Past Courses & Retreats

This four week course will offer ways to play meditatively with the impression of place (spatial relationships, directionality) as well as our sense of the location and nature of awareness. These aspects of self-construction are part of the habitual, self-oriented way of looking that builds and fixates our experience. The practices offered within this course will provide ways to play with these relationships and orientations in service of our emptiness practice. As well, some of the angles of practice may be useful to those working with releasing subtle forms of clinging within their practice.

During this practice weekend, we will focus on the theme of letting go, drawing inspiration from the chapter “Dukkha” in Seeing that Frees. We will explore—and perhaps re-explore—how the mind becomes entangled in a push-and-pull relationship with experience. Patiently and gently, we will relax entanglement while attuning to various levels of experience. As we do so, we will naturally begin to access the ease, flexibility, and stillness that arise when the entanglement with self and world decreases.

Vedana is the second Satipatthana or foundation of mindfulness. Vedana refers to the feeling tone of any perception, which can be sensed as one of three kinds: pleasant, unpleasant or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant.

The meditative exploration into vedana, as simple as it may appear, begins a profound unfolding journey of insight into the basic reactivity of the mind and the fabrication of perception and experience. This practice can organically lead to a deep experiential understanding of dependent origination, the emptiness of vedana, clinging, and all phenomena.

In this retreat we will attend to our heart-mind and body with sensitivity and curiosity. Cultivating the heart’s capacity for kindness and compassion, we will inquire into the Buddhist teachings as liberating ways of looking. Compassionate and transforming perspectives, when wholeheartedly engaged with, will reduce suffering and unveil the potential of the human heart.

We will discover how experience is shaped and co-created by our ways of relating to what is unfolding in our inner and outer life. Establishing and deepening this insight can open possibilities of seeing and understanding that will allow us to explore new, liberating ways of experiencing ourselves and the world. We may also recognize unexamined, habitual ways to perceive and interpret, along with their accompanying limiting narratives, dynamics and beliefs. By questioning and loosening these, we can sense what is possible for our heart-mind, its receptivity, intuitive intelligence and sense of wonder.

Important note: Yahel Avigur, co-teacher on this residential retreat, will be teaching remotely.

For online participation: https://gaiahouse.co.uk/programme-2024-25/ls-liberating-ways/

This four week insight/emptiness meditation course will explore strategies for softening the mind’s habitual activities of comparison and distinction making. These activities of mind shape and fixate the ways we habitually perceive experience, and therefore learning to lessen them can open the door to a range of beautiful meditative perceptions. As well, comparison and distinction making are necessary components of clinging and attachment - paying attention to and working with these activities of mind allows insight into the way experience is fabricated.

Catherine McGee and Yahel Avigur are offering the above online course this autumn. There will be 12 weeks of focussed study and practice re-evaluating Emptiness, Imagination, Sacredness and Desire. Over the first weeks you will be supported to build a practice foundation that can open this Soulmaking paradigm, and then you will have the chance to work with images as the course progresses.

The teaching is offered entirely on a dana basis. However If the course fee from BCBS is too much for you please see the financial assistance information on their website here. BCBS intend that no one is turned away on financial grounds.

Applications are now closed

Samadhi, the art of meditative gatheredness and unification, leads to reliable joy. In this online retreat, we will cultivate the liberating qualities of samadhi and insight through practicing with the breath. The Buddha declares, “Mindfulness of in-and-out breathing, when developed and pursued, is of great fruit, of great benefit.” Indeed, his meditation instructions on working with the breath offer a detailed and precise path, leading from the relaxation of everyday mental unease to the depths of the Dharma.

During this online retreat, we will follow the Buddha’s suggestions and experiment with applying them at a suitable pace and manner. We will learn how to work with the breath, body, inner speech, and other actions of the mind and heart so that our hearts can settle, heal, move towards joy and pleasure, and incline to the freedom of the Dharma.

