Four Practice Retreats on the Four Brahma Viharas
with Sonia & Ad

Students can attend any retreat on its own.
Cost: £130 per retreat or £500 for all four

Namgyal Rinpoche used to tell us that we were only allowed four emotions!
Loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity are the four; also known as the Four Brahma Viharas, or the Four Immeasurables.
The teaching of the Buddha Sakyamuni is always concerned with the training of the Mind, abandoning unwholesome patterns and cultivating more conducive qualities for the benefit of self and others.

We scheduled quite appropriately four long weekends for the study and practice of the Four Immeasurables, starting with the Loving Kindness, Metta.
Metta, we can relate to it as a moment of tenderness in one’s heart towards challenging events or people in our life including ourselves.
And that one moment of turning one’s mind and heart towards others can be truly transformative for both ourselves and others.

The second long weekend will cover compassion, Karuna
When with Metta we begin to turn our attention and interest towards others then anyone can see we all need help.
Compassion, Karuna is present when we work at relieving the suffering of others without considering if they are worth it or not.

Mudita, sympathetic joy, is present when we genuinely feel joy at others’ good qualities or good fortune. Their joy is also our joy and vice versa, wishing them to experience the state of mind that is free of suffering, called the Sacred Happiness.

Equanimity, Upekkha is present when we have let go of preferences and cultivate a state of mind that is unifying, "up to oneness", in union .
All those four emotions have their counter-parts, they are also the antidotes for some of our destructive emotions.

It comes down to having a kind heart at all times regardless of the situation we find ourselves in.

1) Metta - Loving Kindness

23rd (eve) – 26th Feb.

If one shows kindness with a clear mind - Even once! - for living creatures, by that one becomes wholesome. Having mercy in his or her heart for all creatures, a noble person brings forth abundant goodness.
Loving Kindness is supremely relational: it works only if it is offered, given away, or shared.  We cannot bank love; it grows as we give it away.  The more we give it away, the greater our capacity for love.  This is how loving kindness becomes limitless.

2) Karuna - Compassionate Involvement

19th (eve)– 22nd April

When The Buddha was asked by one of his followers if compassion was a part of their practice. “No,” the Buddha answered. “The cultivation of compassion is all of our practice.”

As part of our practice we will meditate on the deity of compassion, Chenrezig. Chenrezig means “continuously all seeing”. Kuan Yin, the Chinese deity of compassion, means “she who hears all the cries of the world”. Compassion is the openness of the heart towards all beings without exception.

3) Mudita - Sympathetic Joy

2nd (eve)– 5th August

“May all beings never be separated from the sacred happiness that is sorrow-less”

Regarding conditional joy, it is usually easier for us to experience joy for ourselves than it is to experience it for others.  One of the hardest things for many of us to do is to feel happy when something good happens to another person.  Judgment and envy, the tendency to compare and demean, and greed and prejudice narrow our world and make sympathetic joy nearly impossible to experience. 
Learning to feel joy for others will help transform our own suffering and self-centeredness into joy.

4) Upekkha - Equanimity

11th (eve) – 14th October

Equanimity allows us that radiant calm, peace, and trust that receive the world and at the same time make it possible for us to let go of the world.
It is said that the boundless qualities of loving kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy stem from equanimity. Equanimity is grounded in the experience of letting go.