Running for it

I'm just coming up to the last few days before my first half marathon - the Great North Run on October 5th. Unfortunately I've had a cold over the last week so haven't done much last-minute training but I'm hoping to pull a few extra miles out of the bag on the day. I'm also hoping to raise some money for the bursary fund here at Tiratanaloka, which is used to give financial help to women to come here on retreat. If you'd like to sponsor me you can do so online here. If you've already sponsored me then a big thanks - it's the thought of that money that has stopped me backing out a few times!!! I'll let you know how it goes.
It's wet and windy today so I get a chance to wear my new showerproof, windproof running top at last!
Candraprabha

A goodbye

On 17th September we very sadly waved goodbye to Vajradarshini, who has left Tiratanaloka after almost 6 years to live in Spain with Padmadharini.  During her last week we had an outing to the circus (preceded by a darts match in which she pulled off an astounding finishing throw) and an evening of charades which included items being acted out by a small kangaroo.  Life is certainly varied and fascinating!!  The good news is that Vajradarshini will be running retreats at various venues over the next year - you can see what she's up to on her website.  We'll miss her.

Amritamati joins the team!

The newest member of our team, Amritamati, arrived in June and has been on retreat almost constantly since then! You'll be able to find out more about her on our website soon, but in the meantime, here's what she has to say about her move to Tiratanaloka so far:-

"I joined the team here at the beginning of June, having left my job as a mental health nurse for older adults a few weeks earlier. I’ve lived in London since 1986 (on and off) and so it’s been quite a move coming to the countryside of Wales, the rain, the sheep and the relative quiet. ..I say ‘relative’ as there is the constant sound of the river, the birds, the rain (much of the time) and the occasional RAF jet zooming down the valley. So far I love it.

Vajradarshini will be leaving in a couple of weeks and I will replacing her...at least her spot on the team. I think her Wabi Sabi vibrant energy will not be easily replaced. So, I’m in a period of being ‘trained up’, being in groups with various members of the team and learning the ropes, from the material we study to driving the lawnmower, from ordering food to tackling the computer. I’ve dived in with two Transcendental Principle retreats and the Reflections on Reality retreat too. The retreats have been very enjoyable and I find myself often thinking how blessed I am to be living here. It’s a full-on way to live, but I couldn’t wish to be doing anything other at the moment. It’s been great meeting the women who come here too and I look forward to getting to know more of you over the years."

Just Giving

Just a short post to let you know that if you'd like to donate to our bursary fund, you can now do so online via the Just Giving website by clicking here. This is great for one-off donations as Just Giving can also reclaim the gift aid for us (for a small charge) if you are a UK taxpayer.
Recently, a mitra from South Africa came to the UK just to attend one of our retreats and it was great to be able to give her some help to do this. She's hoping to come back next year and we're hoping we can again offer some financial aid. The centre in Johannesburg is the FWBO centre that is farthest from any other centre!

To show we're serious (!) about raising money, Candraprabha's going to be taking part (note, the cautious wording!!) in the Great North Run (a half marathon) in October and is hoping to raise some money through sponsorship. If you want to go through every aching mile of training with her, you can see what's happening on her blog.

Let go in July!

For those of you not on our mailing list (you can sign up from the home page of our website) here's some information about a weekend we're running from 18-20 July for women who've asked for ordination and dharmacharinis. Sridevi and Ratnadharini came up with the idea in a tea shop in Ludlow! (or so the story goes). You can find details of how to book on the website. We'd love to see you there.



A non-rational weekend at Tiratanaloka!

We usually think of the spiritual life as gradual development. However, very early on,

at the first anniversary celebration of the WBO in April 1969 Sangharakshita gave a talk entitled Breaking Through into Buddhahood. He pointed out that to really practise we have to realize that the Dharma is revolutionary, that it has to transform every aspect of our lives.