Some of the themes we will cover:

• The breath as a resource
• The process of unification and refinement of the body and mind
• Working with pains, hindrances, and distracting thoughts
• Exploring the awakening factors in Samadhi practice: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity

Die buddhistischen Lehren über Nicht-Selbst können leicht missverstanden werden. Sie sind eine Einladung zu erkunden, wie Selbst, Andere und die Welt von Moment zu Moment geschaffen werden. Oft übernehmen wir, unbewusst und unhinterfragt, beschränkende Selbstwahrnehmungen, mit ihren begleitenden Denk-, Handlungs- und Wahrnehmungsweisen. In unserer meditativen Erkundung, können wir das Erschaffen von Selbst als eine Reise entlang eines Spektrums, vom mehr Verdinglichten, zum äußerst Subtilen, erkennen. Dieses Erkennen ermöglicht eine befreiende Flexibilität, die die einzigartigen, vielfältigen und persönlichen Ausdrucksformen des Selbst ebenso wie seine Leerheit feiern kann.

Dieses Retreat ist nicht für Anfänger geeignet und steht allen offen, die ein Grundverständnis und Erfahrung mit Achtsamkeits-/ Einsichtsmeditationpraktiken haben

Over this four session online course, we’ll explore together the practices of vastness of awareness. Through these practices we can notice how the mind can appear to us in meditation as a bright, spacious, unshakable and sky-like space. These expansive meditative states are referred to by many names in the Buddhist tradition: primordial mind, ultimate wisdom, and Buddha nature, and are described as containing all the noble qualities of mind and heart. In this course we can begin to open up to these meditative experiences through simple and practical exercises of listening and opening up the sense of awareness.

Samadhi means meditative calm, collectedness, cohesion and harmony of mind, heart and body. It is a skill and resource presented and taught by the Buddha and practised for thousands of years. When cultivated in meditation and based on discernment, this collectedness and cohesion of heart, mind and body enrich our hearts with joy, happiness and calm coming from within. Thus, it creates resources for day-to-day life and for deepening practice.

During this retreat, you will be invited to explore meditation practices and attitudes that encourage the arising and deepening of Samadhi. We will follow and honour Rob Burbea’s approach that emphasises sensitivity, responsiveness and turning toward well-being. These are complemented by willingness and skill in meeting challenging aspects of the heart-mind, an integral part of Samadhi work.

These tools and approaches may also support the arising of Jhanas, states of meditative absorption, and the deepening of insight that comes with them.

Ritual, Candles and Shiva for Rob

Tuesday 7th May
6.30pm UK until the shiva ends…

Zoom Link

Please join us for our traditional annual gathering on 7th May - this year marks four years since Rob’s death on the Wesak full moon 2020. This gathering will breathe warmth into his memory, his life and his teachings - rekindling our love and reigniting our shared eros for Rob’s work and our practice. There will be a ritual in which grief, depth and soul will be tended, and please bring a candle to light. Together we’ll echo the Jewish ‘jahrzeit’ tradition in which anniversary candles are lit for our dead. The shiva (also adapted from the Jewish tradition) is an open space for sharing within which we’ll weave a web of connection with our beloved teacher and with each other through our memories, stories, images. The room will remain open until the last person leaves.

Tending the Holy Fire:
An Evening with the Hermes Amāra Foundation

(A Fundraiser)

Wednesday 8th May
7pm - 8.30pm UK

Zoom Link

All donations on the night/day will go towards general HAF upkeep and to the establishment of an official ‘HAF Grants Programme’, which we are very excited about. HAF grants will support sangha to initiate or take up existing custodial projects for the foundation.

We will let you know how to donate at the event.

HAF exists as a custodial vessel for Rob’s dharma. His teachings support us to practise deeply with ways of looking that are not only important but of fundamental necessity in these increasingly turbulent times. This event will shine a light on the importance of finance for HAF's continued work in the world. HAF directors will host the event and offer reflections on dana, the foundation and how collectively we can ensure its sustainability. There will also be contributions from those who work as part of HAF, teachers, and those involved in custodial projects who have received or applied for HAF funding.

