What happens on an online retreat?
Nirodha is offering an opportunity to participate in a week-long communal web-based retreat. From the 13 – 20 April, we will offer a daily simple structure of 3 sessions of teachings/ meditations and also opportunities to connect in small groups or in one to ones with the teachers.
These are drop in sessions. You are welcome to tune into what is offered when you can and practice with what is shared in whatever way feels most helpful in your life situation.
This balance of support and also taking responsibility in one’s own practice can be a crucible for deepening. It can help us to ease out of reactivity and into presence, wisdom and compassion in a real way.
Delightful presence – exploring connection, attunement and community
There is a joy in being fully present – dwelling with a ’heart-mind’ that is spacious, peaceful, sensitive, receptive and malleable. By cultivating calm, well-being and steadiness we learn to tap into inner resources that are essential and supportive both on our path and in everyday life.
We can travel together towards this shared sense of ease and well-being that doesn’t depend on outer circumstances and develop a clear mind that enables us to see through our confusion and mis-perceptions. Together these qualities support us to wake up to our deepest potential…essential always and especially in these times. At this particular moment – tuning in together and attuning to our alive capacities….
Many elements in today’s global situation – including climate chaos and now the coronavirus – can feel very challenging. And yet they are presenting us with a unique opportunity to pause and reflect. We can use this time of ‘self isolation’ as a time to explore the opposite of the kind of consumerist individualism and disconnection/ isolation our societies have actually been running with…and which may have actually caused some of the difficulties we are now experiencing.
We can use the slowing down and physical distancing as a time to explore our depths, our interconnectedness, and where lies our heart and our sense of compassion and community. We are all in this together!
With this heart we offer an online opportunity to explore connection, attunement and community.
The meditation techniques we practice are over 2,500 years old and are mostly based on the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Taking part in this online offering does not, however, require an adherence to Buddhism or any adaptation of personal faith.
Daily Schedule:
10 am guided meditation
11 am group meetings (with one of the teachers present)
3 pm Dharma talk or Q & A
7 pm guided meditation
Price and donations
The base price is 40 euros. This covers the practical expenses of the course. We feel that financial situation should not prevent anybody from participating, so we are willing to offer the retreat for a reduced price, if needed. If the base price is too high for you, please contact us at retriitit@nirodha.fi and let us know how much you are able to pay. If you would like to help sponsor someone who does not have the financial means to pay the full price, you are welcome to pay more than the base price.
The teachers and organizers do not receive any payment for their services but offer them freely so that as many as possible have the chance to benefit from the teachings regardless of financial situation. This principle of generosity is very central to the teachings of the Buddha and has made it possible to continue the practice of meditation still 2,500 years after his life. The teachers live primarily off of donations. Retreat participants may support the teachers and organizers by donations at the end of the retreat.
Registration and cancellation policy
You can sign up for the retreat by filling in the registration form. You will get a confirmation email after we have received the form and your registration fee. Pay the full retreat fee (40 euros) to the following bank account:
Account number: FI84 4108 0010 3769 97
Bank name: Oma Säästöpankki
Bank address: Valtakatu 32, 53100 LAPPEENRANTA, Finland
Swift code: ITELFIHH
Name of bank account holder: Nirodha ry
Address of the account holder: Vetehisenkuja 3, 00530 Helsinki
Type of account: business account
Reference number: 30200427 (It is important to use this reference number in the payment!)
If you pay from an account that is in someone else’s name, please inform us at retriitit@nirodha.fi and let us know your name, the name of the bank account holder and the date of payment.
Alternatively, you can pay via PayPal. Make the payment to talous@nirodha.fi. Please include the reference number above in the “note” field. To cover the PayPal fees, please add 12 euros when you make your payment.
In case of cancellation, please inform us as soon as possible. Unfortunately we cannot refund the registeration fee.
Teachers
Sumedha (Hannah Bagshaw) grew up in the wilds of the Outer Hebrides. Inspired by this and the Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah tradition she is passionate in exploring our interconnection with nature: the different perspective this creates on ourselves, and the care it brings to how we live in the world.
Sumedha graduated in Comparative Religion from Manchester University in 1997, and spent the next twelve years practicing in the Forest tradition, as a novice and then as a nun. She was based at Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries and later Aloka Vihara in California. After disrobing in 2010 she spent a year managing Dharmagiri Hermitage in South Africa with Noon Baldwin and in 2011 they co-founded Ekuthuleni retreat place in France. The emphasis on living simply, close to the wildness of nature, and on cultivating embodied, connected awareness are all important elements in her practice. They link with cultivating a stability and warmth of heart that enable an ongoing exploration and opening to the unknown – a curiosity in keeping practice alive and real and open to all comers, inside and out.
Noon Baldwin is an ex circus artist and street performer who retired from the circus in 2004 to dedicate his life to spiritual practice, living in dhamma centers (France & South Africa) and Amaravati monastery (UK). In 2011, Noon co-created Ekuthuleni rustic retreat place with Sumedha (Hannah) Bagshaw. Ekuthuleni is a back to basics meditation center in the foothills of the french Pyrenees. The emphasis is on meditation and ecological awareness, and bringing these two together.
Noon’s influences are varied, with an interest in all spiritualities: retreats and courses with Jaya Ashmore from Open Dharma since 2008, the Buddhist tradition of Ajahn Chah since 2000, Tibetan Buddhism, sacred chanting, silent walking & movement. He enjoys how the traditional and open spirituality practices meet as one in his heart. Noon’s varied life experience brings a listening with vibrancy, an alive practice he loves to share.
Connecting with curiosity & energy, with a sense of embodying spiritual practice through in depth body grounding meditations are Noon’s fields of exploration. He is transgendered… a two spirit person all in one.
Juha Penttilä has been practicing meditation since 2002. He has spent extended periods of time on retreats and in monasteries in Asia and Europe and he is one of the founding members of Nirodha, the Finnish Insight Meditation practice community. Juha has also completed the Gaia House teacher council Community Dharma Leader -programme and is currently in teacher training with Rob Burbea, Caroline Jones and Martine Batchelor. In addition to emptiness practices Juha’s meditation teaching is influenced by the current climate crisis and engaged perspectives into the Dharma.