Bhante said that we have to break through four things especially. They are: negative emotions, psychological conditioning, rational thinking, and time-sense. There has been a lot of emphasis in the movement on the first two but not so much on letting go of our dependence on the rational mind and clock-time. So we thought it would be really interesting and fun to have a weekend exploring these.

We shall do all sorts of crazy things – without ending up in a total chaos! And there will be a strong presence of Vajrapani whom Bhante introduced in his lecture.

“This fearful, or this wrathful, or this terrific form, represents the forces of Enlightenment breaking, even bursting through the thick dense darkness of ignorance and unawareness.”

You can find Bhante’s lecture on www.freebuddhistaudio.com. Listen to it, and come to a fun weekend at Tiratanaloka, very beautiful in late summer. It might just revolutionize your practice!

Our new handbook

Just a quick post before I go on solitary to say that the first version of our new Tiratanaloka handbook is now available to view or download from the website.
You can access it by clicking on the 'our handbook' link on the left hand side of our home page at www.tiratanaloka.org.uk.

The handbook aims to answer some of the many questions women have about asking and training for ordination into Western Buddhist Order and outlines the part that Tiratanaloka plays in all of that.

We'd welcome any feedback on the handbook so do email us at office@tiratanaloka.org.uk if you have something to say about it or leave a comment on this blog posting! In time, we hope to produce a printed version to send out too.

What's happening with the bursary fund? by Vajrasakhi

About the bursary
The Bursary at Tiratanaloka has been undergoing some rethinking over the last year or so, and we are pleased to report that it is now looking quite healthy! We want it to become a resource that will directly benefit the order and help spread the dharma to more and more countries and people.

A brief history of the Tiratanaloka Bursary
Two separate funds had been started in response to specific needs; the first for a woman from Estonia, who was having difficulty paying for retreats and travel. Later a general fund was set up for women from overseas, this was often used for women from countries like Mexico with poor exchange rates, for whom retreat and travel costs here were very high. We decided to amalgamate the two in 2007, and extend the remit so the money could be used by women in this country as well as abroad.
This year we intend to move all our income from standing orders (about £2,400 a year) to support the Bursary.

How do we decide who to give the money to?
When we get a request for help from the Bursary we usually ask about the financial circumstances and suggest alternative ways of paying for retreats. Retreats can be paid for in instalments, and some women can fund raise around their centre. If it is not possible to do this and there is a genuine case of financial hardship we ask how much of the cost can be covered, and give Bursary money to fund the rest if we have it.
We also suggest that someone who has received help from the Bursary could think about ways of publicising it or raising money for it in the future.
We do not attempt to prioritise the different financial situations women are in, but do keep in mind our sisters from poorer countries for whom the exchange rate and travel costs can be an big obstacle.

Facts and figures
We gave a total of £1,680 during 2007. This is £947 more than in 2006, and enabled us to help 11 women come on retreat here, who would not have been able to otherwise. Our funds presently stand at £1,500.
Some people are giving standing orders to the Bursary fund: even as little as £2 a month adds up. Others give a bit extra when they book on a retreat themselves. We can sometimes claim Gift Aid back from the government for these donations, increasing their value by more than a quarter.

Interconnectedness
What I like about this is that it is a step towards a true Dana economy, and a recognition of the significance of Tiratanaloka as a resource for the women's wing of the FWBO.
The team here support ourselves on £45 a week and with retreat and health allowances this adds up to a maximum total of £3,740 a year each. We manage to keep food costs at around £3 a day per person, and do our best to keep other costs low, so that we can run retreats here as cheaply as possible.
We are a self contained charity: FWBO Sarana; and like all the other FWBO charities we have no central funding body on whom we call for financial help.
If people can give money to our Bursary we get more women on retreat here, we help women from abroad, from outlying situations with no sangha, women who are younger or have dependants to support; and in the end these women will be joining this precious Order and helping to spread the Buddha Dharma. It's a win win situation!

