15 – 22 October | Led by Vessantara + team
Eminent in your compassion, friendly in your words,
One great mass of fine virtues and friendly thoughts,
You appease the fire of the defilements which burn beings,
And you rain down the rain of the deathless Dharma.
On this retreat we’ll spend a week coming closer to the ‘friend of the world’ Avalokiteshvara and his teacher Amitabha through exploring and practising the Avalokiteshvara sadhana that Sangharakshita received from Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche in Darjeeling in 1957. This sadhana is one of the most profound and transformative practices that we have in the Order, bringing together many of the jewels of the unfolding Buddhist tradition.
From Mahayana flow the great streams of limitless compassion and contemplation of the limitless, ungraspable nature of awareness that together produce the heart treasures of bodhicitta. This is the union of Mahakarunika (the greatly compassionate one) and Mahamudra (direct experience of the nature of mind) which are referred to in the sadhana’s title.
These experiences take place within the magic theatre of Vajrayana, using potent methods that include imagination, mantra recitation, and taking the goal as the path. These enable us to gain a real taste of states of mind in which love and compassion flow naturally and awareness is freed to experience in new and expansive ways.
During this week, through presentations and guided meditations, Vessantara will unpack some of the treasures the sadhana contains. The evenings will be spent practising aspects of the sadhana together, so that increasingly we come to share the experiences of love, compassion, pure vision and deepening understanding to which the sadhana invites us. To help the process along, the retreat will be mainly in silence, with the opportunity for meditation reviews.
This retreat is suitable both for those who already have the sadhana and for those who are new to it.