Adhisthana 10th Anniversary

First International Sangha retreat

as Chair and Director

Vajragupta and Saddhanandi join

First Dharma Life course

First Preceptors’ College meeting

First Area Order weekend

Young Buddhists retreat

Chairs, Mitra Convenors, Order Convenors

Opening weekend Retreat for 120 Preceptors, Presidents,

First community members move in

Sale of Madhyamaloka

Sangharakshita moves in

Ratnadharini and Sanghadeva move in

Purchase of Coddington Court

Property search begins

1 / 1 adhisthana ten

Previous page: Oak and copper beech, Yashodeva

From the literal meaning of 'position', this word is applied specifically to ‘authoritative position’ and then to the ‘power’ pertaining to such a position. It can therefore mean the power which belongs naturally to divine forms and in this sense it comes near to the Christian conception of ‘grace’. It can also refer to the power which is experienced spontaneously in meditation or achieved through the recitation of mantras. In that it may be transmitted by a man of sanctity to his disciples, it may also be translated as ‘blessing’.

David Snellgrove, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism

Vajratara

Sudrishti

Bodhikamala

Beth Ratnasambhava and Guhyacitta

Shakyapada

Ksantikara

Gunabhadri

Marcus

Saddhajala

Dhivan

Arthavadin

Satyalila

Vidyamala

Vishvapani

Tenth Anniversary Adhisthana Teaching Community. Order retreats

Mitras + Friends

Young Buddhists

The Dharma Life Course.

Pilgrims & visitors

Volunteers

Sangha retreats

124

Timeline

Mark Ludak

Digging the Swales. Suvannamani

Women on a ten-month residential course at Taraloka, painting Adhisthana’s dining room

Suvannamani

On 7th October 2009 Bhante Sangharakshita set out his vision for what was to become Adhisthana. It was an ambitious project in its conception: to create a land for Triratna where the Order and Community can gather; to pay homage to our teacher, for kalyana mitrata, for Dhamma instruction, for meditation and reflection, to retreat, to work, to live, to honour the dead, to celebrate, to meet in large numbers. Years of pressured searching for a suitable and affordable property preceded a year of dedicated, hard graft to convert a heavily-discounted run-down complex of buildings into an immediate home for Bhante and the beginnings of that initial vision. Given a name meaning ‘blessings’ in Sanskrit and opening in 2013, Adhisthana quickly found a meaningful place in the hearts and minds of the Triratna Order and movement and in 2018 the fundamental essence of the place shifted from Bhante’s home to his final resting place. Ten years after the first residents moved into an abandoned school, freshly ordained, I became its Chair.

To someone visiting Adhisthana today for the first time the place will give the impression of a well-established institution and I have often delighted in surprising newcomers by telling them that we are not yet ten years old. With the help of the generosity of many of you, particularly our retreat leaders who have given their time and experience so freely, so much has already been achieved and the pages of this booklet are a testament to that. I hope you enjoy reading them.

And there is so much more to unfold. The lockdown that followed in the wake of Bhante’s death gave us an opportunity to take a step back from running a successful and thriving retreat centre-cum-meeting place-cum-place of pilgrimage and reassess our role in the Triratna mandala. How best could we help the adhisthana, the blessings, flow out into the world? Our explorations have tapped a well of inspiration, gathering some of our most experienced Order members to delve more deeply into the legacy of teachings our founder has left us. We aim to understand the mind behind the words, and to appreciate and faithfully pass on that ‘something ineffable’ that flowed from Bhante’s realisation while reading the Diamond Sutra at age 16, that carried him forward throughout his life, and which flows through and carries us beyond his life.

The Adhisthana Teaching Community, a group of around 30 of Triratna’s most experienced teachers, gathers twice a year to lay the foundations for this great task. These have proven to be inspiring, energising and revealing gatherings. Out of these explorations has flowered our programme of Teaching Community events: a selection of large events available in-person and online exploring Bhante’s perspectives through expositions, meditation, ritual and discussion on a range of texts; and small, intimate seminars looking closely at Bhante’s words, and just as closely at our heart’s response. Adhisthana will continue to host a wide range of events and meetings which contribute to it being a hub and home for the Order and Movement, as well as welcoming pilgrims and visitors. In our tenth anniversary year we have a selection of celebratory events each offered for the different groupings of the Adhisthana mandala. We will have a tenth anniversary exhibition and site-specific installations by Royal Academy Show artist Akasalila (Sarah Jones). The communities here hope to see you on one or more of these events.

Adhisthana aims to offer an opportunity for all those who want to make contact with this place of blessings: through retreats, gatherings, meetings, visits and volunteering. We’ll soon be adding another offering to that list, in the form of two comfortable solitary retreat cabins on our grounds. Each is an opportunity to connect with Bhante, circumambulate his burial mound, enter his library, visit Urgyen House, witness and be witnessed in our practice, to simply rest in the adhisthana.

Warm wishes

Khemabandhu

Chair of Adhisthana

This evening I attended a spontaneous piano recital given by one of the retreatants. The audience consisted of participants on two retreats, the Dharma Life Course and the Adhisthana community. At 4pm the previous day I led a puja dedicated to Dr. Ambedkar attended by those arriving early for a Sadhana Convention and by those choosing to join online. At the end of the puja four of our Indian sisters and brothers took us through a rousing salutation; a joyful almost miraculous moment.

Adhisthana breathes in and out – a seamless movement of the Sangha in all its variety, creating significance in a place that is both geographic and mythic; a place of pilgrimage, of beauty, of connection, and of learning. Looking back, I find it impossible to assess what particular events have created this place of blessings:

❧ The many years of discussion between Bhante and the Trustees that set in motion this project.

❧ Bhante’s presence in the last five years of his life, with hundreds of people visiting him with gifts and questions.

❧ The combination of events which bring chance meetings in the courtyard between old friends who hadn’t anticipated that moment.

❧ The grave that was dug by friends and where Bhante’s body was placed the following week, a burial mound positioned right at the central place.

❧ The many ordinations that have been witnessed here; the silence, the blue robes, the dedication and commitment.

❧ The Order weekends; large numbers of us gathering together and especially that moment after nearly two years of Coronavirus lockdown when we greeted one another in amazement as we entered the shrine marquee.

❧ The gardens with their seasonal colour and natural beauty, so carefully created.

❧ And then there is all the cake! The celebrations of birthdays, of arrivals and departures, of festivals, and of thanks.

All of this activity is held by the place itself. The Buddha at the entrance with the mudra of fending off false refuges, marks the start of another realm, a ‘thin place’. The shrine room, an unassuming room but with its own deep silence. A room with very little natural light but containing the light of the Buddha’s aura created from the gifts of rupas from all over the world. The aura of Adhisthana is created by its relationship to the rest of Triratna.

Urgyen House, with Bhante’s own rooms and their special atmosphere, holds so many significant memories for so many people. And at the very centre of it all is the burial mound of the man with the vision that started this whole Buddhist movement, that set in motion the wheel of the Dharma for so many of us.

I’ll end with the words that Bhante used when talking about Dr Ambedkar, words that could just as easily be used about himself:

He was the man who had the vision. Perhaps none of them would have found their way to the Dharma without his example, his exhortation, his understanding of the situation. That shows, among other things, the importance of the individual. One person – one man or one woman – can do so much. Not everybody is as gifted as Ambedkar was, but nonetheless one person can do quite a lot, influence quite a lot of other people.

Sangharakshita + Saddhanandi

‘All of this activity is held by

the place itself.’

THE VISION

The vision for what became Adhisthana dates back to 2001:

In outline, we want to buy a farm of perhaps two to three hundred acres, somewhere near Birmingham. We would like it to be in a beautiful setting, including an area of woodland, and to have a farmhouse that could accommodate a community of five or six people. On this estate, we will build the Sangharakshita Library. . . .

The vision for the project, even at this early stage, was the vision that has sustained the development of Adhisthana and which informs all that will happen there in the future.

The Library will have other purposes too, however. It will be a treasure house of clues to the development of Bhante’s outlook and his distinctive insights into the Dharma. He is a man who has read a lot throughout his life, a man who cares very deeply about books, and who refers constantly to various books that have made their mark on him. The Library will house most of the books that have been important in his life and thinking. Anybody who is at all interested in Bhante’s vision of the Dharma will be able to see that vision in perspective, with the aid of the Library ...

The Library will also include an archive of Bhante’s personal papers — letters and other documents (which he is presently putting in order) — which will help people to understand his life and the foundation of the Movement. All in all, the Library will be a kind of key to Bhante, not just as a thinker but as a person.

Some of the 100 books that make up

the core of the Sangharakshita Library

He is also likely to continue to live there …the library will thus be associated with his presence. However, (and more decisively for its future symbolic importance) the site is also likely to be Bhante’s burial place. Subhuti, Madymavani

When the search for property began properly in 2008 Sangharakshita had made clear how important the project was to him, as Dhammarati recalled:

For me, one of the real markers of the importance of the thing, was that Bhante, at that time in his life, [was] willing to go through that level of personal disruption to support this idea of a rural centre, that would have the Sangharakshita Library at the core of it, around that a study centre, a retreat centre and a facility which the whole Order and movement would have access to and could gather in large numbers.

‘A facility for the whole Order and movement’: Abhayavati, Vijaya, Abhayadana, Shubhajaya, New Indian Public Preceptors, Adhisthana, 2022

In 2008 The College of Public Preceptors, who had responsibility for the project, asked Karunika, Mokshapriya and Vajrasadhu to start looking at properties. They travelled up and down the country from the West Country to the Scottish Borders but despite extensive viewing they found nothing suitable or affordable.

As Bhante became concerned about the lack of progress, other senior Order members, especially Ratnadharini, Parami and Dhammarati became involved in the property search.

The initial team had seen Coddington Court early on and Vajrasadhu had thought it was a good prospect:

I was intrigued by it as soon as I saw it in the agent’s particulars and actually as soon as I saw the Dome, as it’s called, my first instinct was

‘that’s the library’, but at that stage they were still looking for a property with more land so it was rejected.

Under pressure to find somewhere so that Bhante could move while he was still fit enough to do so, Ratnadharini discovered that Coddington Court was still on the market at a significantly reduced price and this time the search team took the proposal seriously.

Coddington Court had been, successively, a farm, the headquarters of an oil exploration company, and a school for children with autism. Each user had added buildings and when Ajjavin, an experienced builder and developer, was asked to give his opinion on its suitability:

I could see that there was just the right amount of land about 16 or 18 acres and actually a practical set of buildings with only one which was

Grade II listing on it, and that was the main house. I could see that providing we bought it for a reasonable price there might be enough money left over to actually turn it into a habitable retreat centre which was reasonably civilised.