Donations
Please see our web page on Bursary donations at www.tiratanalok.org.uk, or contact: office@tiratanaloka.org.uk. Snail mail: Aberclydach House, Talybont-on-Usk, Brecon, Powys, LD3 7YS. Tel: 01874 676482.

a long weekend in the country with pomegranates, deckchairs and beetroot

On May bank holiday weekend, Vajradarshini and I hosted another 3 night 'weekend in the country' which was delightfully sunny both in weather and atmosphere.
Delicacies prepared in the kitchen spilled out onto the lawn, when a few friends helped prepare the pomegranate fruits. These were going to be served that evening with the homemade indian style ice-cream and fresh figs that followed an array of curries dhal and pickles. Others looked on from the comfort of their deckchairs.





red was a bit of a theme with roast beetroot served for lunch with a thyme and shallot rissotto served with fresh english asparagus.



The idea of the weekend is for us to offer an open space for teams, groups, friends to come together at Tiratanaloka. Its the fourth year we have done this now and each time we hear the same appreciative comments which has inspired us to keep doing it. This year a A GFR group from Bristol came. They said how wonderful it was to be able to meet together at Tiratanaloka and have the time to go for longer walks, and chill out. In the morning they met in one of the study rooms we had set aside for them. They were looking at the laksanas. They want to book again for next year. There was also a meditation slot at 8am (so still time for a lie in !!) and each evening someone offered to lead a puja.

Vajradarshini and I did all the cooking and with the help of the community did all the washing up too!!! which meant there was more chill time for people to enjoy all the books in the library, go for extra long walks in the green welsh hills or just sit in the garden, full of flowers and birds. Vajradarshini and I love to cook and come up with new recipes and ideas of flavours and aesthetically pleasing foods. Seeing how relaxed everyone was, it was joy to host the weekend.

We will be hosting another one next year probably around the same time.

Kalyanasri on the recent retreat for private preceptors

I've just finished a very good womens' Private Preceptors week, here at Tiratanaloka. This is the third one we've had of these and they get better and better. There were 22 of us in all and we had daily discussion groups talking about any issues people wanted to talk about as well as the Ordination Ceremony, and Asanga's Ethics: covering only a small part of this text. We also had 3 personal talks about people's experience of precepting from Ratnavandana, Dayalocana and me. These were honest, moving and quite strong talks, all three of us having various amounts of experience in being a private preceptor and various stories to tell. In the afternoon meditation slot one of us led through different visualisation practices: Wrathful Vajrapani, the Manjughosa Stutti sadhana and White Tara, with a White Tara puja in the evening. It is very good being led through other visualisation practices: to get a taste of other Buddhas and Bodhisattvas other than our own, as one day we'll be leading people through some of them ourselves. The women who are still in the consultation process felt they 'caught' a lot from us more senior preceptors and much appreciated having Ratnadharini and Maitreyi here as the Public Preceptors, with their perspective and experience of the College. It seemed an invaluable week for helping to 'train' new preceptors, even though, as I said a lot of the experience was of the 'caught not taught' variety. Also very lovely getting together with old friends.

The week was harmonious and uplifting, seeing how being preceptors has informed and deepened our own practice of the Dharma. Well worth doing and well worth coming to.
Photos by Cheri Tamminen

The Heart of Ordination

This year we ar running two new retreats looking at what is at the heart of ordination.
Why join an order ? Why join this order ?

“......although the act of Going for Refuge is an individual act it is, at the same time, an act that takes place within a wider context.....because of this it is able to reveal itself more fully”......sangharakshita

The first of these retreats is

17 - 24 March

led by Vajradarshini Candraprabha Sridevi and Vidyalila
and Sridevi will be leading yoga

We will be looking at.....

The order as a living process and how it changes every time someone is ordained.
Taking our place in the Order is itself a practice. What might this mean?

What does it mean to be a free individual yet join with others in a network of friendships as an order ?

