Hi everybody,
I hope you are having a lovely August.
We are really enjoying the Tuesday class being in person again. It is much better than zoom. I am starting to reacquaint myself with the warmth and depth of our sangha.
Some of us even turned up on the hottest day since records began. It was actually relatively cool in our venue 🙂
Coming up we have aleady arranged:
09 August 2022 Keith and Maisie
16 August 2022 Padmajata and Katey
23 & 30 August 2022 to be announced
6 September 2022 New 6 week course starts – Mind Reactive and Creative
Why not come along and join us one Tuesday. Newcomers and those who have not been for some time are always welcome 🙂
Also I have just booked on a couple of retreats, and it would be great if you came along as well:
1) This one is for “Men familiar with meditation as taught in Triratna and open to Buddhist ritual” https://padmaloka.org.uk/retreats/2022/mens-great-gathering-weekend-3-tantric-symbolism-vajra 14th to 16th October
2) Also. Instead of arranging our own Hertford retreat this year, we are planning to go en masse to the Cambridge Sangha Retreat on 16th to 18th December https://www.cambridgebuddhistcentre.com/event/6043/vajrasana-weekend-retreat . 5 people from Hertford (including myself) have already booked on this, and it is filling up fast. If you are a regular attendee at Hertford, or you have been in the past, then please consider joining us.
Both of these retreat are very suitable for a first retreat 🙂
Keith
p.s. I also wanted to mention that my good friend Amber is doing an eight hour Yogathon to raise money for Ukraine . More info at https://mailchi.mp/81e46c74ce60/yogathon-2022-15521938?e=5b09e8c04d
p.p.s. The next festival Padmasambhava Day is coming up 11th September in Cambridge 10am to 5pm. Details at https://www.cambridgebuddhistcentre.com/event/6013/padmasambhava-day
p.p.p.s. Excerpt from one of my favourite books: “Buddhism: Tools for Living Your Life” by Vajragupta © Windhorse Publications
The lesson here is that we, too, need to blend the life of calm and the life of activity. How can we do this? We can look at how we can engage in our own life of activity as a practice in itself. We’ll explore this below, when we look at right livelihood, and also in the next chapter when we encounter the ‘worldly winds’.
But if we are leading an active life, we also need to ensure there are times of calm that counterbalance this and provide the conditions which creatively support engagement with the activity. To do this, we may want to make some changes to the way we live our lives. For example, we want to give enough attention to meditation, making it a priority and establishing a daily routine that makes time for it. We may value spending time with others who meditate and can support our efforts. We may also be able to go on retreat for a weekend, a week, or longer.
Within the calmness of a retreat we can look back on the story of our lives and gain more clarity and perspective than might be possible while we are in the thick of it. Immersed in the more ideal conditions of a retreat we gain the confidence and inspiration to take our values much more seriously, to consider how we really want to be living life. We often leave a retreat feeling invigorated, with our practice recharged, and ready to re-engage with the life of activity.