Category Archives: Team

Help Wanted!

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If you want a new challenge, an experience of right livelihood and community, or if you have wanted to be part of the Buddhafield team, get in touch now.

We need people throughout the spring and summer to be part of the team that makes Buddhafield happen — building the spaces, creating the community, running the events and cooking the food. If you have any experience that’s great; if not we can train you in first aid, cooking, building structures and more at our Team Retreat April 24th to 29th 2015.

For more information email volunteer@buddhafield.com

Interview: Ratnadeva

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Ratnadeva was ordained by Kamalashila at Guhyaloka retreat centre, Spain, in the summer of 2013 .

So, the 2014 season is upon us. How’s it going so far?
Well, we’ve got a full retreats programme, ten events, and we’ve also got the exciting Triratna International Retreat. This year we’re collaborating with Adhisthana for the first time. It’ll be fun trying out a new site, having got used to working with Taraloka, which was a delight. It’s also going to be a delight working with Adhisthana because there’s a sense that we’re very much at the centre of Triratna when we collaborate on this event. For us it’s an opportunity to get better known throughout the movement. It’s kind of a shop window for Buddhafield.

ratnadevaFor me, one of the big flavours of the coming year is the word “change”. We’ve got a lot changing within Buddhafield in terms of people involved and we are in the process of reorganising, so as to make the best use of the limited resources. I suppose it’s a challenge and an exciting opportunity this coming year in terms of reorganising, finding a structure and a way of working that means we can put the events on that we have planned and people don’t get worn out. People don’t have to overdo it. And that probably means trying to involve the circles of people that are interested in Buddhafield and have been helping us over the years … I think we need to reach out more. That’s one of the main themes of the coming year, find ways to reach out; tell people that we need them and provide the opportunities for the people out there to get involved. I have this sense, this image in my head, of concentric circles around Buddhafield, of different levels of involvement, it may be hundreds, it may be over a thousand of people that, at some point in the last few years have been involved, been inspired by their involvement with Buddhafield. And that’s a resource, their interest in helping us, their interest in getting involved is what we need to tap into.

What is it that we need to do to keep people involved and motivated?
I think what we put on is inspiring in itself. We don’t really need to go outside of that because it’s already quite versatile. It’s versatile from the point of view of the events themselves; you look at the range we have in any given year. We don’t have a Yatra this year, but for several years now we’ve had a walking retreat; such a different experience to, say, the Total Immersion where we’ve had experienced meditators going deeper over four weeks, in silence. And then a very different event is of course the Family Friendly Village Retreat for up to 260 people, a third of them children, experiencing retreat-like conditions on a beautiful piece of land.

But having said that, there are alternative projects that might also inspire people, a bit leftfield. For example, this year we’re looking at the possibility of a co-housing project. Now that is perhaps an inspiring project that might attract people who otherwise might not try a camping retreat. But essentially I think what we put on is a very attractive package. The concept of getting close to nature, spending time, if you like, with yourself in a beautiful environment, being inspired by the Buddha’s teachings and having time out from your normal routine … experiencing oneself anew. I think that is in itself an incredibly inspiring prospect. And in fact I think that’s the core; for me that’s what inspired me to be involved with Buddhafield in the first place — an organisation that puts that sort of event on. I enjoy all the other events, like the Festival, but as far as I’m concerned they’re in service to putting on retreats. I come form a background where Im trying to get more immersed in nature, because I see that as a key expression of my own spiritual life. And I think it can be a key theme within the Buddhist tradition, breaking down that sense of separateness from the natural world.

It’s very related to your involvement with Druid culture?
Yes. I see it as quite seamless in fact. I think that immersing in nature can teach so much about impermanence. If you walk out on a bed of autumn leaf litter, and if you’re really aware when you’re doing that, that can be a lesson in impermanence. Better than any books about impermanence. If you’re involved with setting up a forest garden, or really into connecting with trees, even if its on a mystical level, that can teach us so much about interconnectedness, which is not that far away from non-self. The book of nature is so central to Buddhist teaching. For a lot of Buddhists who live in urban or sub-urban environments it’s not so much the case and I do think that’s a problem. And that is what Buddhafield is offering par excellence: offering people in those sorts of situations to escape and find a connection with nature that they don’t normally get, even if it’s only for a week.

