James Low, April 2026 writes: The traditional structure of Buddhist teachings is that each level or vehicle has its own View, Meditation, Activity and Result. Over the years I have focused on making the various views and meditations as clear as possible and you can access these through my many audio and video recordings, books and transcripts.
I feel that our retreats now need to have increasing emphasis on your activity and proactive learning.
We all have a lot of life experience and so how can we mobilise this experience to become an ally on our path instead of an obstacle? Rather than relying on our habitual assumptions and conclusions, our practice is to investigate how our subjectivity arises in different situations. We aim to locate the ground (or basis) for our subjective thoughts, feelings and actions in our simple presence within the ever-open here and now.
I will be teaching in the mornings. In the afternoons there will be small group activities led by experienced members of our sangha. They will offer a range of activities and I am encouraging you all to try them out so that you can experience what you can make use of (or not) at each moment in time. The key point is for you to observe what arises for you as you engage with each activity in your ever-changing environment.
The aim in dzogchen is to see the self-vanishing of each moment. We do this by ripening our presence without engaging in dualistic reificatory judgement.
The focus of the retreat is on opening to the intrinsic purity of the mind as it is. This purity is not improved by our virtuous efforts, nor impaired by our bad habits. James Low
REGISTRATION • INSCRIÇÕES • INSCRIPCIONES Taking your ease where you are always welcome James writes, "We will focus on opening to our minds as they actually are, free of conceptual covering. We will meditate, communicate and participate in various activities bring us ever-closer to the here-and-now. The retreat will have a new style of timetable with James teaching in the [...]
Opening to the Open: Learning, reflecting and meditating as active participation in dharma. Dzogchen Summer Retreat with James Low and Sangha. July 4th to 11th 2026 at Retreathaus Berghof, Germany The retreat will start on Saturday 4th July 2026 at 6pm and will end at 1pm on Saturday 11th July, followed by lunch and cleaning up the retreat house together. [...]
