spring 2012 INSIGHT MEDITATION IN THE BUDDHIST TRADITION news Contents Regular Articles Welcome pg 2 A word from our Trustees pg 4 Sangha News pg 9 Coordinator news and reflection pg 10 Teacher’s Corner pg 15 Focus on Retreats pg 17 UK One Day Retreat Information pg 20 UK Sitting Groups pg 22 Features in this edition Waking Up In (Our Own) Time pg 5 by Rob Burbea to get us thinking and to challenge our conventional thinking. but few get to know them so intimately as she has done; it is Instant Communication pg 12 Director’s piece... I tend to harbour a comfortable notion of compassion as a delightful to hear some of the inside story, especially when by Martine Batchelor pleasant feeling of goodwill, but the searing honesty which Now in an unnaturally warm late March I feel excited at written in such a poetic way. Insight Meditation and Rob advocates would not be so easy to live with. The the prospect of the long, dreamy, hot summer days ahead. This newsletter is the first one to be taken under the Mindfulness-based Approaches pg 14 intellectual beliefs and values in my head are in conflict with Coming out of winter always brings a relief, heralded at the wing of Charlotte Johnston, our new Communications by Christina Feldman the course of my daily life, with assumptions which I hold front of Gaia House by the patches of daffodils and around Manager. Very many thanks to Sarah Abdy for her years about how I should relate to people or how I should behave in Your feedback please! pg 16 the back of the building by the delicious smell of the wild of hard editorial work, during which this small publication garlic growing in dense, shaded clumps. I have a strong society. What do I do when ideas which hold out the hope by Charlotte Johnston has come a long way. With the intention of harnessing feeling of being revived, that there is more to look forward of a better world prejudice the easy relationships which make the considerable expertise available to Gaia House, A Secular Buddhist pg 18 to once again. my world feel peaceful? Charlotte is aided by an Editorial Group consisting of by Stephen Batchelor Rob is giving us a difficult message: although we can all I enjoy this time of the year and the resurgence of life. But two teachers (Stephen Batchelor and John Peacock), make sense of ideas in the Dharma, living in a way fully true in Rob Burbea’s article in this newsletter, James Gustav Speth a trustee (Sarah Hamilton), and by any measure last of all, is quoted: “we, I fear, are living a dream. We need to be to the Dharma is a different matter altogether. The Dharma, Credits according to this ruthless exposition, undermines us, presents me. reminded of the nightmare ahead.” In his striking piece Rob Editor: Andy Power asks us what it means to wake up from the dream. He points us with complications and contradictions where we search The 2013 programme is already being put together now, Photography: Julian Sutton & Vibeke Dahl out the anomaly that pursuing a compassionate approach to desperately for clarity and straightforwardness. Truth appears and it seems timely to pass the message on that there life must consider future generations, yet that very consideration to be an elusive notion, maybe even a spurious one. In the will be an extended shutdown of six weeks in January- Design & Print: Kingfisher Print and Design Ltd face of such difficulty do we bow our heads and leave it for using inks from sustainable will put us in a direct – and potentially very uncompassionate- February 2013. A couple of retreats will unfortunately and renewable sources, looking – collision course with our contemporaries and even others to sort out, or do we look into the depths of seeming be lost because of this, while others will be re-scheduled, the paper is 100 per cent post-consumer waste. ourselves. I am forced to ask how much I am living a dream: impossibility and join the collective search for a way to but we hope to accomplish a full overhaul of the internal reconcile this into our lives and our future? It is also chlorine-free and how much of my own self-satisfied value system is nothing heating equipment throughout the house over that period. FSC-accredited more than vaporous nice intentions? Suddenly my enthusiasm The deepest truth that I need to come back to when I get With a hoped-for end result of a much less troublesome, (www.fsc-uk.org). is compromised, my sense of who I am feels undermined; lost in such labyrinthine complexities is the grounding, simple All by-products of the more efficient and more effective heating infrastructure production and printing my passing