Cultivating positive emotion

Meeting life with joy and skillfulness

Watercolour of a rainbow figure meditating

Join Ratnavyuha and Vasudhara for this day retreat on cultivating positive emotion in the context of our overall system of practice at the centre. (Oh and yes, there's a typo in the heading, but if we change it now all newsletter links to this event will break!)

Before Enlightenment, the soon to be Buddha had been practicing a path of self-mortification to see if it would lead him to what he was looking for. But this proved to be a dead-end. Reflecting on this, he remembered a time from his childhood when we experienced a completely skillful and thoroughly enjoyable state of mind. He was sitting under a tree as the planting fields were starting to be tilled in the spring. On that day, he was contented and happy, carefree, filled with joy, and could find nothing unskilful nor out of alignment with reality.

And those reflections by the Buddha changed the course of history.

Based on those reflections, the Buddha dropped his self-mortification practices, accepted food from a generous person, and meditated on the rising and falling away of conditions from a perspective which included joy, happiness and skillful pleasures.

What he found was that these positive emotions allowed him to become more integrated, more concentrated. With joy and contentment, he was able to hold his reflections on the rising and falling away more lightly, less personally. His positivity was so refined and illuminating that normal worldly pleasures had no hold on him and normal worldly aversions and fears turned to flowers at his feet. Wow.

On this day retreat together, we'll recollect these events from the Buddha's life, assess our own relationship to joy and happiness, and share ways to refine and cultivate such positive emotions for ourselves more effectively.

Hope you choose to join us. Open to all who have attended our intro nights.

We'll provide a simple lunch. Please bring something to share for dessert.

When

18 May 2024  10:00am-5:00pm

Cost

Caring for each other's health

Before attending, please read our current Covid Guidelines. This is part of how we practice together.

Location

Image of The Auckland Buddhist Centre
The Auckland Buddhist Centre

45b Normanby Rd, Mt Eden

Led by

Portrait of Ratnavyuha
Ratnavyuha

I've been actively involved with the Triratna Buddhist community since 1992 while still at University. As with many other people, my personal journey…

Portrait of Vasudhara
Vasudhara

Vasudhara has been involved with the Triratna Buddhist community since 1999 and was ordained in 2014. She leads some of our Friday night pujas and is…

Bookings for this event are now closed