The purchase process, and the necessary additional purchase of the barn and yard adjacent to Coddington Court which belonged to the neighbouring farmer, was not straightforward. The meeting at which the sale was finally agreed was tense and at times slightly farcical with urgent phone calls to trustees, one of whom was in California, and people having hurried meetings in corridors as the complex negotiations with sellers and agents, all with tight deadlines, went back and forth. In the end everything fell into place and the contract was signed in September 2012.

The story of Adhisthana is full of unexpected and fortunate occurrences. Finding Coddington Court was one of these, according to Vajrasadhu:

I never fail to be amazed by the fact that I regard what we are trying to do as nearly impossible and it always happens. And, you know, I’m not superstitious enough to believe in merit, but I am now convinced that for whatever reason, and it is partly because we are good chaps and chapesses, we managed to persuade people to do the impossible.

Ratnadharini moved in to the main house as caretaker as soon as the contract was signed. The house had been empty for three years and was barely habitable. After a week Sanghadeva joined her and they camped out on the upper floors of the unheated building while the building work began.

Ratnadharini was the on-site trustee and ended up with effective oversight for the whole project while Ajjavin, Abhayanara (then Tim Crosskey) and for a while Mokshapriya, had responsibility for turning an abandoned school in overgrown grounds, surrounded by security fencing, with an inadequate sewage system and non-functioning heating, into a complex of buildings which would serve the developing vision of the place Sangharakshita named Adhisthana.

The project moved very quickly because there was pressure to get Bhante comfortably housed. In order to start work on what became known as the Annexe the team had to develop a vision for the whole site so that all the services were integrated and coordinated.

For months, during a wet autumn and a bitterly cold winter, the site was covered with trenches as the biomass boilers were connected to the heating system and the sewage system was overhauled. Ajjavin thought it was probably the toughest building job he had ever done:

the weather was pretty tough on us. We dug trenches in a combination of torrential rain and frost and snow and laying pipes in those conditions was no joke.

When he did his initial survey Ajjavin had been pleasantly surprised:

Yashodeva welding

It became immediately apparent that we’d got, although in a superficially bad state of repair, an excellent set of buildings.

There were some challenges but Abhayanara as architect found it relatively easy to convert buildings to new uses:

I think it was amazing how we could fit it in. How things were able to fit in to what was here was quite unique.

Some of this was achieved by radical changes such as turning the swimming pool into the lecture hall but in other cases by transforming the buildings from their old functions, often by opening up small divided spaces to become the shrine room, the dining room, the Beams lounge

and the atrium of the library.

As part of the plan to make Adhisthana as sustainable as possible it was decided to use a wetland sewage system. The system, consisting of a series of ponds densely planted with wetland trees and marginal plants, purifies sewage and waste water by microbiological action and transpiration by growing plants. At the same time it creates a beautiful, species-rich ecosystem and wildlife habitat.

In the space of eleven months, working under often challenging conditions and to a tight schedule, the core team, the contractors and many volunteers created; a home for Sangharakshita and his support team; three communities: for women, for men, and for young people on residential courses; a library and all the facilities needed to accommodate over 100 hundred visitors at a time.

Adhisthana was ready to open.

L: Ratnadharini painting

R: The building team: Mokshapriya, Sagaradana...

Sanghadeva, Yashodeva, Ratnadharini and Ajjavin

Adhisthana opened on the weekend of 2nd August 2013 with events for 80 local people, the Order and the Movement.

Ratnadharini, who masterminded it all, remembered:

It was exciting and our opening weekend was threefold because I felt that there were significant stages that I wanted to cover. The first event was a tea party on the Friday afternoon. I wanted to throw that open to local people and contractors and volunteers, everybody who had helped us build the place. [Also invited were former staff of the school for autistic children which had been the previous owner of Coddington Court, and the last person to be born in the house] and that was the bit that I really loved. It felt like we were marking the end of the building project before we marked the actual inauguration.

Everybody came and we gave them scones and cream teas and Sanghadeva gave a lovely talk just describing how much we appreciated them. And there were contractors who said they had never been invited to something like that to mark their work and so it felt like a good note to end on. And then the next day we had an Order day and the following day we invited everybody in Triratna, and then we had the Chairs Event and we were open and running.

Adhisthana’s first Shrine arose from a coming together of the practical and the spiritual.

At a practical level, time and budget considerations favoured the use of materials that were robust, plentiful and readily available. Spiritually, the Shrine needed to hold and represent Adhisthana’s connection to the worldwide Order and Community.

So, inspired by one of the magnificent Indonesian Buddhas (whose arrival at Adhisthana comes with its own magical story), a base of bricks gathered from across the campus building site was constructed – brick by brick. Each brick would provide a platform for one of the many ‘wee Buddhas’ that manifested at Adhisthana in the weeks leading up to the opening, sent by Centres, Groups and Chapters from every part of the world in which Triratna had a presence.

And then, over the opening weekend, each of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas was ritually placed one by one on the Shrine; tiny reminders of the depth and breadth of Sangharakshita’s vision.

Bhante visits the first

Adhisthana shrine

The story of Adhisthana is a story of blessings and good fortune, often underpinned by wise shopping and unexpected discoveries. It started with Ratnadharini discovering that Coddington Court was still on the market but at a significantly reduced price. And you could probably say that the greatest blessing of all was the dedication and hard work of all those who helped build Adhisthana and the surprising ease with which the buildings were adapted for their new uses.

The Buddhas

Early on Ratnadharini and Mokshapriya had explored the possibility of commissioning a rupa for the main shrine room. Mokshapriya had also been searching online, but finding nothing he turned to eBay as a last resort. There he discovered four stone Indonesia-style rupas for sale at

a garden centre just a half-hour drive from Madhyamaloka. These rupas had been in a Customs warehouse for years and only recently put on the market. Mokshapriya and Dhammarati went to the garden centre, hoping one of them would be suitable. In fact, the rupas were so beautiful they bought three of them. One is in the main shrine room, one is by the gate and one under the oak tree in the field.

The beds

Adhisthana needed over a hundred beds and Karunika spotted an advert for furniture that had been used in the Olympic village for London 2012. The beds and bedside cabinets as well as wardrobes and even coat-hangers were for sale and despite reservations Ratnadharini agreed to buy them. When they arrived the coat-hangers still had stickers indicating which country had used them.

The chairs

By her own admission Ratnadharini is a very skilful online shopper and she put those skills to good use when she bought a job lot of the chairs which we now use in the shrine room and across the site. They are design classics known as 40/4 and usually sell for about £100 each; she bought them for a fraction of that.

The bookshelves

The bookshelves in the library were, to date, the final significant fortunate acquisition. A friend of Bodhiketu who worked for an organisation in London through which businesses donated unwanted equipment to charities, rang him one morning to ask if we needed any bookshelves. Foyles, a London bookshop where Bhante had spent many hours, were relocating and replacing theirs. At that point we had just concluded that we could only afford cheap, flat pack bookcases for the library. These were substantial and handsome. For the cost of transport, a mere £2000, we had more than enough bookcases to furnish the library in appropriate style.

‘The gardens are exquisitely beautiful and uplifting. They are an offering.’

Sanghadeva; gardener, groundskeeper and designer of the gardens, at work

Mark Ludak

Sangharakshita moved to Adhisthana in February 2013. The building team had concentrated their efforts on creating a pleasant and comfortable home for Bhante in the annexe to the main house, which he named the Urgyen Annexe, so that he could move there directly from Madhyamaloka when it was sold. Bhante later wrote:

At the time I was quite ill. I was suffering from insomnia, which Temazepam sleeping tablets did little to relieve. Indeed, they made me feel worse. . . . Thus during the last two weeks of February I was not at all in good shape. Yet the move still had to be made. In fact I felt that it had to be made as soon as possible. I had the strong conviction, whether rational or irrational I know not, that otherwise I could die before getting to Adhisthana, and I wanted desperately to get there and spend my last days within its peaceful shades. A great deal of packing had to be done, and done quickly. Ill as I was I helped Vidyaruchi [Bhante’s secretary] pack the images and books from my study. [Paramartha] almost single-handedly, packed everything else that was in the flat and in the treasury next door. This included crockery, kitchen utensils, clothes, books, pictures, box files, thangkas and more than ninety rupas of various kinds. . . . Eventually, everything was packed, and at 11.30 a.m. on Sunday, 24 February 2013, we set off for Adhisthana. The rest of 2013 proved to be a difficult time for me. Adhisthana was still a building site, with noisy heavy machinery operating each day of the week until August, when Adhisthana had its official opening. I was still very ill, with only very small improvements in my condition from month to month.

Adhisthana community with Bhante, 2013

Sangharakshita continued to read and study widely whenever his health permitted and he often shared this study with Paramartha. One text during this time gave him especial pleasure,

Though I had long wanted to study the Śūrangamasamādhi Sūtra, I did not at first take to it, and it was only after we had spent two or three evenings on it that I began to feel at all at home in its radiant world. It was a world inhabited by Buddhas and bodhisattvas, by gods and goddesses of various kinds, and towards the end of the sutra there appears the cunning and malignant figure of Māra, the Evil One. As the weeks and months of study and discussion went by I felt that I was not merely a spectator of this world but living in it and breathing its unique atmosphere.

In 2015 he celebrated his 90th birthday. An Order weekend was held four days before his actual birthday and Bhante joined 400 Order members in a marquee to launch his book, A Moseley Miscellany, and receive

the good wishes of Order members. He entered to the sound of everyone chanting the Shakyamuni mantra and was then garlanded by Kusaladevi. After Kalyanaprabha had talked about the book:

I was then given a large birthday cake and presented with a beautifully bound birthday card from the thousand and more Order members who had contributed to the £110,000 for the Complete Works and for translations. This was the signal for everyone to sing ‘Happy Birthday’.”

While Bhante was inside the marquee, rainbows were visible over the annexe. On his actual birthday he visited the Nine Decades exhibition in the library. The exhibition celebrated his life and work and was organised around three significant objects for each decade of his life. Visitors to the exhibition could listen to Bhante talking about his life as they looked at the objects and the photographs in the atrium of the library.

During the months preceding my birthday Saddhanandi and I met up every few weeks, or even every few days, depending on circumstances. We dealt with one decade at a time. Saddhanandi would describe the three objects representing the decade, then ask me about them and about my life at that time.

By 2017, after a period of mixed health, Sangharakshita was

back to receiving visitors:

I think in many ways the most enjoyable part of the day is in meeting people, that is to say, Order members and mitras especially those who are in training for ordination. Sometimes one comes across surprising things especially when one asks whether the person has any special interests apart from the Dharma and I might get a reply like ‘well I’m a gemologist’ . . . which can be a bit unexpected.