Also included in the evening:

‘Unimaginable Joy of Jeopardy: A Rob Burbea Quiz’

You're warmly invited to participate in the first ever (we believe) Burbean Quiz night. With hands on buzzers we will probe into the depths of our collective Burbea dharma insight and reveal the fullness of our understanding of the teachings. Very serious but please bring maximum creativity and silliness to the table. It’s only what Rob would expect. (Oh, and if you know yourself to be a particularly ardent and competitive Robophile, you might want to bone up on the HAF website, and maybe listen to all of Rob’s talks and read the entire works of James Hillman before the event…)

The HAFFLE
Roll up roll up for the premiere of the Haffle (HAF raffle). We will draw tickets and announce the prize winners during the course of the evening. Buying haffle tickets is not attached to you attending the event - absolutely anyone and everyone can participate! Feel free to forward the link to others also. If you’re not there at the event you’ll be notified by email if you’ve won a prize.

Click here to enter the HAFFLE draw…

Can you donate a prize?

We are donating some HAF themed mystery prizes (some of which are not quite fabricated yet), but it would be great if collectively we could muster up a larger number of prizes and really make this a thing. If you have something lovely, interesting or fun (not HAF themed) and postable, that you would be willing/able to send to a prize winner, please email us at the address below by 16th April, with name of item and a photo if possible so that we can post it on the Haffle page.

Emptiness and Metamodernism:
Exploring the Resonances Between Rob Burbea and Hanzi Freinacht

Hosted by Stephen Reid and Jem Stopes (sangha members)

Thursday 9th May
6pm - 8pm UK

Zoom Link

Join us for a group discussion delving into the parallels and contrasts between the teachings of Rob Burbea on emptiness and the emerging philosophy of metamodernism, particularly as articulated by Hanzi Freinacht. We will explore how Rob's approach to deconstructing and reconstructing our perceptions of reality resonates with the metamodern emphasis on holding multiple perspectives and playfully navigating complexity. Whether you are new to Rob's work or Hanzi's ideas, this session will provide an accessible introduction to both, revealing the transformative potential of integrating their insights to develop greater resilience, empathy, and joyful participation in shaping our shared future.

Recommended watching for those new to metamodernism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BzD3wUEMaQ (8 mins)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kl0caFRFoms (14 mins)

Recommended listening for those new to Rob's work:

https://hermesamara.org/resources/talk/2013-09-07-the-wonder-of-emptiness-seeing-that-frees-introduction (23 mins)

‘Dharma(s) Discovered and Created’ through the lens of metamodernism: a study group

Hosted by Iona Steen and Zac Newman

Friday 10th May
4pm - 5.30pm UK

Zoom Link

This session takes its inspiration from the previous night’s event ‘Emptiness and Metamodernism: Exploring the Resonances Between Rob Burbea and Hanzi Freinacht’. In this study group session we aim to continue to explore Rob’s work through the lens of metamodernism.

We invite you to listen to the talk Dharma(s) Discovered and Created (part 3) or read the transcript prior to the session.

This talk will be the springboard for a mixture of large and small group discussion in which we will explore in more detail how Rob’s approach to emptiness and soulmaking supports a metamodernist co-existence of multiple truths and realities. And how both posit a movement away from meta-narratives and overarching truths towards plurality and fragmentation in which multiple narratives and perspectives arise.

You do not have to have attended the session on the 9th May in order to attend this one. You are really welcome to participate in this session and share from your experience of the talk and its territory: whether that feels largely intellectual, embodied, ensouled, all or none or more. If you’re moved to join us that is definitely enough; please do.

Insight into emptiness is at the heart of the Buddha Dharma, and the emptiness of self is a central gateway into this wisdom. On this retreat, we will focus on the traditional meditative practices of letting go, which will support an experiential understanding of how the self is fabricated and how it can be compassionately loosened, liberated, and recreated differently.

Samadhi means meditative calm, collectedness, cohesion and harmony of mind, heart and body. It is a skill and resource presented and taught by the Buddha and practised for thousands of years. When cultivated in meditation and based on discernment, this collectedness and cohesion of heart, mind and body enrich our hearts with joy, happiness and calm coming from within. Thus, it creates resources for day-to-day life and for deepening practice.

During this course, we will explore practices and attitudes that can give birth to Samadhi. We will learn to meet the hindrances and difficulties that visit our hearts and minds and block the natural unfoldment of joy.

