The courses and retreats listed here are led by the teachers on the Teachers page. The page is current - listings appear in date order and are taken down one day after the start date. Buttons take you to the relevant websites with all information and application processes. To view past retreats and courses in order to get a sense of the range of offerings over time, please click the button below.
Past Retreats and Courses
Emotions and mindstates fabricate and colour all experiences and perceptions of ourselves, others and the world, as well as potentially influencing many of our actions and decisions in life. They are natural aspects of our being, and as such form an important part of our meditative exploration. As meditators, we are given a particular opportunity to draw close to our inner life while being supported by skillful and kind ways of looking.
Over this five week course we will cultivate the skill of recognising emotions, meeting and holding them skilfully, as well as learning to see their fabricated and empty nature. These practices will support our hearts’ capacities to hold the difficult, as well as developing a delicacy of attention in meeting the lovely. Through our practice we can begin to explore what freedom can mean in relation to emotions and mindstates.
With our bodies as home base and emptiness as our ground, we will cultivate the four Brahmaviharas, beautiful qualities of the heart: kindness, joy, compassion and equanimity. Loosening the views and the limiting patterns of mind, and engaging the liberating gifts of our imaginations, we will deepen our capacity to rest in the boundless heart.
And from here, we will venture, engaging in contemplative ‘Ways of Looking’ to explore a soulful and enchanted cosmos. A cosmos in which our particularities are needed, loved and woven into a sacred and meaningful story.
Gaia House is now offering an online option for the The Eye of the Heart. This retreat is residential at Gaia House on June 5th-12th, and will also be live-streamed for those who can’t make it in person.
The page has just opened (password if needed: flowering).
Eye of the Heart is a Brahma Viharas and Soulmaking Dharma retreat. Everyone who has done the Soulmaking Foundations course is eligible, as are people who have been practising with Rob’s ways of looking approaches through courses and retreats. You are most welcome to join us if you can.
Please register by May 26th. You are welcome to share the link with anyone who meets the prerequisites - the online option has a few additional criteria for joining.
Fire can be both gorgeous and terrible—a symbol for sacredness, yet also an image for the flames of greed, hatred, and delusion. While we see a world on fire and hear the call of the Buddha to extinguish the flames, we also know that the fires of love and of creative imagination are among our most incredible, compelling, and needed gifts.
An alchemical maxim says: She who masters the fire, masters the work.
What ways of practising can orient us to sanity while meeting the intensity of the times? What ways of being can draw upon the depths we know and intuit while doing justice to our love for the world? What ways of looking can transmute fires of suffering into initiations?
This weekend Adam and Catherine will reflect on how they are grappling with these questions and invite us into practices to deepen our own inquiries. They will draw upon four ways of looking : 1. Early Buddhist teachings as articulated through the 'ways of looking' approaches of Rob Burbea. 2. Buddhist Tantra, a tradition that works with intensities alchemically. 3. Soulmaking Dharma in which our relationship with loving desire - ‘Eros’ - is seen as a key factor in restoring and expanding senses of sacredness. 4. The Four Fields, a contemporary ecological and social teaching on the embodiment of awakening. Together, these offer a multidimensional investigation drawing from the wellsprings of our traditions.
This retreat has been organized by the Czech Insight Meditation Group and is supported by the Hermes Amāra Foundation.
Yahel hopes to teach the retreat in person, but may teach online if that turns out not to be possible. Retreatants will stay at the retreat centre, and there will be an option for others to join online whether or not Yahel is present.
Teachings will be offered in English and will not be translated.
For over a millennia, people have stepped away from the busy-ness of daily life to nurture qualities of heart and explore the depths of human existence and consciousness. For the last fifty years, the Insight Meditation tradition has held and enlivened this possibility, grounded in ancient teachings translated and adjusted to Western and modern-day cultures.
In this retreat, we will establish gentle and steadfast mindfulness, attuning to the moment with kindness. We will nourish samadhi, the collected presence of heart and mind, while meeting difficulties with wisdom and compassion. With guidance, we will turn to insight ways of looking that soften rigid perceptions of self and world, opening to profound freedom. The schedule will consist of meditating in the sitting and walking postures, teachings, and guided practices to support a consistent deepening and subtlety of attunement, stillness, and wisdom. Held in noble silence, this retreat is an invitation to cultivate the heart and to explore the depths of stillness and timeless, radical wisdom.
All are welcome to come and explore these practices on this residential retreat. This retreat is appropriate for those with extensive meditation experience or none. If you cannot attend the residential retreat, you can join onlinefor the Dharma teachings, meditation instructions and guided meditation sessions. For online attendance, you will need some stability in your practice in order to sustain your practice independently between sessions.
Foundations of a Soulmaking Dharma: Re-evaluating Emptiness, Imagination, Sacredness, and Desire is a BCBS Online Immersive Program that offers 10 weeks of focused study and practice of Soulmaking Dharma guided by Catherine McGee and Yahel Avigur.
Application coming soon on BCBS website.
