply upon it with ‘Great Doubt', and resting with confidence in the truth as it unfolds.
There will be an emphasis on working with direct sensate experience rather than imagination of the elements, though we'll work with this as well.

Possible phases of the practice
Bhante’s original introductions encourage us to ‘give up’ earth water etc. as their loss will anyway be forced upon us at death. Often this is an electrifying realisation.
After a while it may occur to us that elemental experiences were always unowned — they could never actually be possessed — so we can then give up our sense of literal ownership, control and identification. These introduce further levels of spiritual death.
Later, we might realise that it’s important to give up in a positive spirit rather than one of fear of loss. What becomes important then is what we’re opening up to, rather than what we’re giving up — as sense of opening up into a space that is vast and profound: the ultimate reality — into spiritual rebirth.

Note that we will establish good retreat conditions of silence and meditation sessions, assimilating practitioners from the resident Adhisthana community as far as possible

The Team: Kamalashila & Bodhiketu

Kamalashila: I have done the Six Elements practice a lot, and have had any number of life changing experiences as a result… both directly and as a general consequence. The Six Element practice was one of the things that convinced me to get ordained. I learned it on retreat with Bhante in 1972 or 3… I’m not sure which, though I do remember being 22 and feeling very new. Bhante led the Elements practice every afternoon and of all the formative events of the retreat, that practice was the thing that affected me most. I have done it ever since.

I recently wrote a short article for the preceptors on the Six Elements Practice which you can read here: [link url=https://thebuddhistcentre.com/order/view/value-six-elements-practice-kamalashila-talk-preceptors-retreat]thebuddhistcentre.com/order/view/value-six-elements-practice-kamalashila-talk-preceptors-retreat[/link]

Bodhiketu:
I have practiced the six element contemplation regularly over the last two decades, including taking it as a daily practice for several years while I lived at Guhyaloka. During this period I sharpened the practice by incorporating a precise investigation of the skandhas in the latter stages, finding this an effective way of investigating the consciousness element.

For: Order Members

Start date: 10th Jul 2016
End date: 17th Jul 2016
Event Type: Residential

Price: Waged/Supported £245  |  Unwaged/Unsupported £175
Non-refundable deposit: £70 (included in prices above)

Bursary Fund: Help those who can't afford to come on retreat
You're invited to donate to enable individuals experiencing financial hardship to attend events with bursary places.
Go to our Bursary Fund page

Bookings are closed for this Event.