retreat coming up at Dhanakosa

in october i will be leading a retreat at dhanakosa called inner peace, outer peace. follow the link by clicking on the header above to get to their web-page with blurb. there are still places if anyone is interested. i have just written something for their newsletter - based on some questions nayaka asked me. thought i's reproduce it here as it is not just about the retreat but says a bit more about my work and my inspiration in joanna macy's work. for more on joanna's work follow the link at the bottom of my blog.


Q. When and how did you first become interested in Joanna Macys work.

In the early 1980s I read articles by Joanna dealing with what she called Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age. She later published a book with the same name which I found very moving. I think it was in 1982 or 83 that she came to London and I went to hear her speak at St James' church, Piccadilly in London. I was knocked out by the combination of dharma and social awareness and a call to social action. Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend any of her workshops at that time as I was teaching a lot and attending a lot of retreats. Over the years I would read things written by her and feel a strong resonance. She carried on with the work of despair and empowerment, moving on in more recent years to looking at these in relation to the environmental crises which the world is facing at this point in our history.

In 2000 someone gave me her autobiography as a birthday present and that rekindled my interest in meeting Joanna and working with her. I looked on her website and discovered that she was doing a workshop in Barcelona a few weeks later. As I was then living in Valencia it seemed too good a chance to miss so I attended that workshop and found it really brought elements of my life together. I also made a very good connection with her and have since done quite a few more workshops, including a two week intensive workshop in California. The workshops are called The Work that Reconnects and have had a strong influence on my own teaching. The reconnection is with ourselves, our feelings and our responses to the world.

Q. What particularly about her work interests you.

I find the approach of acknowledging our response to the suffering we see around us in the world and then using the energy unlocked by that acknowledgment very empowering. We often block out our fear, our anger and our despair because we fear that we will be unable to function if we open up to the suffering of the world. My own deeply held belief and experience is that the contrary is true. I found this over the many years I worked with people facing their own death or the death of a loved one. For more than 20 years I led workshops called Opening the Heart: living with loss and bereavement and hundreds of people - Buddhist and non-Buddhist - attended these over the years. We found that really contacting, admitting and sharing our feelings, fears and learnings with others released energy. Most people found that while exploring our responses to death and loss we would learn to live more fully and more passionately.

In the same way, I think Joanna's work helps people to release feelings that they have found difficult to handle and that there is a huge amount of power and energy to be tapped into. Over the last 5 years or so, my work with Joanna and my increasing exploration into environmental and social issues with friends and fellow dharma practitioners have helped me go more deeply into the seeming contradiction between spiritual practice and acting in the world.

And strangely, in all these retreats and workshops I have led and participated in, even dealing with these "heavy" topics, I have found incredible joy and laughter. Maybe that comes in part from a sense of solidarity - of knowing that we are not alone in our sense of horror.

Q. Could you say a little bit about what sort of things you do these retreats, and maybe talk about how this helps people

A lot depends on who attends the retreat and what topics are "live" for them in the moment. There is a structure that we follow but the team will be fairly flexible in exactly what that means. We will meditate, there will be input in the form of discussions and talks but the main thing will be experiential work We will explore the issues that we feel in conflict about and find ways of nurturing inner peace while living in a world so devoid of outer peace. Over the last few years I have been facilitating these retreats and workshops with a team of others who are also engaged in practicing what is sometimes called "engaged Buddhism", using the structure of The Work that Reconnects . We have worked in the UK, continental Europe, the USA and Mexico. Literally hundreds of people have done these retreats and workshops and the feedback has been overwhelming. People say that they contact a depth of care and motivation that they had long ago lost. The strength of the connections felt between people doing this work together has also been a truly inspiring development and I have been told that participating in one of these workshop / retreat gatherings has allowed people to see how their Buddhism can help them be effective in the world and yet they see also how engaging with the world helps deepen their practice of Dharma in quite unexpected ways.

Q. in what ways do you feel that Dharma practice can really make a positive impact on the world

Many of the problems facing the world today -- poverty, environmental issues, global conflict -- stem, in my opinion, from the poisons that Buddhism has always named. They are manifestations of greed, hatred and ignorance on a scale that has never been seen before. Their effect is horrific in that no part of the planet is left untouched. More than ever before it is urgent that we learn that our actions have consequences. Dharma gives us a framework to make sense of that and practices that help us deal with it to the extent that we can. The values of care, solidarity, simplicity found, for example, in buddhist ethics can offer ways of living in the complexity of the 21st century. Meditation practice can help us to develop clarity and compassion, to not look away from the suffering of the world without becoming completely overwhelmed.

Q. How has your work in this area influenced your own Dharma practice
I have always been deeply moved and motivated by the ideal of the Boddhisattva Warrior - the dharma practitioner who practices renunciation of the ego and self cherishing so that s/he can work for the well-being of the world. I feel deeply grateful to Sangharakshita for founding an Order with that ideal at its heart. I also feel great gratitude to Joanna Macy for providing a very clear, effective framework in which to work with that ideal. And I feel blessed in having friends with whom I can develop this work and a wonderful place like Dhanakosa where my friends and I can share this work with others.