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Active Hope - Practices For Difficult TimesTeacher: Tsunma TsondruCost: 2 days accommodation + R350 surchargeDates:
Hope does not sit on the threadbare couch clutching a lotto ticket, passively waiting for good luck. Hope wields an axe, actively breaking down the door in a crisis. We can’t escape that Earth is in crisis. It’s also ever-more evident that we feel this crisis within ourselves as personal crisis. There is creeping hopelessness, fatalism, anxiety, denial, and numbness - a disengagement from the natural world which sustains us. The inner crisis even has a name now: eco-anxiety. To hear the daily news is to hear the myriad ways in which humanity is sensing and expressing the eco-anxiety.How to respond to these crises? Can we better understand the eco-anxiety of these times? How should we live in these times? Within a framing of Active Hope, the weekend will be spent in group and solo practices from The Work That Reconnects, moving through the spiral of gratefulness, grief, and transformation that will unlock your unexpected resilience and creative power. Hope is waking up to the beauty of life, on whose behalf we can act. As Joanna Macy always says: I am so grateful to be alive at this time of great upheaval, because we are made precisely for these times! Mostly we will practise in silence. As much as possible we will practise outdoors, in contact with nature. The retreat will be held in an atmosphere of silence and introspection.
View teacher detailsTsunma Tsondru is a nun ordained by Tai Situ Rinpoche in the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She came across Buddhism through Louis van Loon at the BRC. After working as a lawyer and environmental scientist, she left for Spain for a traditional Kagyu three-and-a-half-year retreat, followed by a second retreat of four years. Since returning to Cape Town, she has served on the Board of the Southern African Faith Communities Environmental Institute, a multi-faith NGO, and is now its Executive Director. She spent a 10-day intensive retreat with Joanna Macy, engaging with Macy’s “Work That Connects”, which she has offered in Cape Town. Her particular interest is eco philosophy and the role that spirituality and ethics play in transforming our economic and social systems in protection of the Earth. -
Beginner's Mind, Quiet Mind: Meditation Instruction And Practice For Meaningful Daily LivingTeacher: Tsunma TsondruCost: 5 days accommodation + R350 surchargeDates:It is important for us to take time out from the incessant demands and fast pace of daily life. The BRC gives us a space to step off the wheel and the time to come home to the quiet, strong refuge which lies at our centre. Cultivating the natural state of peace and ease that lies there reveals our true nature - which enables us to not only help ourselves, but to help the world of which we are part. Then daily living becomes meaningful. This mid-week retreat will bring out our Beginner’s Mind through the practice of meditation. The time will be silent, quiet, and slow. There will be meditation instruction and guidance, formal sitting, and time for walking, writing, or staring into the distance. The retreat is suitable for those with or without meditation experience and will be held in an atmosphere of introspection.View teacher detailsTsunma Tsondru is a nun ordained by Tai Situ Rinpoche in the Karma Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. She came across Buddhism through Louis van Loon at the BRC. After working as a lawyer and environmental scientist, she left for Spain for a traditional Kagyu three-and-a-half-year retreat, followed by a second retreat of four years. Since returning to Cape Town, she has served on the Board of the Southern African Faith Communities Environmental Institute, a multi-faith NGO, and is now its Executive Director. She spent a 10-day intensive retreat with Joanna Macy, engaging with Macy’s “Work That Connects”, which she has offered in Cape Town. Her particular interest is eco philosophy and the role that spirituality and ethics play in transforming our economic and social systems in protection of the Earth.