Insight into emptiness is at the heart of the Buddha Dharma, and the emptiness of self is a central gateway into this wisdom. In this course, we will focus on meditative practices, which will support an experiential understanding of how the self is fabricated and how it can be compassionately loosened, liberated, and recreated differently.

We will explore the practice of Anatta and dive into the sevenfold reasoning, an intricate and radical practice in which one is looking for the self, wherever it may be and discovering its ultimate unfindability. These two meditative approaches will support the deepening of an experiential understanding of the empty, illusory nature of the self and all the aggregates that constitute experience, opening the door to the abundant compassion such understanding may bring.

Exploring insight & emptiness practice based on Rob Burbea’s presentation of the Buddhist path.

In this course, we will offer ways of working that unburden the heart and the mind. These practice approaches are rooted in Buddhist teachings and were presented in a clear, comprehensive, and innovative way in the insight teachings of Rob Burbea.

These ways of working lead to liberation in three ways. The first way is an immediate freedom that can be opened in our present experience through practice. The second way is encouraging the development of the kind sensitivity and discernment that open the doors to more subtle and profound ways of working. Lastly, and most importantly, the methods and framing of the dharma we will explore can place us firmly on a path that leads to an ever-deepening understanding of the emptiness of all things, and the way that human consciousness and experience are formed.

These six meetings are a chance to explore the intersection of creativity, art making, and dharma practice from different angles. The sessions will include guided meditations (on the theme of creativity/insipiration/imagination), as well as teachings related to these themes. There will be an optional creative process session after each meeting - see the full description of this offering for more details on what these are about. You can attend some or all of what is offered each month (guided meditation, teaching session, creative process session).

You don't need to be any particular kind of art-maker or creative so long as you feel called to explore around meditation, dharma and creative endeavors. Writers, painters, dancers, textile people, ceramicists, crafters, and more are all welcome. If you're not currently engaged in creative practice, but might like to be, you might find these sessions stir up some inspiration.

We won't share any work within these sessions - instead they offer a chance to be inspired / reconnect with our own creative process. As well, there is time for sharing/reports/questions about creative process and meditation practice within the teaching session - it can be really fun and enriching to spend time with other meditators drawn to creative practice.

This retreat will support deepening the practice of Samadhi and Jhana. Over our years of practice under the guidance of Rob Burbea we have found amazing beauty and resources in this line of practice. We invite you who already have some familiarity with these practices and want to explore more of the subtle, delicate beauty they offer to a week of dedicated and supported practice.

During the retreat, we will touch on the beauty and benefits of the Jhana practice. We will also explore how the practice of Jhana connects with wisdom practices and how it supports the firsthand understanding of dependent arising and emptiness.

This retreat offers individual support with the practice and a possibility to practice together, sharing our love and interest for the Jhanas. Retreatants will receive practical help to deepen in skill and understanding of the samadhi and practice.

On this retreat, we will engage in Samadhi, Metta and Insight practices as presented by Rob Burbea. These practices will support the harmonisation of the body and heart, our attunement to joy and steadiness, and open experiential understandings of dependent origination and emptiness. We will complement these explorations with analytical meditations explained in Seeing that Frees. Throughout the history of the Buddhist meditative tradition, these practices have served as a central vehicle for internalising the view of emptiness. They support opening a profound understanding of the nature of phenomena, the self, the world and all appearances. Although often unexplored, the analytical approaches can help us open to a powerful and liberating understanding when applied in the crucible of one's meditation practice.

With this combination of approaches, we will move towards a multifaceted view of emptiness beyond the paradigm of letting go.

As well as silent times for meditation, instructions and talks, there will be opportunities to explore some of these practices in pairs or small groups for those who choose to do so. Aside from these, the retreat will be held in silence.

This retreat is for those who:

- have participated in at least two week-long silent meditation retreats in a Buddhist tradition.
- have some experience in Ways of Looking/Emptiness practices, informed by how they are presented in Rob Burbea’s talks and book.
- who are interested in and available to explore teachings of emptiness.

