Applicable from 2024
We endeavour to keep our rates as low as possible and are committed to ensuring that our programme is available to everyone who wishes to participate, irrespective of financial circumstances. Everyone who lives at and supports the work of Adhisthana lives a simple life and receives £470 or less per month, which ensures we have low costs and have the freedom to set our prices low.
Please consider paying at the highest rate that you are able to. Your generosity is vital in supporting Adhisthana to sustain its offerings for the benefit of all. If our Standard and Concession rates are too high for you, you are warmly invited to get support from our Financial Assistance rate or apply to our Bursary Fund.
We have two rates based on your income (Standard and Concession) as well as options to receive Financial Assistance with an even lower rate and a Bursary Fund.
Standard Rate
This is the standard rate for most people and is intended for those with an income from work equivalent to the Living Wage or higher. It is also the appropriate rate for those who, although they may not have employment, have significant savings, investments or sizable pensions.
We strive to keep all our rates very low and invite those who can afford to donate on top of this rate to allow Adhisthana to thrive.
We set this rate to cover our costs and have some additional money to contribute to modest developments and new initiatives.
Concession Rate
For those whose income is limited and includes:
- Unemployed (without significant savings, investments or sizable pensions)
- Those on a low pension (e.g. state pension)
- Those earning less than the Living Wage
We set this rate to cover the basic costs for your retreat.
Financial Assistance
This additional rate is for those who are experiencing acute financial hardship that restricts their ability to come on retreat. This is also the rate we use where Order members are receiving a retreat grant from the Abhayaratna Trust.
We want to help you be able to attend events at Adhisthana and so we set this rate lower than the basic costs for the retreat to provide financial assistance in order to make your attendance possible. We can offer this because of the generosity of others.
If this rate is still too much for your circumstances, you can get in touch about our Bursary fund (see below) through which we can offer a set number of ‘dana places’ (‘donation places’) for each retreat that allow you to contribute the amount you feel is appropriate.
Bursary Fund
We offer bursary places to those who would not be otherwise able to afford to go on retreat. This may be because exchange rates into UK pounds are prohibitively expensive, or financial hardship. We want to make the Dharma available to people as much as possible, and so offer these places for those who would not otherwise be able to attend.
Bursary places are not ‘free’ – they are on the basis of dana. This means that someone may not be able to afford to pay the full cost of the retreat, but we encourage making a contribution appropriate to the circumstances. Of course in some situations it is not possible to make a contribution, which is fine – we would rather people could come!
There are a restricted number of bursary places per retreat. On average, for every 10 people coming on the retreat, we can have one bursary place. This means if you are coming on a smaller retreat there will be fewer bursary places available. Note that we also sometimes have to restrict bursary places to one retreat per person per year. Bursaries are allocated on a first come first served basis.