In 2017, according to Paramartha, over 400 visitors met Sangharakshita for a total of over 200 hours of interview time. In the same year there was a Blake retreat at Adhisthana,

The retreat was accompanied by an exhibition of Blake’s illustrations to the Book of Job, organised by Satyalila. There was also a reproduction of his engraving ‘Death’s Door’, which shows an old man wearing shepherd’s garments and with a lantern in his hand about to enter the darkness of a crypt. I greatly enjoyed being wheelchaired round the exhibition by Paramartha, who explained to me the illustrations from the Book of Job, some of which I remembered quite well and could al-

most see in my mind’s eye. We had entered the library atrium in which the exhibition was held by the front door, and we left by the back door, which leads into the grassy area in which paths have been laid down by Sanghadeva, who is planning further developments in the shape of flower beds and a water garden. Paramartha pushed me along these paths, pointing out as he did so the spot where I am sooner or later to be buried, so that I felt that I was standing, like Blake’s old man, at my own ‘death’s door’. There was nothing morbid about this. It was a fine summer morning and l was out in the open, enjoying the fresh air and the sight of the adjacent fields.

In an interview with Paramartha in 2018, Sangharakshita was reminded that he had said that the previous year had been one of the happiest of his life. He replied,

I don’t think that is really an exaggeration because it goes back to something written by a follower of Jung that old age is not just a preparation for death. It is a stage of life in its own right and I think I have experienced that. I have no major problems. I am now sleeping regularly. I am meeting with interesting people. I am able to express my thoughts in writing. So yes, I am living here at Adhisthana where a lot of spiritual activity goes on and creates a very beautiful atmosphere and of course

the place is situated in the midst of gardens and fields and I have the support of my carers. There is nothing I really need other than what I already have. So yes, it is a great time for me.

After a week of illness, during which he exemplified, in Paramartha’s words, ‘the perfection of kshanti’, Sangharakshita died in Hereford hospital on 30th October 2018.

was to be buried

opposite, at the site where he

90th birthday celebrations, and

Sangharakshita garlanded by Kusaladevi at his

gratitude

and joy.’

Two days after his death Sangharakshita’s body was brought back to Adhisthana. Parami wrote:

Around 60 people gathered to welcome him back. It was a beautiful afternoon with stunning light shining over Adhisthana and the hills beyond. The hearse arrived as the light was fading and we lined the drive as the car drove slowly up to the courtyard. In the courtyard Bhante was received by Saddhanandi, the chair of Adhisthana, and the four Dharmacharis who were to carry his body to the Amitabha shrine room: Paramartha; Sanghadasa; Sthanashraddha and Yashodeva. We proceeded in silence behind them and, as they carried Bhante into the Amitabha shrine room to prepare and dress his body, the rest of us went to the main shrine room to chant and meditate. There was a still and peaceful atmosphere.

Sangharakshita’s body lay in the Amitabha shrine room in the days before his funeral so that members of the Triratna community could come and pay their respects. Dressed in his grey-blue robe with his gold kesa, a green mala in his hand and, as he had requested, with his head resting on Dhardo Rinpoche’s yellow robe, he lay under the large refuge tree painting looking very much like himself. Hundreds of people came, in groups or alone, but it was a solemn moment for them all as they sat briefly with the body of their teacher. Lama Shenpen Hookham, who had studied the Dharma with Sangharakshita in the 1960s wrote:

I spent half an hour meditating beside Bhante’s body feeling the powerful and strangely joyful sense of his presence as he lay there at peace with his legacy continuing all around him.

At the same time there was a twenty-four hour vigil in the main shrine room with the five mantras that Bhante had requested to have chanted at the time of his death constantly repeated.

The task of preparing for Bhante’s funeral was a vast one but many of those who were at Adhisthana at the time remarked upon the calm and joyful way in which people were exemplifying work as practice. The usual sense of stress and anxiety seemed absent despite the prospect of preparing for over a thousand people to attend the funeral. Sudrishti observed:

people just getting on with what needed to be done in response to this significant event. Getting on with practice. There was clarity and confidence in everyone in carrying on what Bhante had taught us. He has taught us well and in that sense I truly do feel the adhisthana, the blessings, of our Teacher.

More and more volunteers arrived and found the energy to work well beyond their usual capacity. They said the atmosphere and the mood was unlike anything they had experienced before. In Parami’s words,

The overwhelming experience has been gratitude and joy. And my own experience has been at times almost blissful, where I just had the sense of confidence and spaciousness.

By the time of the funeral visitors from all over the world had arrived at Adhisthana. The funeral ceremony was held in the barn at the back of Adhisthana. As Mahamati wrote:

Bhante’s body had been placed in a cardboard coffin, lovingly collaged and painted some years before by Annie Leigh, to a design agreed with

Bhante. The coffin was carried to the grave by six pall-bearers in their Guhyaloka-style blue robes. From the morning, the elements put on a fine display with rainbows and light rain. It was somewhat cold but not freezing. At the time of the burial itself, there was a beautiful, late-afternoon golden-yellow light glowing with the autumnal colours of the trees, and the shadows lengthening as hundreds of us scattered flower petals over the coffin and circumambulated the grave.

At the funeral itself, there were around 1,200 people present at Adhisthana who heard the funeral orations, participated in a sevenfold puja, and chanted together the five mantras that Bhante had asked us to chant at the time of his death: the mantras of Shakyamuni, Manjushri, Amitabha, Padmasambhava and Green Tara. Maybe 70,000 people around the world watched it live online, in many cases participating simultaneously in the rituals. The largest numbers were in India. Sangha members gathered at many centres, including, in New Zealand and Australia, during the night.

The commonest response to the funeral that I heard was that it had been ‘amazing’. It really did seem that something from another dimension was present with us that day.

Chair and Deputy Chair of the Preceptors College, 46 / 47

offer flowers.

always been so much

more than just a WHAT

retreat centre.

ADHISTHANA MEANS TO ME

In the 10 years since it opened Adhisthana has become, for many people, the heart of Triratna. Here the movement and Order has celebrated, mourned, practised, studied, worked and met in large and small numbers. Practitioners from near and far share what Adhisthana means to them.

VAJRATARA

Public preceptor and Tiratanaloka team

For me Adhisthana is and always was about Bhante. At the heart of the retreat centre, the library and the communities, is Bhante’s vision and translation of the Dharma. That gives everything I do there a particular edge, a radical edge going back to what is truly important about Buddhist practice. Adhisthana offers more than retreats, it offers a vision.

It has been my delight to practise with others at Adhisthana right from the level of young people new to the Dharma to the College of Public Preceptors. Adhisthana can hold them all, and it does, frequently. Even if we aren’t attending the same event, we feel part of each other’s Dharma world. The stream of practice at the College meeting flows into the stream of practice in each of the communities, flows into young people’s events and ordination training retreats, all the various meetings and gatherings, retreats and workshops that happen here. We see the Dharma life in a broad context, a great river flowing. We all take our part in that flow in different ways, at different times.

A PLACE OF INSPIRATION:

‘ADHISTHANA OFFERS MORE THAN RETREATS, IT OFFERS A VISION.’

SUDRISHTI

Public Preceptor, Australia

The shrine in the main shrine room always moves me with its simple yet deeply devotional beauty. I love the vision and the symbolism of having small rupas from Triratna centres around the world incorporated into the shrine. And the gardens are exquisitely beautiful and uplifting. They are an offering.

I feel fortunate that I was staying at Adhisthana, on the International Course, when Bhante died. It was such a profound and remarkable time. It felt very much as though Adhisthana was the heart-centre for people to come to, and to tune into, as we shared our feelings around the passing of our Teacher. The most evident emotion that I picked up from everyone gathering at Adhisthana was profound and deep gratitude to Bhante.

BODHIKAMALA

Chair, Toluca Buddhist Centre, Mexico

On the recent International Course we developed a collective vision; a deeper understanding of what it really means to belong to the Order (and I truly believe this is one of the key elements that Adhisthana has to offer to the world), the principles of Triratna, the fundamental vision of Bhante, the practical needs of the movement all with an eye to the future. In a more symbolic way, I experienced it as if we were weaving a little piece of Indra’s immense web, cultivating deep friendships, and so strengthening common principles and values.

Adhisthana has given me so much: deeply transformative and integrating experiences which allowed me to learn the value of service; deep, beautiful friendships; community living experiences; and the privilege and pleasure of meeting Bhante in person (and now, symbolically) and getting a sense of his presence, his personality and his energy. This magical place offers this and much more to everyone who visits. It’s the core of our movement, the heart of our Sangha and it keeps beating, filled with life, with the energy of our collective shraddha and Kalyana Mitrata.

Mitra attending classes at Adhisthana

I first came to Adhisthana on the Young Person’s Guru’s Advice festival retreat in August 2021 and since then it has been a constancy for me. Through retreats, weekly classes and volunteering I enjoy the space that Adhisthana holds for deep spiritual work, friendship and learning.  Particularly memorable moments for me at Adhisthana in the last year have been: garden work with Sanghadeva, pruning roses and planting beneath the wonderful oaks; hearing Sangharakshita’s poem ‘New’ for the first time; wandering through

Transcribed interview with RATNASAMBHAVA AND GUHYACITTA

Bhaja retreat centre, India

R: When we heard the name Adhisthana something historic happened in us because we thought it meant, ‘Bhante’s place or our teacher’s Adhisthana’ but later on we understand it’s a different meaning more, bigger than that. That it’s blessings . In India we say adhisthana is a mark. Like the Buddha has made his mark in Buddhagaya. It has a sense of place but not just place.

the wildflower meadow in Summer; conversations after coming out of silence; and painting the Refuge Tree shrine room on a working retreat.   In both subtle and obvious ways my life has been changed by Adhisthana. I consider myself so fortunate that it is my nearest centre and I am very grateful to those who have held the space there in one way or another.

G: Meaning that something precious and important has started in that place. When we heard about it we thought this is what Bhante meant it be. Because we are scattered and he made a mark for us – now this is Adhisthana. There is the presence of your teacher. This is our teacher’s place. The burial mound gives you the kind of freedom to see Bhante, to meet Bhante. When he was alive you had to ask to see him but now you can just go, at midnight, at 12 o’clock. He is ready to see us. There is nobody between him and me.

R: He is not only in his room now, he is everywhere. So he is occupying every corner so you can feel him, you can see him everywhere very well.

G: It is like breaking the barriers of the physical world. It’s open now.

