Ratnasambhava Rocks...aka the cake retreat

A weekend of abundance beyond doubt...

Sangha members from Worthing, Tunbridge Wells, Southampton, Croydon and Brixton (Brixton: it's nice you know) shared our second weekend's worth of space and time in the generous abundance that is the Rivendell retreat centre. Within that elasticised, tardis-like space and time we were inspired by body scans and early morning Do-in sessions, by generously offered wisdom and shared experience, by poetry and silence. We received gifts including the blank notebooks of abundance, reminding us to notice, appreciate and share. We learned to aim for cessation of comparision, to Mind The Gap, to stop and wait, to allow. We were reminded that we are all unique but not really all that special, and to see that as a liberation. We celebrated ourselves and each other.

We also ate a lorra lorra cake.

Abundence. It rocks.

It was lovely to spend part of his birthday with Vidyakaya

And good, as it always is, to benefit from his wisdom and encouragement to move beyond the immediate, to stretch away from comparisions, to relax into the gap, while also minding it. (It was a bit of a novelty to be told to clench a pencil up our bums and draw circles on the floor but there you go, he's a bodywork kinda guy)

Padmachandra shared jewels of wisdom and of colour. It was wonderful to hear her own poem "marvellous" (inspired in part by Seamus Heaney's reflections on Clonmacnoise and the accidentally tethered ship) and the words of Pablo Neruda asking to be returned to being what (he has) not been

Returned me, oh sun, to my wild destiny,
rain of the ancient wood,
bringing me back to the aroma of swords that fall from the sky,
the solitary peace of pasture and rock,
the damp at the river-margins,
the smell of the larch tree,
the wind alive like a heart beating in the crowded restlessness of the towering araucaria.

Earth, give me back your pure gifts,
the towers of silence which rose from the solemnity of their roots.
I want to go back to being what I have not been,
and learn to go back from such deeps
that amongst all natural things I could live or not live;
it does not matter to be one stone more,
the dark stone, the pure stone which the river bears away.

Thank you Padmachandra for guiding us in appreciation of our inner jewels, for helping us to extend those outwards. Thanks also for your sharing of the notebooks of abundance, a practice to be cherished.

Amarapuspa, warm and lively as always, sharing all of that and more. How lucky we were to be guided by her opening pebbles of wisdom dropped into our contracted and sometimes weary hearts on that opening evening in the shrine room. Dropped pebbles whose ripples continued to extend throughout the weekend.

And who can forget the "wet bread" sky of the evocation of winter she so generously shared:

Horses by Pablo Neruda

From the window I saw the horses.

I was in Berlin, in winter. The light
was without light, the sky without sky.

The air white like wet bread.

And from my window a vacant arena,
bitten by the teeth of winter.

Suddenly, led by a man,
ten horses stepped out into the mist.

Hardly had they surged forth, like a flame,
than to my eyes they filled the whole world,
empty till then. Perfect, ablaze,
they were like ten gods with pure white hoofs,
with manes like a dream of salt.

Their rumps were worlds and oranges.

Their colour was honey, amber, fire.

Their necks were towers
cut from the stone of pride,
and behind their transparent eyes
energy raged, like a prisoner.

And there, in the silence, in the middle
of the day, of the dark, slovenly winter,
the intense horses were blood
and rhythm, the animating treasure of life.

I looked, I looked and was reborn: without knowing it,
there, was the fountain, the dance of gold, the sky,
the fire that revived in beauty.

I have forgotten that dark Berlin winter.

I will not forget the light of the horses.”

May we never forget the warmth and beauty of those words(especially in the depths of wet bread winter when we need to remember that warmth and light will some day come again), and all that Amarapuspa had to offer us.

Amarapuspa later spotted in the library sporting a wizard of oz apron...courtesy of Helena the novice cook's helper who cooked up an absolute storm.

Our wonderful cooks, to whom we were enormously grateful, for food and the beauty and good spirit with which they offered it (although Jill did ladle out rude names along with the food [and for no apparant reason] at one point ...tut tut... possible merit deduction offence no?)

(wonder what she is calling poor Nick and Judy - they look shocked)

no really though, well done gals!

mmmmmmmmm.....that Ratnasambhava Soup!

( I think they are making up... though it looks serious)

"The Boss", whom nobody (not even Amarapuspa) dared defy.
Julia. Organiser beyond compare. And actually not bossy at all.
(Photos don't ALWAYS tell the truth)