Sangha Retreat & Urban retreat
- Parami
- 4 days ago
- 3 min read
What can I say about my time at Adhisthana? Superlatives easily seem like cliches but it is only superlatives that come to my mind as I remember my 10 days there. Firstly an Order weekend with around 350 Order members celebrating the centenary of the birth of our Founding Teacher Urgyen Sangharakshita - known to many of us as Bhante. The shrine marquee was colourful and beautifully set up for us all. For me, one of the highlights of any big order gathering is the introduction of new Order members. There were a lot, many from London and, of course, a couple from here: Padmaprajña and Abhayaruci.Â
Straight after the weekend I was part of the team leading the summer sangha retreat. These sangha retreats are a great idea I think. Sanghas can attend as a group and they study together while mixing with others for meditation, ritual and input. This one was based on a talk given by Bhante in 1979 which I mentioned with a link in my last blog post. There were 120 participants and I was delighted that the Glasgow sangha was one of the biggest groups. Including me there were 13 of us! We tied for first place (not that it was a competition of course) with the Brighton Sangha. The input will be available on the Adhisthana YouTube channel.
Ritual played a really big part in the retreat starting on the very first morning. During this, as I said last week:
the Padmasambhava rupa was ceremoniously placed onto the shrine. For anyone who hasn’t seen the Padmasambhava rupa here at Adhisthana I can share that it was a master class in ingenuity. It is huge and I’m not sure how much it weighs but it’s a lot. It took 12 people I think to move it and place it on the shrine where it will be for the duration of the retreat.Â
On the last morning, the shrine was dissolved and the rupa returned to his usual place in the library shrine room. I was surprisingly moved by both days, especially the dissolving. I found myself in tears as we chanted the Sunyata mantra (all beings are pure and empty; I too am pure and empty) and the huge rupa was taken off the shrine leaving an empty space.
Another moving highlight for me was hearing the positive precepts in all the different languages present in the marquee during the final puja. I am always moved by this honouring of the international aspect of our community. On this occasion there were 14 different languages including Scots for the first time that I am aware of. I had them in a translation by Bodhipaksa and I loved reciting them. Many people think Scots isn’t a language but only an accent or slang. My generation had it knocked out of us in school and told to speak “properly". It has now been acknowledged as a distinct minority language by the Scottish Government, the UK Government, and the Council of Europe under the European Charter For Minority Languages.
Here are the precepts in case you are interested:
Wi luesome acks, A mak ma boady pure.
Wi a weel-hertid haun, A mak ma boady pure.
Wi respeck for masel an ithers, A mak ma boady pure.
Wi truithfu wirds, A mak ma speech pure.
Wi mindfu sobriety, A mak ma hert pure.
I was also incredibly moved to hear Padmaprajna recite them in Punjabi.Â
On the Tuesday of the retreat we were joined by over 40 people to celebrate the centenary of Bhante’s birth. For some parts of the day we were also joined online as part of the Buddhist centre Online’s day of celebrations. There were around 300 joined us for a conversation between Subhuti and myself about Bhante. All of the online aspects of the day can be seen here:
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And a reminder of the Padmasambhava urban retreat and festival coming along soon. Retreat dates: Monday to Friday 22nd to 26th September with three sessions a day (7.30 am; 12.30 and 6.45) in Berkeley Street. Festival Sunday 28th September in Woodside. Full details will be available next week. There will be 4 Mitra ceremonies on Padmasambhava day.
For now, as always, may all beings be well, may all beings find true happiness and its causes and may all beings be free from suffering.