R: And we are not feeling that he is no more, that he died but we feel that he is still there, in our hearts. We are are trying to practice what he taught us so he is alive in us, in that way. So this place really gives us a way to understand that. This is our teacher’s place. We don’t feel like a guest. It is like going to Buddhagaya you don’t feel like a guest there. You don’t feel like a pilgrimage, because we are part of that place

G: Adhisthana is where we are rooted. All Buddhists are rooted in Buddhagaya. And where we are rooted is here. All Bhante’s disciples are rooted here.

SHAKYAPADA

Chair, York Buddhist Centre

Saddhanandi had invited a small group of us to come for a short retreat to ritually accept a Bhante Box and to place our small Amoghasiddhi rupa in the shrine wall. This was to officially mark York Buddhist Group becoming a Triratna Centre the year before.

We meditated, we wandered around, we reflected in the beautiful gardens. We also had a precious opportunity to visit Urgyen House together and experienced Bhante’s presence in the rooms where he sat and slept during his final years.

Adhisthana wove its magic around us, and every one of us was moved by the depth of our experience there. It was a significant, auspicious retreat in the short history of one of Triratna’s newest centres and, it deepened both our practice and our friendship.

A PLACE OF SANGHA

‘WHERE THINGS HAPPEN WHEN PEOPLE MEET’

KSANTIKARA

Young Buddhist Convenor

For close to eight years now I’ve been gathering alongside other people in their twenties for weekend retreats here. Many of my closest friends have been made through these Young Buddhist retreats. Adhisthana is a genuine hub of international friendship, a sacred spot where the future of Triratna becomes fused together.

It is difficult to put into words how much I love the Young Buddhist Project and how much the blessings of Adhisthana are responsible for its success.

When I met Bhante (at Adhisthana) a few years before his death he was clearly pleased by the momentum of the Young Buddhist Project. As I stood up to leave, I turned to him and said: ‘Bhante, I’m so grateful for what you’ve created, for everything you’ve done’, he paused and said, ‘… and now it’s over to you, huh.’ He didn’t mean ‘me’ as such, he meant us!

GUNABHADRI ECA Development team

I have had the good fortune to stay at Adhisthana many times in the last few years.

When I arrive, and of course several times during an event itself, I will circumambulate Bhante’s burial mound. And recently I got into the habit of a daily walk in a circle around the grounds so as to take in the changing and often quite magical surroundings and atmosphere.

Often there are unexpected chance meetings. I cross paths with old friends who are on another retreat or just arriving when I am about to leave; I meet new friends who are staying at Adhisthana for a few months; have a chance in-depth communication or the honour to introduce someone who has never been before to Bhante’s burial mound and some of the key buildings.

Ksantikara interviewing Subhuti on the Sub35 Festival Retreat, 2021

MARCUS

Mitra, Sweden, Dharma Life alumnus

One night when crossing the courtyard to the community in the main building I looked up and saw a star-filled sky. I was struck by the beauty of the whole place, and not just that particular scene but also the surrounding countryside. Just before turning the handle of the front door I remember I said to myself “this must be a magical place”.

Speaking of magic, I was lucky to meet Bhante during the course and he is very much still a big part of Adhisthana to me. When we talked about the course, he added that by doing this course one also makes friendships. It seemed a trivial comment and I overlooked it at first but it turned out to be true and significant for me.

Thinking about the course, what often comes to mind are the work sessions with the communities, the teachings and the constant flux of people coming and going on retreats and events. Together with friendship that is Adhisthana to me. A busy hub where things happen when people meet.

SADDHAJALA

Women’s mitra convenor, Krakow, Poland.

Two phrases come to my mind when I think of Adhisthana: a sacred mandala and home for the international Sangha. It is a place where the transcendental and the mythical create the foundation for a place that is outside of space and time. A heart for the movement where we can find what is most meaningful in our lives, in our precious community by connecting with the spirit of our teacher Bhante Sangharakshita and his revolutionary vision of the Sangha.

During the first women’s Dharma Life course I experienced life in harmony, love, deep connections, life that finally had a true meaning. From that time I made longstanding friendships that last until now. Adhisthana provided strong and firm conditions for all that to happen.

After the course I stayed at Adhisthana and lived and worked there for another two and a half years. It was the place where my dear teacher lived at that time. Being able to meet Bhante, to talk to him, to feel his enormous energy and to experience his blessings and love is something that stays with me after all these years, giving me courage to face difficulties in life and to continuously expand my heart.

Adhisthana has hosted five Philosophy Symposiums which encourage philosophical engagement with aspects of the Dharma, such as the meaning of the Transcendental, and of Higher Evolution. Adhisthana is big enough to hold this kind of deep questioning at the same time as being at the very centre of the Triratna movement.

Since the beginning of 2022, I’ve been living at Adhisthana as a resident scholar. I have come to love the sensation of opening the oak door into Bhante’s Dharma library, smelling the soft odour of ink and paper dust, then switching on the lights, and seeing all these books spring into visibility; testament to Bhante’s broad reading in Buddhist traditions old and new. Various rupas that belonged to Bhante are scattered among or above the books, giving the room an atmosphere of the quiet presence of the Dharma.

A PLACE OF STUDY ‘SOMEWHERE TO SUPPORT THE LIVING WORD’

KARUNIKA

Former Director fwbo Central

The project that eventually became Adhisthana has its roots in what was originally referred to as the ‘Library Project’. The library remained a central part of the project and important to Bhante. Throughout his life Bhante was a phenomenal reader, able to read and digest several books in a week. Books had played a crucial role in Bhante’s life; not least since it was through reading ‘two of the greatest Buddhist scriptures – the Sutra of Wei Lang (Hui Neng) and the Diamond Sutra – I knew I was a Buddhist and always had been’.

As we all know books can be a source of the most profound wisdom; they have the power to change lives and can act as locus for the meeting of minds across great periods of time.

When Coddington Court came into view, one of the first things we noticed was the fine, purpose-built library (built to house the records of Clyde Petroleum, one of the previous owners of the estate). Was this synchronicity, serendipity, both? Whatever it was, the ‘library project’ was resolved; a home for Bhante’s books, but perhaps more importantly somewhere to support the living word: the ideas, thoughts, communication of others that can trigger joy, growth and freedom. Ten years on the Sangharakshita Library is a beacon at the heart of a flourishing Adhisthana community.

A HOME FOR TRIRATNA

‘THE HEARTMIND-CENTRE OF THE WORLDWIDE TRIRATNA COMMUNITY’

ARTHAVADIN

Convenor, International Council

Adhisthana feels so integral to the life of our community that it’s hard to believe it’s only been in existence for ten years. How did we ever manage without it?

From the outset, Adhisthana has always been so much more than just a retreat centre.  It was Bhante’s home and has subsequently become his resting place. I had the good fortune to meet Bhante on several occasions, but regardless of whether I’d met him or not, I believe his presence at Adhisthana was, and still is, palpable.

dispersed Triratna responsibility holders to live, connect and learn together in unusually intense and supportive conditions.  And, not least, it is the de facto home of the International Council – the structure that convenes and coheres the Strands and Areas that constitute Triratna around the world.

Adhisthana is living up to its name.  It exemplifies what is possible when inspired and committed practitioners live and work collaboratively to benefit themselves, each other, and the wider Triratna community.  I am amazed by, and feel immensely appreciative of, what has been achieved so far.

SATYALILA : Order member, Bristol

Adhisthana has very quickly become the heart-mind-centre of the worldwide Triratna community. It has important symbolic as well as pragmatic significance. It is a place of pilgrimage for Bhante’s disciples scattered across the globe.  It is where his writings, essays and books are compiled into a substantial library, providing a reference point for Dharma research and scholarship, regardless of where on the planet it is being conducted.  It is where the International Course is hosted, bringing together geographically

‘If Adhisthana is anything, it is a nexus.  It is a place where the light of the transcendental makes landfall.  When two Dharmafarers meet on the basis of their Dharma practice, an alchemy happens. Between them, in their openness to each other, there is created the space in which the Kalyana can arise: something ‘more than two’ comes into being.’

This is what Adhisthana means to me and its invaluable contribution to our Order and movement.  I wrote this for the 2017 Adhisthana programme.

On the full moon day of September 2022 I brought a small group of Bristol mitras here to evoke – and invoke –Padmasambhava. I know they felt it too.

Memories from the last 10 years:

❧ Reciting the Dedication Ceremony on 22 September 2012 with Ksantika, Khemasuri and Prajnamati in the library building, on a floor that no longer exists, looking out on a scrubby field – now the garden and Bhante’s burial mound.

❧ Attending the first retreat here in August 2013.

❧ Helping Yashodeva cut up great rolls of fleece into Shrineroom blankets – with a stanley knife!

❧ Unpacking books for Bhante’s library in September 2014 with Vidyadevi, and others. Tea with Bhante in the atrium to celebrate our having finished!

❧ Co-creating a ‘Writers’ Convention’ in 2015 with Ananda and other friends from the Wolf at The Door Sangha. Filling the atrium with poem-flags.

❧ Dreaming up the ‘Blake retreats’ with Saccanama, co-creating five of them variously with Atula, Ananda, Ratnaprabha, Dhivan, Saccanama, Prakasha, Amitajyoti and Aryavacin (and the c80 people who’ve taken part!)

❧ Helping librarian Danasamudra establish the library friends’ [fosls ] weekends.

❧ Teaching on all the Dharma Life Courses (DLC) for women, thanks to Vidyatara, who masterminded them.  The web of connection that has evolved from that.

❧ Making mandalas from wool/ fabric strung between the pillars in the library atrium for the DLC – and sitting in them.

❧ Helping make library exhibitions: 2017: words/catalogue for the Triratna#50 exhibition, and an exhibition of Blake images which Bhante visited and wrote about; 2018: the Fifty Years, Fifty Voices exhibition to complement its website and blog.

❧ Coming on or co-leading retreats each year, from Bristol Sangha weekends to Area Order Weekends.

❧ Ushering for Bhante’s funeral in 2018.

❧ Ordaining Maitrijyoti here in September 2020 (mid-pandemic)and then co-leading the Mitra weekend here with her in September 2022.

‘Everyone will need

to take care of that

rather mysterious, indefinable spirit...’

Seminar with Bhante at Padmaloka, 1980s. Vajradipa

There is a powerful quotation in the talk given by Bhante at the LBC on Padmasambhava Day in 1979. He says somewhere that our centres, our communities, and our co-ops, are all ways of contacting different aspects of life and transforming them, because this is essentially what our movement is about. “It’s not simply a Buddhist movement in the narrow sense, or even a spiritual movement in the narrow sense. It’s a stream of spiritual energy that deeply transforms and transfigures everything and anyone with whom it comes in contact.” So Bhante, as it were, enabled that stream of spiritual energy that originated with the Buddha’s own enlightenment, he enabled it to “ground” as it were; to find expression.