What is the relevance of the private and public ordination and what does it mean to take the precepts from our preceptor ?

Why be altruistic?
Do we have a feel for the Bodhisattva ideal ?

How do we engage with our imagination and myth so that our practice is held in a wider context and doesn't fall into spiritual materialism ?

Another retreat on this theme is 3 - 12 August with the same team

News Flash: Extra Retreat

We have just planned in an extra Going for Refuge retreat for the summer holidays. The dates are 18-26 August, the team is Candraprabha, Vidyalila, Vajrasakhi and Vajradarshini, and the theme is yet to be decided. Watch this space or better still go to the Tiratanaloka website and sign up to receive our news by email.

Our Community Days

Three times a year we plan in a week of what we call community days. During this time we often get someone from outside the team to do some ‘training’ with us. Over the years we’ve studied with Subhuti, meditated with Kamalashila, had Achara doing our Myers Briggs and Bridget doing an NVC weekend. The rest of the time is divided between personally exploring how life is for each of us and then having a few days of business meetings. It is often the only time that we are all here together.

So that is what we have been doing the past week or so. For the first three days Abhaya joined us and we studied “Self Liberation Through Seeing With Naked Awareness” a Padmasambhava text and explored Formless meditation, which the text is about. It was very enjoyable, I think it is good for us, given that we are so often up front and leading things, just to sit back and be led in dharma study. One of the things that I found really helpful was Abhaya’s perspective on the dharma and the connections he made between this text, which is a Dzogchen text, and the Yogacara and Zen traditions.

When Abhaya left we had some time to each talk in depth. Mostly we talked about our lives at Tiratanaloka and some of the conflicts and pulls we feel to other lifestyles, to other people. Someone said it was as if we’d bought in all our dreams and fantasies, then we were all there more fully. I guess, speaking personally, I’m aware that in choosing to live this way I am choosing not to live in other ways and some of those other ways hold a lot of attraction! It’s left me feeling that everyone on the team is here because they really want to be, even though there are other lives they could imagine living.

Then we were on to business. We planned in a couple of extra retreats with bookings looking good for next year. Did some more planning for the coming year’s retreats. Tried to anticipate any long-term expenditure we might have coming up. Had a discussion on men coming to Tiratanaloka, we are not entirely closed, but with no plans to be open…that is a whole other story! We reviewed the way we work together and finished with a fascinating, emotive, discussion on decision-making!

The whole meeting seemed to be characterised by honest and open communication with nothing that couldn’t be said, including being able to talk about various dynamics that happen between us!

The Path of Abundance (or some things about money)

As the year draws to a close, I thought I might write a bit about money - perhaps prompted by looking at our end of year accounts! If you've received a copy of our 2007 programme, or looked at the booking section of the website, you might have noticed that for our 2007 retreats we've introduced a 3-level price structure - even more complicated than before, you might think! The reason for our change is that previously we had just two rates for each retreat - the standard rate, and a concessionary rate for students and those on a low income or unemployed. Our retreat costs have remained largely unchanged over the last couple of years, although financially we are not making a profit. What we have done for 2007 is to keep the standard and concessionary rates almost the same as for 2006, but add in a higher rate for those who feel able to pay more. Some retreat costs can seem a lot to pay up-front, but we do want to continue offering 2-week retreats as this gives us a chance to really explore themes in detail, while maintaining an spacious atmosphere.

Still on the subject of money, we've been thinking quite a lot about the bursary fund recently and you might have received a flier about this with the 2007 programme. The background to this fund is that it was originally set up to help a woman in Estonia, who was practising in fairly isolated circumstances, come to Tiratanaloka to prepare for ordination. After a time, we were able to start using the funds to help other women who would not otherwise have any way of coming here. The bursary is entirely funded by voluntary donations, mostly from women who have come here on retreat and, because have been running at a loss, we're unfortunately unable to fund retreat places from our own profits. When people ask for financial help to come on retreat, we sometimes explore options other than the bursary with them first, such as paying for the retreat in instalments or fundraising in their local sangha. This is simply because the amount of money in the bursary is limited, and may only pay for a handful of retreat places each year. But we really do want women to be able to come here on retreat, so please keep donating to the bursary if you can and asking for money from it if you need to!

