Thank you so much for deciding to hold your retreat at Adhisthana. We are looking forward to having you here.
As Adhisthana holds a central place in the movement, there are a few things (some of which you will already be familiar with), that we do differently from other retreat centres. This is partly because Adhisthana isn’t purely a retreat centre but a meeting point; a place of pilgrimage as the last home and burial site of Bhante; a heart and home for the Order and movement.
Things to bear in mind
Everyone on site meditates together in the morning
The morning meditation is an important point of contact between those living at Adhisthana and those visiting for retreats, meetings, etc. It is the one point during the day when we can all gather together and participate in the flow of collective practice. We think this greatly contributes to a sense of shared purpose, both now and into the future.
We ask all events to come together to meditate in the morning, even if their shrine room for evening rituals is somewhere else. It can be delightful to look across the shrine room in the morning and see a familiar face unexpectedly, as well as to tap into the wider mandala of the movement.
The shrine is laid out with rows of people on each side facing each other, at a ninety degree angle to the shrine. The programme is meditation 7-7.50am and 8-8.30am, starting the first sit with the Tiratana Vandana. There are copies of the Tiratana Vandana available if there are members of your retreat who won’t know it by heart. If you would like to share it with your group before they come, you can share the audio and text below:
If there are newcomers attending who haven’t been taught the Mindfulness of Breathing/Metta Bhavana, depending on availability we may be able to offer a separate shrine room for you to give meditation instruction. Other participants are still expected to attend meditation in the main shrine room.
1:10 ratio of team members to retreatants
For Sanghas doing their own bookings and administration, the rate applies for every place (including the whole team). We are unable to offer bursaries for these events.
For Sangha retreats where Adhisthana takes the bookings, as well as any non-sangha retreats not being run by the Adhisthana Teaching community, we offer one free team place per ten paying retreatants. This is also the ratio on which we offer bursary places.
It isn’t financially viable for us to have large numbers of team places without a corresponding number of paid ones. This is because Adhisthana offers some of the lowest rates in the movement to enable as many people as possible to come here.
a liasion for your event
Unlike some other retreat centres, we don’t have an ‘organiser’ as such on retreats. It is important for you to have a retreatant or team member nominated as a ‘liaison’ between the Adhisthana operations team and the retreat. Being the liaison for a retreat is instead of a job on the rota and therefore still requires the retreatant to pay if they aren’t part of the allocated team. This will enable someone else to deal with practical questions (e.g. sourcing flip chart paper, printing handouts, organising a retreatant to make a cake for someone’s birthday etc). This is especially true for Sangha events.
Please let us know as soon as possible who your liaison will be.
Wifi Access
We would like to create conducive retreat conditions at Adhisthana and give all who come a positive experience of being on retreat. In order to achieve that, we’ve set up conditions where it is possible for retreatants to be here without access to Wifi.
As a retreat leader, we can give you the password and it will be at your discretion if/when to share it with retreatants. We hope you will help us to uphold these supportive conditions. If the event you are leading is a meeting rather than a retreat, you will have access to the password to distribute.
We have a printer/copier in reception, which is for retreat leaders only.
As our password changes regularly, you may need to forget the network on your device before rejoining, even if you have been to Adhisthana recently.
Caring for the space
Adhisthana is only able to run due to the ongoing generosity of those who come. As part of being here we ask everyone to do a daily job such as making porridge, serving meals, washing up and cleaning various areas of the site.
At the end of your event there will be a clear up. This applies to meetings as well as retreats. If it’s likely that lots of people will leave early from your event, please make the office aware of this in advance and they will communicate the expectations around cleaning before you leave.
sharing the space
Unless you are holding a very large event (e.g more than 80 people) it is unlikely you will have exclusive use of Adhisthana. We always try to design the programme to work for the different kinds of events happening here, and therefore put similar events on at the same time. We also try to avoid having people arriving for an event mid-way through another. If you are the only event, please be aware that there may well be visitors staying who will also be in the shrine room and dining hall (although they will be asked to eat separately from retreats).
If you would like to have silence during your event please let us know in advance so we can ensure that all the events on site can be in a supportive atmosphere.
Allocated rooms
Due to there often being multiple events at once, it’s not always possible to know until closer to the start date which shrine or meeting rooms will be available. We allocate spaces based on the number of bookings which can sometimes only be determined close to the beginning of the event. Adhisthana’s programme of retreats/events have priority for using certain spaces. We will try to accommodate your requests, so please make them known to the programme manager at the point of booking your event.
With multiple events there is also a high pressure on single room availability. We have five single rooms, three of which are ground floor ensuites. If there are other events happening at the same time as yours, single rooms are split between events, so there may have less than five available for your group.
use of the library and atrium
Adhisthana holds the largest Buddhist library in the UK outside of a university, and we want people to be able to spend time there; to read, research and reflect. We want to keep the library accessible for everyone on site as much of the time as possible. Library rooms are often used for seminar-type events. If your event is focused on the library, we will try to enable you to use some of the associated rooms in the building. With four available shrine spaces on site we don’t use the Atrium for that purpose.
If your retreat team would like access to Bhante’s books, please get in touch and we can make arrangements for access.