Bhante formed this Order, this movement, as a means for channelling that energy, and he presented the Dhamma in a way that he found expressed his own understanding and which he believed would be helpful to many of his disciples. Of course, that presentation is not static. It is going to have to adapt and respond, evolve in relation to new circumstances. The world never stands still, and issues have arisen since the Order was founded that did not arise at that time. We each have to try to refresh and renew and communicate Bhante’s presentation. But we have to keep referring back to the original. Otherwise, each of us adapts it in our own way. And you get more and more adaptations, which have less and less in common with each other. If that happens this stream of spiritual energy divides into lots and lots of tiny little rivulets and streams, many of which will of course, just disappear into the soil. Some will go in strange directions and some may develop but the force, the power of the stream is lessened, is diminished.

And to avoid that we need to keep engaging with Bhante’s writing. To keep reading it but reading it with the sense that you are trying to connect with the mind behind it. All reading is communication, but I think, especially when you are reading your teacher’s words, you are entering into a communication which can be as much of an initiation as having water sprinkled on your head. The Dhamma can be transmitted through the written word as effectively as any other way. So I think we need to keep going back to Bhante. Otherwise, when we go forward, we will just spread out and of course, we will lose the extraordinary power

and depth of insight that Bhante brings. You know you sometimes get streams coming down to a beach, and they don’t even reach the sea; when the tide is out they just sort of melt into the sands. It will be like that – all these little streams will just disappear. But if there is a powerful current, it will push the sand aside and get to the sea. So we need to keep going back to Bhante, reflecting on Bhante, arguing with Bhante if necessary. Putting in footnotes and codicils and so forth. Commentaries, sub-commentaries, no doubt that tradition will go forward. We need to keep reaching back to Bhante. If we do not, we do not have a future beyond three or four generations as a unified Order, as a unified stream of spiritual energy.

And this is one of the purposes behind the place that is called Adhisthana. Of course, Adhisthana isn’t the only place where you connect with Bhante; there are many other places, many other situations where people do. But this is the pre-eminent one. The most important in Bhante’s own understanding. He wanted it to present the gold standard of his teaching and that is what we intend to do from now on. And we have been forming a team of people who generally teach at Adhisthana who connect with this perspective.

Together we have been exploring what it means to keep on connecting with Bhante’s teaching. What it means to touch base on it, and then move forward from it, in continuity with it. And now we have got to a stage where we are ready to launch our project, which sits within the overall Adhisthana framework.

So all the usual things will go on, Order weekends will go on; the various Sangha retreats will go on; the many and various meetings, will continue to take place here. But added to this we will have a range of events, of activities, that come under the heading of the Sangharakshita Library and Study Centre. After all Bhante’s original idea, way back in the early 2000s, was that we should establish a centre where his library was and where his approach would be studied in depth and in breadth.

Exploring Bhante’s presentation of the Dhamma

First of all we will be having retreats and events that explore Bhante’s presentation of the Dhamma but not necessarily with reference to his

direct words. We’ll be looking at a text, we’ll be taking a theme. For example the recent Nature of Mind retreat referred to a number of quotations from Bhante so we will continue with that sort of thing. There may be rather larger retreats, and probably many of them will be online. They will be mainly for Order members and maybe for mitras who have asked for ordination. Retreats like that that will be coming into the programme at Adhisthana before long. We have already got some of those things but we will locate them under the heading of the Sangharakshita Library and Study Centre.

Engaging deeply

Then secondly, we plan what is really a continuation of the seminars that Bhante used to lead. They will be smallish groups so that we can really engage with each other very deeply. They will be a way for people to connect with Bhante’s particular presentation through that text. Helping people to relate to Bhante’s mind, and to the stream of spiritual energy which manifested through him. So those seminars I think will be very important for the future of the Order.

Advanced study of Bhante

And the third phase, which is still much more in the planning stage, is what we are provisionally calling the Acharya course. This will, again provisionally, be a two-year advanced study of Bhante which will be partly residential, partly online and partly personal projects and study.

So I think this is very important for our future, for what we are trying to do here at Adhisthana. We’re trying to create a situation in which we can go in depth into Bhante’s presentation of the Dhamma so that we can connect with the mind of the man, and with the adhisthana that flows through him. We can refresh our movement, but also mindfully address changing circumstances. Continuity does not mean stasis. Continuity is dynamic, but it always refers back to the source, and it keeps on refreshing itself with the source, as the whole Buddhist tradition does with the Buddha himself. So that’s what we’ll be doing at Adhisthana, and I think this will really benefit the Order especially, and thereby the movement in the future in the ways that I have already talked about.

I think it is very important for us as a movement that we root in certain places. That we have places that go way back in our history where we go on pilgrimage. We ought to have the places as hallowed ground, and we must never let them go. They are so important. Rootedness in place is part of what we can offer to stabilise the extraordinarily fluid, unstable world around us. It’s important for our movement that we honour these places, that we use them. Adhisthana is particularly important because Bhante spent the last 5 years of his life here and is buried here. We have deliberately commemorated the place where he lived for those last five years and preserved his library as a tangible reminder of his legacy. Now we have these places that can help to ground and deepen our understanding of Bhante and his presentation of the Dhamma.

Edited transcript of a talk by Subhuti. Men’s Area Order Weekend, November 2022.

‘We ought to have the places as hallowed ground ...’ Triratna Order convention, Bodhgaya, 2013.

What was it like to study with Sangharakshita? Some of you are lucky enough to know first-hand – having sat in those circles, some newer, some more experienced, all eager to witness what might become a seminal teaching. The reel-to-reel tape recorder whirred in the background, you each took your turn in reading, and then nervously ventured a response to a question…

[long pause]

And then Bhante begins, spontaneously, to bring alive the soul and spirit of the text, to unravel any latent wrong views in the room, to reveal what’s somehow both directly true for you, your friends, and the nascent Sangha, and yet timelessly true – as it was for the Buddha’s immediate disciples and for all who practise the Dharma. You feel lifted, beyond even the finest hymns to your highest ideals, into a new realm of vision, joy, and friendship.

Or so I imagine. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t even born yet. While reading seminar transcripts, and the books that some of them became, has

changed my life for the better, I will never know first-hand what it was like to be present as Bhante’s spiritual vision met the messy, youngish people grappling with their Dharma lives.

And nor will future generations. With Bhante’s death in 2018, that door was closed forever. All we have now are the recordings of those conversations, his transcribed speech, the memories of those who participated. Dutiful disciples may feel the need to ‘preserve’ these teachings, or ‘keep them alive’ for future generations; but if that means hooking them up to a sort of spiritual life-support, count me out. Nor is it a matter of merely quoting Sangharakshita in our Tuesday night talks,

or (re-)reading him because we believe that’s what good Triratna Buddhists should do.

However well-meaning such sentiments may be, they miss the point. I’ve been fortunate to study Bhante’s words as part of the newly-formed Adhisthana Teaching Community, most of whom were present on some of those early seminars. Studying Bhante’s words in this way isn’t just of interest for scholars or ‘study-types’. It’s to enter into Bhante’s mind: the mind that, in turn, puts us in touch with whatever it was that animated the Buddha, and what continues to animate our community. I say this because I’ve been surprised at how strong an effect it has had on me. Studying Bhante with those who studied with him, I feel, gets as close as I can imagine, spiritually speaking, to what it must have been like to study with him. Turning towards his teachings together, it’s as if he comes alive among us. And the vital spiritual energy that he seemed able to channel once again flows freely.

I’m excited that Adhisthana is becoming more and more a place where people can experience Bhante in this way, not only through the Teaching Community, but also in the atmospheres of Urgyen House, his burial mound, and his library. The potential benefit of these for future generations is hard to overstate.

In 2009 Bhante said: “there is something about the movement, the Order and even about me that is not easily definable. There is a touch of something that cannot be buttoned down, something that cannot in the end be defined. Even the desire to button it down or define it is a mistake … Everyone will need to take care of that rather mysterious, indefinable spirit that gives the movement life and energy.”

I love this and it evokes the spirit of my commitment to Bhante and Triratna. Although there is, of course, a need for clarity and precision about our understanding of Bhante’s teaching and his approach to Going For Refuge to the Three Jewels, there is perhaps an equal need to stay in touch with mystery and that which is beyond words: the mystery of truth and love and community which Bhante pointed to so magnificently in all his teachings, writing and indeed his life.

He also says “everyone will need to take care of that rather mysterious, indefinable spirit” which raises the question of how do we take care of it?

I would suggest we need inspiration, community, as well as a sense of shared place to help this. And of course Adhisthana is that location – in time and out of time – that holds the mysterious and indefinable spirit of Triratna.

I have been in the orbit of Adhisthana from the opening event 10 years ago and I continually marvel at how it straddles these different dimensions: practical and welcoming, grounded in the earth, and yet it seems there is a hole in the sky above Adhisthana and the light floods down making it a place of blessings for all of us to experience when we spend time there practising together. The fact that Bhante lived his final years at Adhisthana – years he described as among the happiest of his life – and then of course died and is buried there – only deepens this opening to mystery.

A metaphor that works well for me is that Bhante is a portal and that he opened some astonishing gateway for us between one dimension and another – between the limited, hard-edged world we so commonly over-identify with – and the timeless, vast, loving radiance of the liberated heart and mind. I say Bhante is a portal, using the present tense intentionally. Although he is physically dead, he still feels very present

Oak trees, Adhisthana. Suvannamani

at Adhisthana in all kinds of ways. Every time we remember friendship rather than conflict we can feel his influence; every time we look around and see the beauty and benevolence of the landscape and the creatures that abound there, we can reflect on all the long quiet evenings Bhante spent in his conservatory dwelling in the life flowing through and around him. Maybe we are experiencing something of Bhante’s adhisthana – timeless and beautiful – every time we come together in community and feel something bigger than the sum of the parts.

The Adhisthana Teaching Community has been forming over the past couple of years with bi-annual gatherings of a few days at a time. We come together to discuss how to keep Bhante’s legacy alive in ways that are relevant to a continually changing world. We have intensely creative explorations dancing between diving deeply into Bhante’s words – exploring what he meant with his various and wide-ranging teachings – and ‘resting into the mystery’ of that which is beyond words which he continually evoked and pointed towards.

It is a fascinating dance: if we veer too strongly to attaching to the words alone then we risk collapsing into dogma and rigidity. But if we veer too strongly to relating to Bhante purely in terms of ‘the spirit’ of his teaching, we risk drifting into vagueness and fantasy and miss the full meaning of his teachings.

The project feels dynamic, alive and evolving and I suspect and indeed hope that this will remain the case for generations. If we ever became completely clear about what we are doing, that we’ve ‘nailed it’, then it would probably be time to shut up shop.

