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.
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Retreat. Todtmoos
Seeing clearly, acting gracefully.
Buddhist texts suggest that we function under the power of obscuration, veils within us due to which, although our eyes are dulled and opaque, we believe that we see clearly. Two main types of obscuration are described, those of knowledge and limiting emotions.It can be difficult to imagine that knowledge can be obscuring, after all we spend our youth acquiring knowledge. Yet much of what we take to be knowledge is actually belief. When we look at the wars and conflicts that surround us we might ask, how can it be that different people with very different views can each be convinced that they are right?
We will examine some of our own assumptions and see how easily we confuse belief with fact. Identifying how easily we get lost protects us against hubris and opens the way to truly seeing clearly, the basis of wisdom and compassion.
For further information see the flyer
The retreat starts at 4pm on 3rd June.