Simply Being

All times refer to UK time, unless otherwise stated.

 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.

Latest Past Events

The Deathless and the Dying. Public Talk, London, 2025.

London, Lekdanling Unit B 14 Collent Street, London

James Low will be speaking at Lekdanling in East London at the invitation of the Shang Shung Institute of Tibetan Studies. Topic: The Deathless and the Dying: The focus will be on illusion as the middle way between the familiar binary opposites of birth and death, health and sickness, life as flow and within that,  loss and grief. Registration: Click [...]

Relaxing into Freedom. Oxford, Nov 2024

Magic Common Room, The Story Museum 42 Pembroke Street,  Rochester House, , Oxford

Relaxing into freedom: a day of teaching and practice. We are used to structuring our lives around the notion of the self, our individual view of the world and our personal agency. However, when we explore who we are through meditation, we come to find that this egoistic or dualistic (me/not me) view perpetuates our being in a seemingly inescapable [...]

20£

Crisis, creativity and awareness. Zoom. Oct 2024

May you live in interesting times: Crisis, Creativity and Awareness Webinar: 6.30pm to 8 pm London Time. Wednesday 2nd Oct 2024 Speaker: James Low Moderator: Safak Ersozlu Turkish Translation: Pinar McGivern This is organised by Safak Ersozlu who, together with his wife Bahar,  has a studio space in Izmir, Turkey.  www.acikstudyo.com. Flyer in English. Those who would like to make [...]