I find it exciting that this project exists for our community and encourage everyone to join us in this exploration and make this a project of continual creativity amongst us all as a community of practitioners.

Bhante has given us the most precious gift we could ever hope for: the gift of the Three Jewels. He opened the portal, the doorway in the sky, and perhaps our overriding task is to keep that portal, that doorway, open for ourselves, but even more importantly for generations to come. This is perhaps what the Adhisthana Teaching Community is most essentially about.

Over the last few years I’ve been rereading and writing about Sangharakshita. I started thinking I had something to say about him that would integrate criticisms with appreciation and might be helpful to others in Triratna. But the more I tried to identify what I wanted to say, the deeper I found myself travelling into his writing and his life. I realised that, even though I have been absorbing Sangharakshita’s teachings for four decades and lived with him for six years, I was wrong to think I knew Sangharakshita properly.

This writing has turned into a book, but it’s not really like other things that have been written about Sangharakshita. One way to put this is to say that I’m less interested in what he says and more interested in why he says it; I’m focusing less on his thought and more on the forces at work in his outward and inward life that shaped his thought.

I don’t know when my writing will be completed. For one thing there is the small matter of earning a living as a mindfulness teacher, living with my wife and son in Cardiff, broadcasting about Buddhism and advocating mindfulness to policymakers. In the midst of all this, writing about Sangharakshita has been a strange, powerful and definitely spiritual practice. Something similar happened when I wrote a book about the Buddha – Gautama Buddha: The Life and Teachings of the Awakened One, but this time it’s more mysterious, as if the material was shaping itself, regardless of my efforts to control it.

This is hard to express, but in one of Sangharakshita’s essays I came across a passage that does so very well. It’s a quote from the writer John Middleton Murry, which I think is a clue to how Sangharakshita himself approached Buddhist texts and teachings, and how we can approach him as readers and students who may or may not be ‘disciples’. It also vividly describes my own writing experience:

‘There are moments when criticism of a particular kind – the only kind I care for – utterly absorbs me. I feel I am touching a mystery. There is a wall, as it were, of dense, warm darkness before me – a darkness that is secretly alive and thrilling to the sense. This, I like to believe, is the reflection in myself of the darkness which broods over the poet’s creative mind. It forms slowly and gradually gathers while I read his work. The

sense of mystery deepens and deepens, but the quality of the mystery becomes more plain. There is a moment when, as though unconsciously and out of my control, the deeper rhythm of a poet’s work, the rise and fall of the great moods that determined what he was and what he wrote, enter into me also. I feel his presence, I am obedient to it, and it seems to me as though the breathing of my spirit is at one with his.’

John Middleton Murry, ‘The Nature of Poetry’, in Discoveries, 1919

Beginning with an online launch on the anniversary of Bhante’s arrival, to celebrate this significant year we’ve put together a programme of special events, each for a different group within the wider Adhisthana mandala. We want you to take part in our Tenth Anniversary Celebration and we hope to see you here on one or more of these events. Throughout the year we will have additional features such as exhibitions and art as part of our celebration.

Prajnaketu + Paramartha

7.30pm to 9pm

Online

Open to all

24 FEBRUARY

COMMEMORATING SANGHARAKSHITA’S ARRIVAL AT ADHISTHANA

10TH ANNIVERSARY LAUNCH

In February 2013 Sangharakshita moved to Adhisthana, where he lived his last – happiest –years and is now buried. Ten years on, what does that mean for us, and how will it shape the future of our community? Join Adhisthana and the Urgyen Sangharakshita Trust in celebrating this key moment with ritual, readings, and personal reflections from those present at the time.

6-10 APRIL

IS A GURU NECESSARY?

TRIRATNA DAY WEEKEND

Saddhanandi + Ksantikara

4 nights

Residential

Open to those who have learnt Triratna meditation

Through communication with those more experienced than us, we can rise to a higher level of consciousness. In his 1970s talk, Sangharakshita warns us against thinking of those we look up to as problem solver, teacher, or substitute parent, but if we learn to look up in the right way we enter a larger world of gratitude, receptivity, and reverence.

8 APRIL

THE ELECTRIC CHARGE OF COMMUNICATION TRIRATNA DAY

Saddhanandi, Paramartha, Kalyanaprabha + Khemabandhu

Day Event

Open to those who have learnt Triratna meditation

In his 1970 talk ‘Is a Guru Necessary?’, Sangharakshita makes a case for the relationship between guru and disciple being primarily that of an existential communication. A communication that brings you into a new experience of yourself, that takes you to the limits of your own being and encourages you to stretch beyond them.

Padmasambhava rupa

belonging to Sangharakshita

Ratnadharini + a team of public preceptors

7 nights

Residential

By invitation Nagabodhi, Parami, Dhammarati, Saddhaloka + team

7 nights

Residential

Open to participating Sanghas

30 JUNE-7 JULY

LINEAGE AND THE ESOTERIC REFUGES THREE STRANDS RETREAT

The first major event Adhisthana hosted was attended by the Chairs, Preceptors, Presidents, Order and Mitra Convenors. These people play a particular part in bearing our lineage and taking care of ‘that rather mysterious, indefinable spirit that gives the movement life and energy’. This event will be a significant opportunity for us to gather together for a practice retreat, rather than a meeting, and tend the fires of inspiration that must animate and be expressed through our responsibilities.

7-14 JULY

THE DAWNING MOON OF THE MIND SUMMER SANGHAS RETREAT

A remarkably short text, the Bodhicaryavatara packs a life-changing punch. With poetry, wisdom, sincerity, and a sense of urgency that can raise the hair on one’s head, Shantideva calls us to fulfill life’s ultimate purpose. For him this is nothing less than to live the life of a Bodhisattva and manifest the enlightened mind in the world for the benefit of all beings. If you would like your Sangha to participate next year then get in touch with us.

Dakini

Tibet, late 18th century, Metropolitan Museum

Kavyamani, Dhammamayi + Khemabandhu

Weekend

Residential Dharma Life Alumni

30 JULY OPEN DAY

An opportunity for all those who live near Adhisthana, whether in the Sangha or not, to come and learn more about this place and the Triratna Buddhist Community. All welcome.

11-13 AUGUST

DHARMA LIFE ALUMNI RETREAT

Dhammamayi and Kavyamani, friends, and roommates from the 2015 Dharma Life Course, invite everyone who has taken part in a Dharma Life Course at Adhisthana, to join for an exploration of friendship and Dharma practice. The retreat will happen alongside a weekend

Above: Members of Adhisthana Comunity, and Dharma Life alumni

Parami

Weekend

Residential

Adhisthana

Community Alumni

for current and former Adhisthana community members, coming together in the evenings for rituals (and perhaps more!). Alumni can invite their favourite community members from when they were on the course to come over the same weekend and reconnect.

11-13 AUGUST

COMMUNITIES PAST AND PRESENT

An opportunity for everyone who has ever lived at Adhisthana to come together and spend the weekend celebrating this place and the lineage of the community here. This event is part of our tenth anniversary programme, celebrating how much has happened at Adhisthana over the last decade. This is a dana event.

Order Convenors + Adhisthana Teaching

Community

3 nights Residential Order members

Bookings open. Programme details on the Adhisthana website when confirmed.

17-22 AUGUST

TOUCHING A MYSTERY

UK & IRELAND COMBINED AREA ORDER WEEKEND

‘There are moments when criticism of a particular kind – the only kind I care for – utterly absorbs me. I feel I am touching a mystery ... a darkness that is secretly alive and thrilling to the sense. This, I like to believe, is the reflection in myself of the darkness which broods over the poet’s creative mind’

This quote, from Middleton Murry, gives a clue to how Sangharakshita approached Buddhist texts and teachings. Members of the Adhisthana

Teaching Community will lead this weekend, approaching Bhante and his teaching in this spirit, sharing their own explorations with the wider Order, and evoking the ‘indefinable spirit’ that may be the flickering flame of each Order member’s part in the Order as the 1000 Armed Avalokiteshvara.

24-28 AUGUST

THE ESSENCE OF ZEN SUB35 FESTIVAL RETREAT

A team of young Order members

4 nights

Residential

Open to all under 35

Taking our lead from a series of lectures given by Urgyen Sangharakshita, we’ll immerse ourselves in an ancient Zen verse to explore the principles and practices contained within its uncompromising nature. Combining meditation, talks from experienced Buddhist teachers, rituals, storytelling, silence, and discussion with volleyball, fireside music, friendship and play; over this long-weekend, gather with other people aged 18 to 35 to delve into the essence of Zen.

Inspired by the study and discussion on their own gatherings, the Adhisthana Teaching Community invites Order members to participate in this collective project to bring us more deeply into relationship with Bhante and his presentation of the Dharma.

Immersive retreats

Large retreats exploring traditional texts in an immersive experience engaging more of our faculties, with exposition, discussion, and meditation, readings of the text together with ritual dramatization, allowing the myth and symbolism to speak to us on an imaginative level.

Order Study Course

These events offer an intimate setting to look in depth at Bhante’s exposition of key texts, to bring us closer to the mind behind the teaching, and understand their relevance to our lives and practice. Over time, these events will add up to an exploration of Bhante’s main seminars, but Order members are welcome to attend as many or as few of the retreats as they are able to. Places are very limited, so do book early.

Nagabodhi, Saddhanandi, Saddhaloka, Subhadramati, Vidyamala, Dhivan, Jnanadhara + Khemabandhu

7 nights

Residential + Online

Order members

17-24 MARCH

SUMMONING THE WORLD TO BUDDHAHOOD BODHICARYAVATARA

Evocative and uncompromising, poetic and personal, the Bodhicaryavatara is a foundational text for the Mahayana and in Triratna; calling forth each of us to place our hearts more fully upon our most cherished ideals. Allow the beauty, power, and challenge of the verses to more deeply inform our practice, and enter an immersive retreat with a team who have dedicated their lives to the ideals enshrined within this text.

26 APRIL-5 MAY

UNFOLDING PATHS TO INSIGHT THE HEART

SUTRA

Vessantara

9 nights

Residential + Online

Order members

Vessantara explores The Heart Sutra as an example of how to practise sunyata meditations as one of the insight practices discussed by Sangharakshita. He will take it out of its supporting role in a puja, and instead set it centre stage as a support for insight practice, that offers profound pointers which we can follow until they lead us into the heart of reality.