Total Immersion 2014: The Teaching Team

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Vajrapriya, Maitridevi and Kamalashila have all worked together before on this retreat in different guises, and it promises to be a lively and substantial team. Introductions to the team below, but there’s  more about the retreat, it’s theme — The Foundations of Mindfulness — and booking on the main Buddhafield website.

Vajrapriya was ordained in 2002 and has lived in Cambridge ever since, but last year he went on retreat for a whole year. He’s been on a number of Total Immersion retreats, finds them elemental, and this time is looking forward to co-leading. That elemental quality suits his meditation style — embodied, direct and non-competitive. He has a very active mind and has to work to incorporate its energy without over-identifying with it.

Talk by Vajrapriya on Vimeo: Living a Meaningful Life

Vajrapriya takes the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path – rebranding it as the Meaningful Eightfold Path – and considers how it’s eight areas contribute to a meaningful life, and how following it eventually eliminates the whole problem of meaninglessness. Second of three talks in the series “Reality and what to do about it”, given at the Cambridge Buddhist Centre in November 2010.

Maitridevi, who co-led last year’s Total Immersion, is presently a homeless spiritual adventurer, having until recently been Finance Director at Windhorse:Evolution in Cambridge. She has a love of meditating in nature, yoga, swimming in rivers and hiding in forests, and her passion is exploring how to engage the imagination in her practice. She responds to exemplification far more than theory.

Talk by Maitridevi on YouTube: The Tender Gravity of Kindness

How to find depth in a superficial world — a talk about love and longing and the way that they pull us deeper into life. Given at Buddhafield Festival 2013 in the Dharma Parlour.

Kamalashila has been leading the Total Immersion retreat every other year. He’s in London nowadays, though for some years he lived as part of the Buddhafield collective in Devon. He enjoys more than anything else communicating his experience of Buddhism, meditation and mindfulness — something he’s done over many years. He has founded Dharma centres in London and Wales, written a best selling book on meditation, and lived four years in Wales as a hermit.

Talk by Kamalashila on YouTube: Mind full of passion

“Shouldn’t you be passionate in all you do? Probably, but how to distinguish between that and self-centred craving? A look at the issue of what we want.” Given at the Buddhafield Festival 2011 in the Dharma Parlour.

Devapriya

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Recently you may have read that Devapriya has been very ill and in hospital. Having made a remarkable recovery, he was hoping to return home, but we are profoundly sad to have to say that he hasn’t managed to do so and that it now looks as though his time is very short. Please bear him in mind with metta and, if you feel moved to, chant the Tara Mantra for him. (You can find out about more about Tara on the Wildmind website if you aren’t familiar with her, her mantra, or why chanting it might be significant.)

For those of you that don’t know Devapriya, he has made an inestimable contribution to Buddhafield, especially to our Family Friendly Retreat. He has struggled with physical ill-health for many years. Undaunted by his physical limitations and supported by many friends, he has shown the remarkable capacity to participate in Buddhafield activities.

At Dhiramati’s suggestion, Lokabandhu has put together an album of ‘Rejoicing’ for Devapriya. The intention was to print it and present it to him as a book and we hope he still may be able to see it. It’s very clear from all the contributions that came in, over just a few days, that he deeply touched the hearts of many.

The featured photograph was taken at Buddhafield Festival 2012. The weather was mixed and the ground difficult in places, but partly due to Devapriya’s unfailing determination and partly the willing help of the many people that valued him, he participated as best he could. He was carried around site on this makeshift litter. (Thanks to Dharmacharini Osadhi for the use of the photograph.)

Update: Devapriya died very peacefully on 1 November 2012.  His old friends Annie Munro, Rehana, Carl Davies, Kamalashila, Satyajit and Rosie, plus his sister Akasacitta, were with him.