Welcome to our 2021 Programme
April 2021 update
We are delighted to be able to re-open the house for personal retreats from May 2021.
It has been such a long time since we were able to welcome retreatants at Gaia House and after more than a year without any ‘in-person’ retreats, we can’t wait to have you back here again. Please click here to find out more about the personal retreats we’re offeing in May and June.
We are unsure exactly when we’ll be able to start offering in-house group retreats again. We are certainly planning to do so as soon as it feels possible and the UK Government’s guidelines allow.
In the meantime, we look forward to welcoming you online. Whether you’re new to meditation or an experienced practitioner, we are offering many ways to practise and explore the Dharma together online, including meditation days, retreats, courses and evening sessions.
We have heard from our online participants that practising together virtually can be incredibly supportive and inspiring, and the sense of sangha can be really powerful.
We hope our online programme will be supportive and nourishing in the midst of all that is happening around us.
Retreat fees are flexible and we welcome you to pay according to your individual means and circumstances.
May our practice serve the welfare, happiness, and safety of all life.
A note on dana/generosity
None of your registration fee goes to the teacher(s). Gaia House teachers rely on the generosity of students for their livelihood. There is an opportunity to make a dana offering to the teachers at the end of each event.
ONLINE
Meditation Day: Patience, Kindness and Right View
With Laura Bridgman
28 April, 10am – 4.30pm (BST)
In this retreat we will contemplate and bring into our practice patience and kindness together with Right View. These qualities create an atmosphere of mind that is able to abide with a gentle, tolerant, accepting presence. Then the clarity of perspective that is Right View is able to penetrate and understand suffering.
This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience. Please join us.
ONLINE
Online Retreat: Abiding with a Heart Imbued with Love
With Catherine McGee assisted by Gail Alyward
30 April – 3 May
In this online retreat we will explore ways of practising with the body to cultivate restfulness, steadiness, nourishment and a coming home with our body. As we learn to ‘abide’ more deeply, we will explore the beautiful qualities of heart; loving kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity.
Some experience of meditation will be helpful.
ONLINE
Online Course: The Power of Relationship on a Noble, Whole-Life Eightfold Path
With Gregory Kramer
5 May 12 May 19 May 26 May
This series of talks by Gregory Kramer will explore how we can engage the power of our inherent relational sensitivities in service of awakening and deep human care. Gregory will teach four sessions on the wholesome function of relationships in the noble eightfold path.
Each session will include Insight Dialogue practice, a formal practice of bringing together meditative awareness, Buddhist wisdom teachings, and human’s natural relatedness, so that we can experience Dhamma friendship at work.
This series is open to all, including beginners and those with experience.
ONLINE
Online Retreat: Mahasi weekend
With Bhante Bodhidhamma
7-9 May
Mahasi Insight Meditation (vipassana) is grounded in the tradition of the Burmese meditation master, Mahasi Sayadaw, who began to teach vipassana Insight Meditation after World War II near Yangon (Rangoon) in Myanmar (Burma). He developed a method to help us maintain moment to moment mindfulness from the instant we awake to the instant we fall asleep. There are two techniques: the use of a simple word to note whatever we are experiencing, and doing everything very slowly.
This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience. Please join us.
ONLINE
Online Retreat: Mahasi 5 day retreat
With Bhante Bodhidhamma
7-12 May
Mahasi Insight Meditation (vipassana) is grounded in the tradition of the Burmese meditation master, Mahasi Sayadaw, who began to teach vipassana Insight Meditation after World War II near Yangon (Rangoon) in Myanmar (Burma). He developed a method to help us maintain moment to moment mindfulness from the instant we awake to the instant we fall asleep. There are two techniques: the use of a simple word to note whatever we are experiencing, and doing everything very slowly.
This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience. Please join us.
ONLINE
Online Retreat: Insight Meditation and Qigong
With Jaya Rudgard
14 – 16 May
A weekend bringing together the Chinese art of mindfulness in motion with the meditative wisdom teachings of the Buddha. Let’s investigate how weaving these two ancient traditions together can support us in our 21st century search for happiness.
This retreat is open to all, whether you have an existing Insight Meditation or Qigong practice or are new to both.
ONLINE
When You Greet Me I Bow: Book Talk
With Zoketsu Norman Fischer
21 May, 7pm – 8pm (BST)
In this Dharma talk and discussion Norman Fischer will present his just-out book “When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen,” a collection of thirty years of his Dharma essays, with his own contemporary reflections.
ONLINE
The Merging of Difference and Unity: A Study and Meditation Retreat
With Zoketsu Norman Fischer
24 – 26 May
In this three day retreat, led by Zoketsu Norman Fischer, we’ll practice silent sitting and walking meditation, and study a classic Soto Zen text, The Merging of Difference and Unity (Japanese: Sandokai). Norman will give two short talks each day followed by small and large group discussion.
Beginners as well as seasoned practitioners of any Buddhist tradition are welcome.
ONLINE
Online Meditation Day: Beauty of Being
With Leela Sarti
23 May
This is part of a series of meditation days with Leela entitled: ‘Embodying Human Awakening – Living In the World but Not Of It’.
A human life infused with meaning, freedom and love, a fulfilling life, means to develop a taste for certain values; a taste for truth, depth and simplicity of being. You do not need to achieve these qualities, you just need to appreciate them and orient yourself towards them, allowing yourself the time and opportunity for them to emerge and become an integrated part of your life.
Previous attendance on a silent meditation residential retreat of three nights or more at Gaia House or another residential centre will be assumed.
ONLINE
Meeting Uncertainty with Wisdom and Courage: Perennial Teachings for a Changing World
with Zohar Lavie and Nathan Glyde
4 – 9 June
2,600 years ago the Buddha offered us responsive ways of relating to our dynamic, unreliable, and interrelated world. These treatments of the human condition are as relevant now as they were then. They draw attention to inconstancy and stress, not for fatalistic acceptance and withdrawal, but rather as an invitation to sensitively tend to the creative process of life. Insights are an invitation to change how we relate. For it is through ways of relating that we radically transform our lives: either by contracting experience in dukkha and distress or by opening towards freedom and the true heart’s release.
A five day retreat to include mediation guidance, talks and interviews with the teachers. This retreat is open to all, including beginners and those with experience.
ONLINE
Online Meditation Day: Awakening Together
With Leela Sarti
23 June
This is part of a series of meditation days with Leela entitled: ‘Embodying Human Awakening – Living In the World but Not Of It’.
A human life infused with meaning, freedom and love, a fulfilling life, means to develop a taste for certain values; a taste for truth, depth and simplicity of being. You do not need to achieve these qualities, you just need to appreciate them and orient yourself towards them, allowing yourself the time and opportunity for them to emerge and become an integrated part of your life.
Previous attendance on a silent meditation residential retreat of three nights or more at Gaia House or another residential centre will be assumed.