Head of Lokeshvara, 1100s–1200s. Cambodia, The Cleveland Museum of Art

5-12

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Saddhaloka

7 nights

Residential

Dharmacharis

A retreat on the Sigalovada Sutta. The Buddha teaches a young householder about how to live well, bringing the deepest values to all one’s relationships, including parents, teachers, wife and family, friends, servants and holy men. We will be drawing on the seminar on the sutta led by Sangharakshita in January 1983 as he sought to lay out the Dharma for a still young, but fast growing, Order and movement that was starting to attract more and more people beyond the dedicated core who lived in communities, worked in rightlivelihood businesses and ran centres.

23-30 JUNE

THE REALISATION OF METTA

THE KARANIYA METTA SUTTA

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Ratnaghosha

7 nights

Residential Order members

Ratnaghosha has been exploring Bhante’s seminar on the Karaniya Metta Sutta for the past year. In this seminar we will spend a week going deeper into Bhante’s very positive approach to spiritual life and Insight. There will be guided reflections, meditation, study and an encouragement to relate the teachings to our own lives and practice.

‘Now at that time, young Sigala, a householder's son, rising early in the morning, departing from Rajagaha, with wet clothes and wet hair, worshipped with joined hands the various quarters – the East, the South, the West, the North, the Nadir, and the Zenith.’

Vidyamala, Dhammarati + Sona

9 nights

Residential + Online

Order members

14-23 JULY

MINDFULNESS FOR SELF AND WORLD SATIPATTHANA SUTTA

Discover the radical brilliance of the Satipatthana Sutta as a guide to Insight and freedom. We can experience this seminal text as a map of consciousness, a drama of awakening and a cosmic invitation.

We will use Living with Awareness, Bhante’s exploration of the sutta, as the basis for teaching, meditation, and ritual. We will explore the ‘internal’ and ‘external’ aspects of the sutta to bring out the connection between self-awareness and altruism, the ‘self’ and ‘other’ dimensions of mindfulness and we will also draw on verses from the Mahayana mind training tradition. There will be opportunities to discuss your meditation practice in individual or group meditation reviews.

Vessantara

7 nights

Residential + Online

Order members

1-8 SEPTEMBER INSIGHT & IMAGINATION MEDITATING ON THE VIMALAKIRTI NIRDESA

For hundreds of years, Mahayana sutras were used as major routes to insight. They weren’t just read, they were practised. The wisdom suggested by the text was reinforced by the symbols and imagery, to bring about a mystic marriage of insight and imagination. So, how do you practise a Mahayana sutra? Can you take it deep into your being, so that its vision affects your whole life?

Metropolitan Museum

Manjusri visiting Vimalakirti, detail, Wang Zhenpeng, China, 1308.

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Paramartha

7 nights

Residential

Order members

PLATFORM SUTRA OF HUINENG

The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch is a central text of Zen, a school of Buddhism based on the powerful claim that enlightenment can only be attained through a flash of direct intuitive understanding. We will study the Platform Sutra and story of Huineng’s life and awakening. Reference will be made to both Bhante’s 1975 seminar on the Sutra of Huineng as well as Paramartha’s personal notes from a study he did with Bhante in the late 1980s. This intimate retreat will put an emphasis on meditative practice ‘on and off the cushion’, sutra reading and an appreciation of the poetry of the Zen tradition.

9-13 OCTOBER

THE DHAMMAPADA

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Nagabodhi

4 nights

Residential

Order members

This is an opportunity to spend a few days going back to basics, looking at some crucial sections from the Dhammapada. Sangharakshita ran several study seminars on this well-known and highly accessible text back in the early days. We won’t have Sangharakshita, but we will have good company, the facilities of Adhisthana, and all the beauty of autumn in the Herefordshire countryside.

Art Gallery of South Australia

The Plain of Musashi, Mount Fuji and the Moon, detail, Japan, 1760.

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Subhuti

7 nights

Residential Order members

TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD SEMINAR

The Bardo Thodol translates as ‘the Great Liberation through Hearing in the Bardo’. The Study Seminar, which will have just 20 people and will be led by Subhuti, who was present at the original seminar that Bhante gave on the text, and which set the tone for his whole spiritual life.

27 OCTOBER-3 NOVEMBER

TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD RETREAT

Subhuti, Prakasha, Subhadramati, Jnanavaca + team

7 nights

Residential + Online

Order members

As well as exposition, discussion, and meditation, during the retreat there will be readings of the text together with ritual dramatization, allowing the imaginative myth and symbolism of the teaching to enter into our being on a non-cognitive level.

Both the retreat and the seminar will explore the text’s principal themes in light of Bhante’s presentation, enabling an entry into its spiritual world and revealing its relevance, both in our present experience and our perspective on life and death.

Milarepa and Disciples, Tibet, 1400-1500, Art Institute of Chicago

17-24 NOVEMBER

HEARTFELT ADVICE TO RECHUNGPA

ORDER STUDY COURSE

Maitreyi + Paramartha

7 nights

Residential

Order members

Milarepa’s teachings to his heart-son disciple Rechungpa are both uncompromising and compassionate; their authentic communication releases a spiritual energy which Bhante harnesses in his commentary, without in any way diluting its passion and intensity. His lucid exposition of the text reveals further depths of the teachings whilst making it fully relevant to our own practice.

We have a range of events for different interests and levels of experience, and hope that you find something to support and deepen your practice.

Saddhanandi + Ksantikara

4 nights

Residential Day Event

Open to those who have learnt Triratna meditation

6-10 APRIL

IS A GURU NECESSARY? TRIRATNA DAY WEEKEND

Through communication with those more experienced than us, we can rise to a higher level of consciousness. In his 1970s talk, Sangharakshita warns us against thinking of those we look up to as our problem solver, teacher, or substitute parent, but if we learn to look up in the right way we will enter a larger world of gratitude, receptivity, and reverence.

8 APRIL

THE ELECTRIC CHARGE OF COMMUNICATION TRIRATNA DAY

Saddhanandi, Paramartha, Kalyanaprabha + Khemabandhu

Day Event

Open to those who have learnt Triratna meditation

In his 1970 talk ‘Is a Guru Necessary?’, Sangharakshita makes a case for the relationship between guru and disciple being primarily that of an existential communication. A communication that brings you into a new experience of yourself, that takes you to the limits of your own being and encourages you to stretch beyond them.

Satyalila, Prakasha, Ratnaprabha, Aryavacin

+ Amitajyoti

4 nights

Residential Order members

10-14 APRIL

BHANTE, BLAKE, FRIENDSHIP AND THE IMAGINATION

‘The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.’ William Blake.

On this event, we will explore the theme of spiritual friendship by drawing on the poetry and artwork of William Blake. His emphasis on friendship and imagination was a significant influence on Bhante. We will be using meditation, ritual, drawing, painting and writing as gateways into our own creativity and imagination. The event will be held within the supportive context of spiritual community.

Spider web

Trevor Gerzen, Unsplash

Dhivan, Silavadin + Ketumati

3 nights

Residential

Mitras + Order members

WISDOM OF THE EARTH PHILOSOPHY AND THE CLIMATE CRISIS

Climate change, mass extinction and environmental crises are becoming all too visible for us these days, urging us to take action. At the same time, different views abound on what is really going on and what should be done. What is in the background of these different views? Or to put it in a different way: how can we develop a fruitful view about the challenges that face us?

26-29 MAY

PEOPLE OF COLOUR RETEAT

Suryagupta, Bodhilila, Aryavacin + Amaragita

3 nights

Residential

Open to all levels of experience

A weekend event for people of colour to come together, deepen meditation practice and be inspired by the Buddha’s teaching.

Arctic Icebergs Annie Spratt/Unsplash

Dhivan, Sagaramati + Sraddhapa

7 nights

Residential

Mitras + Order members

GETTING CLOSER TO VIMALAKIRTI SCHOLARS RETREAT

In 1999, a complete Sanskrit manuscript was discovered in the Potala Palace of the Vimalakīrti Nirdeśa Sūtra, which allowed scholars to read the sutra in its original form, rather than through the lens of Chinese or Tibetan translation. An English translation of the Sanskrit sutra has now

Sanghajit, Aryajit, Dharmajit + Sam

Residential Weekend

Open to all fathers

been

published, The Teaching of Vimalakīrti. On this retreat we will be studying sections from the sutra in translation, with reference to the Sanskrit as well as Chinese and Tibetan versions. This retreat is an opportunity for a more scholarly study, although there will also be meditation and reflection together on themes from the sutra.

8-10 SEPTEMBER DEPTH AND MYSTERY RETREAT FOR FATHERS

Join the Triratna Fathers team on a retreat exploring the nature of mind and ineffable Nirvana.

Manjusri visiting Vimalakirti, detail, Wang Zhenpeng, China, 1308. Metropolitan Museum

Paramartha, Vidyamala, Pramudita + Punyamala

7 nights

Residential

Order members

‘WONDROUS IS THE BUDDHA OF INFINITE LIGHT…'

AMITABHA SADHANA

We have the good fortune to practise with a form of Amitabha that directly derives from Sangharakshita’s vision. Simple though profound, it brings us into contact with the deep mystery, boundless light and infinite love of the great Buddha who resides at the head of the Padma family. Come and practise with us to make sure the qualities of light, warmth, love, meditation, calm, and discriminating wisdom continue to ceaselessly pour out into the world for the sake of all: the boundless abundance of the beautiful red Buddha, Amitabha.

Amitabha, Adhisthana shrine

Over a thousand people in their late teens and twenties have come to Adhisthana for retreats since 2013.

We offer a continually expanding programme of events from our popular big weekend gatherings, to intimate study seminars and an invitation to the depths with a nineday meditation intensive.

Ksantikara

3 nights

Residential

Mitras under 35

CHANGEMAKERS WEEKEND

A renewed Buddhism needs to confront the modern world as it is. It needs to be a radical alternative to an individualistic consumer society. It needs teachings that help to overcome hatred and prejudice. It needs people living and working together to reduce suffering, tackle loneliness and give meaning to people’s lives. Essentially this means deepening our own practice, connecting with others and building Sangha.

24-26 MARCH HEART OF THE VOID SUB30 WEEKEND

Akasajoti

Weekend

+ Ksantikara

Residential

Open to all under 30

At the heart of the Buddhist tradition is a tension between the wish to withdraw from the world with all its painful games and the wish to turn towards it to alleviate the suffering of all beings. How can we engage more deeply with the troubles of the world with a truly creative response? Is it possible to avoid horrified anxiety and passivity, and instead stay wise and compassionate? What can we do to foster, and better balance, the tensions between withdrawal and engagement in our daily life?