You are welcome to listen to these talks, recorded by Juha and Yahel during a course on analytical practices:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1K1BU08MEqyvDpL-YOuUT53YgsaW_icwX?usp=sharing

Metta, or loving-kindness, is an important quality to develop in our practice that enables us to meet our experience with kindness. However Metta practice can also support both the deepening of samadhi, as well as insights into emptiness. We can begin to see directly how our mind-states colour the perceptions of ourselves and the world, and also how these practices of letting go lead to more meditative depth and bring equanimity alongside the sense of kindness and love. This weekend retreat will weave together the practices of metta and meditative allowing and accepting, and explore how they can mutually support each other.

The premise of this online course for experienced meditators is to offer a chance to play with how we perceive space, awareness, and absence through applying different meditative instructions. Cultivating perceptions of spaciousness, openness, and lack of obstruction can open lovely aspects of samādhi and mystical states of consciousness. They can also offer a basis for exploring some of the subtle aspects of the manner in which experience is fabricated.

Practice can unveil fundamental truths about being human. We may discover that all of experience is shaped and co-created by our ways of relating to what is unfolding in our inner and outer life. Establishing and deepening this insight can open possibilities of seeing and understanding that will allow us to explore new, liberating ways of experiencing ourselves and the world...

In this retreat we will tend to our body, heart and mind with sensitivity and curiosity. We will inquire into how Buddhist teachings can be understood as liberating ways of looking, as compassionate and transforming perspectives that, when wholeheartedly engaged with, will reduce suffering and unveil the potentials of the human heart.

The unfolding and deepening of meditation is dependent on a number of foundational skills of attention. These include things like the ability to direct the attention to an area of one’s experience, developing a steadiness and continuity of mindfulness to allow it to rest with a single object, the development of a delicacy of attention and sensitivity to the whole body of sensations, being able to notice different qualities of wellbeing through the experience of the body, as well as all the tools needed to work with the variety of hindrances that will inevitably arise.

These skills play an important role in all kinds of practices from metta and compassion to working with the breath as well as developing insight into the nature of things. On this course we will be working with cultivating and strengthening these foundational skills of attention and samadhi in relation to the body and the breath both in formal practice and in one’s daily life.

This course offers a thorough grounding in the foundations of Soulmaking Dharma. It will support a practitioner to then build a Soulmaking Dharma practice if they should wish and be more confident in navigating and practising with Rob’s many Soulmaking Dharma talks.

Completion of this programme will allow participation in a number of different Soulmaking courses with Catherine and Yahel. It can also simply act as a stand-alone course in its own right to support and vivify one's main Dharma practices.

This course intends to provide a supportive ground for inquiring into our relationship to our creative process and the experience of art-making. Some questions we'll explore: How might we open more fully to what we most long for from creative expression? What feels to be missing for us, or where do we feel blocked? What do we not permit ourselves to explore within our creative work? How might making connections between our dharma/meditation practice open limiting beliefs about our creative capacities? What can creative practice open and reveal about our spiritual path?

This course is intended for meditators who also have a creative practice (art or craft of any kind). The course will include teachings, guided meditations, reflective exercises, discussion, and group creative process sessions.

Note:This will be roughly the same course offered this past Spring. If you took the course previously, you are very welcome to sign up to join the creative process sessions.

With our bodies as home base and emptiness as our ground, we will cultivate the four beautiful qualities of the heart: kindness, joy, compassion and equanimity. Loosening the views and the personality patterns that limit our hearts, 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.

How does this retreat fit with the Soulmaking Dharma?
‘The Eye of the Heart’ commences as a Brahma Viharas retreat and then opens into the Soulmaking Dharma frameworks and practices. It is therefore suitable for students who may already be deeply involved with Soulmaking teachings and also for those who may not be.

In these alternate Sunday drop-in sessions (you can attend as many or as few sessions as you like) we will support the holding and development of Anattā and Dukkha Method practices, which can play an essential role on the path of emptiness as presented in Seeing That Frees. We will approach them from different angles and directions in guided meditations and enjoy the support, practice experience, and questioning of the sangha expressed in sharing and questions.