(p.s. those are chocolate coins in the photo... I ate them afterwards)

Bhante's Visit by Vidyalila

The college of Public preceptors have just been to Tiratanaloka for one of their annual gatherings and Vajradarshini and I have been cooking for them. It was fun working together, with Candraprabha’s help before she flew off to the sunny Canaries. I have enjoyed the familiarity of our banter in the kitchen and the little quirky things that we tease each other about. Then quiet times just getting on with the task, asking each others opinions on important things like, “do you think that there are enough apples cooked for that apple betty pudding we are making”!

As part of the college meetings Bhante came to stay at Tiratanaloka. He decided to eat his meals with us in the community and spent an evening with us by the fire talking. He was only coming for one night but decided to stay two. It was such a pleasure to have Bhante visit us and when I said it was good to have him here, he said it was good to have a change and it was like being on holiday. We told him he had an open invitation to come and visit anytime and he said he might come in the spring.

Talking to Vajradarshini this morning we agreed that having Bhante visit Tiratanaloka was deeply significant and had had an effect that neither of us could quite say why or in what way. After all without Bhante there would be no Tiratanaloka. Its like he's in the fabric of the place. He is so fundamental to what we are doing here. In pujas, study, meditation, the refuge tree, and especially ordination, he is integral to those taking effect. He represents something so vital that has influenced my life, but also to so many of the women who come here. Many women comment that without Bhante they may well not have come across the Dharma and if they had, whether or not they would have made any sense of it for themselves without Bhante’s translation for our western minds.

One of the highlights for me about Bhante’s visit was the ordinariness of things like having him eat with us, seeing him strolling up and down the driveway, and taking him a cup of tea in the afternoon in one of my great aunts china tea cups. He is like a wise great uncle who comes to stay who has traveled the world, pioneered great changes, seen everything there is to see and in the latter part of his life quietly imparts wisdom from the armchair.

I took a few photos, which you can see here, a rather Russian flavour with the hat. He seemed very well and talked about his new book out next year about his teachers and others.

Vajradarshini on Ordination Training

Autumn is here and I’m thinking back to summer and the chairman’s meeting where I tried to sum up what training for ordination we are doing at Tiratanaloka, what’s changed and what’s the same. Padmavajra was doing the same thing on behalf of the team at Padmaloka.

So what was all that Talk of ‘Decentralisation’?
Have you noticed there’s been a lot of talk about ‘decentralisation’? As if there really was a ‘centralised’ process and that overnight the whole process would be ‘decentralised’.

Ordination training has never been completely centralised, whatever someone is doing to deepen their practice and understanding of the order, that is training, its happened wherever people have been practicing.

But something has changed.

Has Tiratanaloka’s Role Changed?
Training here had two aspects: One was the retreats we offered; they are specifically ‘training for ordination’ retreats. The other was that the ordination team here was the ‘recommending body’ the people who, having gathered all the information, would recommend someone for ordination to the public preceptors.

It is the second of these that have changed, the ordination team here are no longer ‘the recommending body’, so who is?

Where is my ‘Centre of Gravity’?
Each woman wanting to join the order will have their own ‘centre of gravity’; this is where and with whom their practice takes place and manifests. This can take as many different forms as there are women. It is from this ‘centre of gravity’, i.e. the woman herself, her friends in the order, her prospective private preceptor, where the recommendation will come. Of course someone’s ‘centre of gravity’ may be at Tiratanaloka, but that is often no longer the case.

