New year news from TES

Silent Day Retreat – a perspective

Firstly, a big thank you to all of you who attended the recent Silent Practise day at the Croydon Buddhist Centre. It was a real privilege to spend time with you in this way. From the messages in your card and the sense of the day it seemed a very engaged, harmonious and nourishing day for all.

These events are co-created so the merit is equally shared. Thank you to Dhira for your Brotherly support, Inge for being Inge and for each and every participant bringing themselves as fully as they could to the day.

Thank you to those who wished to attend but couldn’t make it due to illness…be well!

Much love to you all…Padmapriya

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Life With Full Attention Course

All being well and with sufficient interest we will be running another Life With Full Attention course starting January 19th for eight consecutive weeks at ‘Old Post’ in Nutfield.

Mindfulness is all the buzz at the moment but as some of the broadsheets are beginning to report (notably the Guardian and the Times), there is a lot of stuff out there that purports to be mindfulness that really is not and the quality of guidance is variable to say the least.

The Life With Full Attention course was devised by a Buddhist with almost a lifetimes worth of experience. He doesn’t teach mindfulness so much as exemplifies mindfulness and thus can invoke or guide towards this in others. Although I make no claims to perfection the material is good enough that any errors or omissions on my part will be well covered in the accompanying book.

What makes this course so effective is that it assumes you have a broadly typical ‘western’ lifestyle, that you may work, have a family and so on. The practical and pragmatic approach emphasised in this course would benefit those that may already have had some form of Mindfulness training or the complete novice. No matter how often you return to the material you will find something you have either forgotten or not quite understood… “There are no higher truths, just deeper understanding”.

If you are interested in joining us just turn up on the first evening which will be an Introduction and enrolment evening. Because there is venue hire, course books etc, although desirable, it was debatable whether we could offer this course on a Dana (donation) basis so we decided that the cost of the course will be £120 but concessions maybe available so don’t let that stop you, just ask, there is always a creative solution.

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Community Retreat

We now need to firm up on numbers for this years Community retreat to be held at Adhisthana in Herefordshire. The week option runs from March 2nd – 8th and the long weekend runs from the 5th – 8th. The event is offered at ‘cost’ £32 per person per night. As always, there remains a small bursary to help those in need.
Please confirm your intention to attend and which option you are signing up for (Week or long weekend) and if possible pay a £20 deposit which will be off set against your final charge. contact Padmapriya on 07514281352 or by email.

The important thing here is to practise as a community, what we do, in a way, doesn’t really matter although meditation, some silence, and i would like to offer Qi Gong/Chi Kung practise as a theme but we can sort it out when we are there.

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TES Social

Each year we have had a small social event for those that wished. We tried to set something up for November but for various reasons it didn’t quite come off. To make it as simple as possible we have given over one of the practise evenings to the event, so instead of a meeting at Old Post, we will have an evening meal in the Bell at Godstone Green.

The date for your diary is January 29th.

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Parinirvana – Day Retreat

The next day retreat will be held at Old Post on February 15th a traditional day of community practise in the Buddhist calendar.

Parinirvana marks the day of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni’s passing. Using the 12 links on the chain of dependent origination, as depicted on ‘the wheel of life’, we will see what insights it may hold for us on the rising and passing of all ‘things’.

This is a Dana event with a suggested donation of £8 all proceeds to go towards venue hire and the TES Bursary fund.