+ Friends

Vajratara

3 nights

Residential

Mitras under 30

26-29 MARCH

ENCOUNTERING ENLIGHTENMENT SUB30 SEMINAR

Through Dharma study we dialogue with the enlightened mind, feeling our own experience coming into relationship with the experience of awakening that the Buddhist tradition has handed down to us for over 2500 years. Although we can read Buddhist books and watch Dharma teachers on YouTube, things will often open up much more fully, deeply and clearly when studying the Dharma alongside others. Come along to awaken your longing for the truth. Places are limited.

20-23 APRIL

I

ACCEPT THIS ORDINATION

SUB40 ORDER SEMINAR

Saddhanandi + Ksantikara

3 nights

Residential

Order members under 40

Recited in the public ordination ceremony, the four verses of acceptance essentialise what it means to be practising within the Triratna Buddhist Order. Together they provide a vision for Triratna as an international Buddhist community loyal to Urgyen Sangharakshita’s vision, working in harmony and sustained by spiritual friendship; dedicated to the attainment of Enlightenment for the benefit of all beings.

Team of Young Order members

4 nights Residential

All under 35

‘Things will often open up much more deeply and clearly when studying the Dharma alongside others.’

24-28 AUGUST

THE ESSENCE OF ZEN SUB35 FESTIVAL RETREAT

Taking our lead from a series of lectures given by Urgyen Sangharakshita, we’ll immerse ourselves in an ancient Zen verse to explore the principles and practices contained within its uncompromising nature. Combining meditation, talks from experienced Buddhist teachers, collective rituals, storytelling, silence, and discussion; with volleyball, fireside music, friendship and play. Over this long-weekend, gather with other people aged 18 to 35 to delve into the essence of Zen.

Vidyamala + Vajrashura

9 nights

Residential

Open to all under 30

13-22

OCTOBER

THE DIRECT PATH OF AWAKENING

SUB30 MEDITATION INTENSIVE

One of the most influential of the Buddha’s discourses, the Satipatthana Sutta shows us how meditation on the four gateways to mindfulness – the body, sensations and feeling tone, thoughts and emotions, and Reality – can bring about an awakening to our true nature and the cessation of suffering, stress and dissatisfaction.

24-26 NOVEMBER

Team of Young Order members

Weekend

Residential

Open to all under 30

Dhammarati

3 nights

Residential

Mitras under 30

Metropolitan Museum

ENERGY

& THE TANTRIC PRECEPTS SUB30 WEEKEND

Socrates said that once we know what’s good for us, doing it would automatically follow. That might have been true for Socrates but clearly is not true for us! All too often we waste our energy living undirected, unrefined and under-nourished lives. So how can we unblock our minds, use our potency and make the most of our friendships?

26-29 NOVEMBER

DHARMA TREASURES SUB30 SEMINAR

A four-day study seminar on a foundational text with experienced study leaders. We will primarily be studying an original text (such as the Dhammapada or the White Lotus Sutra), informed by Sangharakshita’s perspective on it, given in seminars from the early years of Triratna. There will be time for reflection, meditation and ritual, in addition to study and stimulating discussion in a small seminar-style setting.

Woman with a Pink, detail Rembrandt van Rijn, Dutch, 1660s.

2023

13 MARCH-30 JUNE

DHARMA LIFE COURSE FOR YOUNG WOMEN

Applications for this course have now closed. Get in touch to express your interest in the next women’s course

28 AUGUST-15 DEC

DHARMA LIFE COURSE

FOR YOUNG MEN

Applications open now

THE DHARMA LIFE COURSE

Each year we run four-month residential courses to provide an opportunity to live an intensive Dharma life: living, practising, studying, and working together within the context of Adhisthana.

You’ll receive a grounding in the principles and practice of Triratna Buddhism through retreats, study with experienced teachers and communal living. You’ll also participate in the life of the wider Adhisthana Sangha: meditating together, performing ritual, developing kalyana mitrata and joining in with regular work periods as a spiritual practice.

2024

DATES TBC

DHARMA LIFE COURSE

FOR YOUNG WOMEN

Expressions of interest invited from now

DATES TBC

DHARMA LIFE COURSE

FOR YOUNG MEN

Expressions of interest invited from now

The courses are aimed at those under the age of 35 who are mitras or who have asked for ordination. Participants come from all over the world.

L: The first Dharma Life Course, 2014

R: The most recent Dharma Life Course, 2022

£35 waged/£25 unwaged per night

Booking is essential Book via admin@adhisthana.org

Friends, Mitras, and Order members from across the world are welcome to visit and spend time at Adhisthana outside of any retreat programme. We offer an opportunity to live simply in the countryside amidst a thriving dharmic context. You can meditate in a shrine room, circumambulate the burial mound, visit Urgyen House, sit in the garden or by a pond, go for a walk, meet friends or study in the library. We ask visitors to take part in the daily work rota which integrates you into life here.

18-23 JUNE PILGRIMS’ WEEK

£35 waged/£25 unwaged per night

Up to 5 nights

Open to all

For five days we’ll devote Adhisthana to being a place of pilgrimage and offer an optional light programme to supplement simply resting in the blessings. You stay for the number of nights of your choice.

Many people who visit Adhisthana have a strong impulse to give their time and energy to the project. Adhisthana thrives on volunteers, and we want to give opportunities to as many people as possible. Volunteering is a great opportunity to become part of the Adhisthana network, and develop a relationship with the place, the community and Bhante. We’re particularly interested in skills in: cleaning, admin, gardening, electrics, cooking, familiarity and creativity with wordpress. However if you have initiative and willingness to work hard we would love to hear from you.

‘Adhisthana came alive to me in a more personal way though volunteering. Joining with the community over those few days gave me a hearty appreciation for everything that goes in to the life of Adhisthana, and I so enjoyed putting all of myself into physical work, showing my gratitude in giving something back (with buckets of earth!)’ Edward Lawrence, Sheffield

Opposite:

Sangharakshita’s burial mound, International Sangha Day, 2020

Preparing the shrine room window frame

Contact programme@ adhisthana.org

if you would like us to host your retreat

SANGHA RETREATS, REUNIONS AND SELF-RUN RETREATS

In addition to the many events you see in our programme, we also host an array of Sangha retreats and reunion retreats, as well as chapter, going for refuge and mitra groups. Coming to Adhisthana is a worry-free way of holding a retreat. All your food is cooked for you, you’ll be in the beautiful surroundings of Adhisthana, and you don’t need to make a financial commitment upfront.

The practical, organisational side will be taken care of before you arrive, so all you have to do is turn up and enjoy!

From an organiser’s perspective, it’s a dream –wonderful food, stunning grounds, access to Urgyen House and Bhante’s burial mound, and all the facilities you need for running successful retreats. Every time we visit I notice a step change in the depth of friendships between people and our connection with the wider Triratna Sangha.

Prajnaketu, Oxford Sangha

Rochani in the Adhisthana kitchen

Any visit to Adhisthana is an opportunity to also visit Urgyen House, Bhante’s last residence. It contains many of Bhante’s personal possessions on display. You can relax in his sitting room, view his bedroom, meditate in the intimate shrine room, view photos or simply sit and absorb the atmosphere of the place.

This year is the last opportunity to see the Precious Teachers exhibition exploring Bhante’s 8 main teachers before Urgyen Sangharakshita Trust unveils a new exhibition in August 2023.

Sangharakshita’s sitting room where he met visitors. Urgyen House, Adhisthana

Property search begins in earnest

SEPTEMBER

Purchase of Coddington Court and adjacent farmyard. Ratnadharini and Sanghadeva move in

FEBRUARY

Sangharakshita moves in

MARCH

Sale of Madhyamaloka. First community members move in

AUGUST

Opening weekend with events for the local community, the Order and the Movement, followed immediately by a 5 day retreat for an international

group of 120 Public Preceptors, Presidents, Chairs, Mitra convenors, Order convenors and Centre representatives

NOVEMBER

First Triratna Young Buddhists retreat at Adhisthana

DECEMBER

First Area Order weekend at Adhisthana. The biggest residential event yet with over 140 Dharmacharinis attending

JANUARY

First Preceptors’ College meeting at Adhisthana

FEBRUARY

First Dharma Life course. 8 women from around the world come to Adhisthana for 5 months

MARCH

Vajragupta and Saddhanandi join as Chair and Director

JANUARY

The Sangharakshita Library officially opens

JULY Saddhanandi becomes Chair

JANUARY

Consecration of the Manjusri Rupa containing greetings sent to Bhante on his 90th birthday. It symbolises the mythic aspect of the Complete Works project

APRIL

First retreat for Friends of the Sangharakshita Library

MAY

First International Sangha retreat at Adhisthana. There are 300 people camping

AUGUST

First anniversary of opening. In its first year Adhisthana hosts more than 50 retreats, meetings and courses, for over 1000 members of the Order and Movement

OCTOBER

Building work on the Library is completed and Sangharakshita’s books are finally on the shelves

First ordination at Adhisthana. Dayavandana is privately ordained by Ratnavandana

AUGUST

Sangharakshita’s 90th Birthday. An Order weekend Conscious Surrender to the Beautiful takes place to mark it, attended by 400 Order members

9 Decades exhibition about Bhante’s life, in the Sangharakshita Library

AUGUST

More than fifty Order members from India are at Adhisthana for the men’s and women’s International Order conventions Exhibition

Babasaheb and Bhante: Bringing Buddhism back to India in Library

AUGUST

Dedication of the new shrine with its wall of rupas during UK and Ireland combined Order weekend

AUGUST

Fifty Voices exhibition to mark 50 years since the founding of the Order

OCTOBER

First Adhisthana International Course for Order members from all over the world already holding responsibilities

Death of Urgyen Sangharakshita

NOVEMBER

Sangharakshita’s funeral

NOVEMBER

On the first anniversary of Bhante’s funeral, Ratnadharini lays the stone on the burial mound as her first duty as Chair of the College

MARCH

Lockdown due to the Coronavirus pandemic. All events are cancelled and the resident community settle into isolation

JANUARY

Library shrine room becomes the ‘Connected Shrine room’ in order to host online and hybrid retreats more effectively

JULY

First online study weekend

SEPTEMBER

First online week-long retreat led by Maitreyabandhu and Jnanavaca

Adhisthana Teaching Community begins

AUGUST

A UK and Ireland Combined area Order weekend is the first large-scale in-person event since the end of lockdown

NOVEMBER

Khemabandhu becomes Chair

Urgyen House, the transformed Urgyen annexe where Sangharakshita lived, opens as a memorial to him

JULY / AUGUST

Adhisthana International five week course with 16 participants

booklet

Editor Danasamudra

Design Dhammarati

Set in 9.5/15 Scala

Other photos

Dhammarati, Suvannamani

Archive photos

The Urgyen Sangharakshita Trust

Adhisthana

Coddington Court

Coddington

Ledbury

Herefordshire

HR8 1JL

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