So are all the Centres Running their Own Going for Refuge Retreats?
Some centres may be, particularly outside of the UK, but most UK centres won’t have the resources to do this, or won’t want to provide something that we are already able to provide. Most women will still be doing that aspect of their training with us. Though there are more and more valuable retreats being run throughout the movement and these too are an essential part of a broader part of training for ordination.


Why Come to Tiratanaloka?
We Exist
I’ve been feeling that there is something about the existence of Tiratanaloka that seems to have value, before we actually ‘do’ anything. We exist as a community of Dharmacharinis living, working, and practising together. We are here because we feel these are conducive conditions for us to practice in and we want to create those conditions for other women.
We Specialise
There are three aspects to what we do:
1. Run retreats which will help women to deepen their Going for Refuge.
2. All our retreats aim to bring about a deeper understanding of the Order.
3. We offer a personal ongoing connection and guidance for those who want it.

We have a New Framework of Retreats
We continue to cover all the essential themes while keeping our own creative edge with the freedom to explore them in ways that we consider current and appropriate. See our new programme and website for details.

The shrineroom

If you haven't been here for a while (or at all!) then you won't have seen our redecorated shrine room. Here's what Vidyalila wrote about the project to refurbish it......

When I was thinking about how I would describe the new shrineroom at Tiratanaloka, the words grace, light, contemporary, spacious and earthy came to mind. The neutral colours (from Farrow and Ball of course !) are interesting and richly significant enough to impact on the overall effect of simplicity. The carpet has been taken up and newly sanded light coloured floorboards now provide the smooth platform from which we sit to meditate, puja and chant. The wall lights and old spot lights were taken down and a simple string of spot lights fitted giving a soft warm light, highlighting the thangkas and paintings of Vajrayogini, Vajrasattva and Amitayus. A mala of floor up lighters give extra lighting to the shrine, where the Buddha is now raised high. The Buddha sits on a shrine of mature wood and slate found from a reclaimed materials yard. The wood is full of appealing marks of age and elemental intimacy which in itself is a rupa of beauty. Underfloor heating has been installed, which has meant that the radiators have gone creating an uncluttered atmosphere and giving more wall space for yoga. During a working retreat here in April, Sophia, Carol, Abie, Anna, Sujun and Ann joined some of our community, Candraprabha, Sridevi, Vajradarshini, Vajrasakhi and myself, to embark upon the decoration of our new shrineroom. After 3 days of polyfilla, heavy sanding and much dust, the walls and woodwork gleamed with the marks of readiness to be licked with paint. With ladders, loud sanders, varying size brushes, teas, kindness, some moments of poetry, and quiet concentrated work the shrineroom emerged into its new form. Each days work ended with us sitting on the plastic protected floor in the middle of the shrineroom surrounded by worn sandpaper, empty paint pots, and satisfied sighs of tiredness. We were not only doing the shrineroom on this work retreat, we were also relaying the path to the stupa, extending it to link up with the patio which was laid last summer, and painting the external woodwork of the conservatory but that’s another story!!

Life in the Office

Here's a little taste of what it's like working in the office at Tiratanaloka. I've just come back from a few days visiting my mum in Ireland so there is a bit to catch up on. Today I've been replying to a few phone messages, booking people on to some of our 2007 retreats, sending information out to women who have recently asked for ordination (78 so far this year!) and replying to lots of emails. It's amazing how quickly time passes. On a more personal note, I've been starting to think about the new year retreat on the Four Mind Turnings. There's a good bit about these reflections in Reginald Ray's book on Tibetan Buddhism 'Indestructible Truth'. Living at Tiratanaloka is such a mix of things - practical work, planning retreats and being on retreat. All have a very different rhythm to them and it's almost impossible to say what a typical week is like.

Hello from Tiratanaloka

Hello! Welcome to our blog! The team here will be using this to let you know what's going on at Tiratanaloka - news about the retreat centre, about our retreats and anything else we think might interest you. We're situated near Brecon, in South Wales, and run retreats for women who have asked for ordination into the Western Buddhist Order.