springtime enjoyment seems like a cheap refuge. presence of that springtime beauty in the garden, and the to complement our woodchip boiler and solar panels, processes are recycled. Rob’s uncompromising message is not an easy one to take pleasure it creates. we think that the sacrifice will be worthwhile. on board. Talking of which, Emma describes inspiringly the pleasure she It’s not easy because such strong, appealing ideas are has derived from working in the garden for the last couple of Andy Power fraught with difficulty. It is brave to expose these thoughts, years later in this issue. So many people enjoy our gardens, Director CBP0003490305124259 2 gaia house news | spring 2012 +44 (0) 1626 333613 www.gaiahouse.co.uk 3 A word from Waking Up our Trustees In (Our Own) Time Writing this gave me an opportunity to reflect on Rob Burbea my first year as a Trustee, both personally and in terms of what has been happening at Gaia House. Recently there have been changes amongst the Trustee Board with the departure at the end of 2011 of Douglas What does it mean to wake up today, in the midst of this modern life? Stoddart and Rob Sully. Thanks are due to both of them for the generosity with which they gave of their individual skills, expertise and time over the past years. We are If ‘waking up’ has something to do with the way we meet life, what is our pleased to welcome two new trustees, Pete Mallard and sense of what an ‘awakened’ (or at least, a ‘more awakened’) meeting Justin Andrews. Both may be already known to some with life might involve? What do we imagine it might look like? And in our readers as Pete manages The Barn Retreat at Sharpham The Trustee Board, like the Boards of many charities with and Justin has been a co-ordinator at Gaia House. a strong ethos, is faced with the need to make decisions notion of ‘Meeting Life’, what exactly do we mean when we say ‘Life’? Greater numbers of yogis from an ever wider range of that accord with Gaia House’s Ethical Guidelines whilst at the same time ensuring that we comply with backgrounds have been coming to Gaia House and For modern ‘Life’ (however we construe it) now inevitably Though often conceived of as an ‘environmental’ issue, legal frameworks and satisfy the Charity Commisioners’ our capacity this year is being increased by off-site includes an awareness of a whole range of uncomfortable anthropogenic global warming is also probably the retreats at Seale-Hayne campus near Newton Abbot. requirements for good practice. The intention to maintain but undeniable facts about itself, about our collective biggest Human Rights issue the world has ever faced. For This, together with the intention to build on outreach this balance, work closely with the Teacher Council and situation and how we shape it through our choices and we know, almost with certainty, a stark truth: as a result make decisions through consensus can be challenging at activities, has necessitated some staff restructuring. actions. At times of course it can feel tempting to try to times. It’s good to be able to acknowledge the progress of global climate destabilisation, alongside the wholesale We wish Charlotte Johnston all the best in the new role of avoid this awareness and the questions and emotions it we have all made recently, in addition to outreach devastation to other species, many millions, or even billions Communications Manager. might bring up for us. To live wakefully and authentically, and Gaia House @ Seale-Hayne. Financial stability of (mostly poor) human beings will be confronted with On a personal note I have come to deeply appreciate however, we have to endeavour instead to somehow and a buoyant Retreat Support Fund has enabled us practically unavoidable death and suffering by starvation, just how many people, (staff, co-ordinators, volunteers, broaden the range and reach of our hearts and our to introduce lower rates for young people. Our new water shortage, loss of land and displacement through teachers, trustees and yogis) contribute in different ways questioning, and with it the compass of what the Dharma website is now up and running well. Turning on the new droughts and flooding, increased disease, extreme to what Gaia House has to offer. I’ve discovered more means today. biomass boiler has created a warmer environment for all weather events and doubtless brutal regional conflicts about the value of not being attached to my view of (even some comments about the house being too hot!) Gaia House or my opinion of what should happen. We live together on a planet of now more than seven fuelled by resource scarcities.