Live a Buddhist Life
The LBC exists to help you tread the path from where you are now to Enlightenment itself. The challenge is to live that out. Here’s a rough sketch of the path we offer:
Intensify your practice
You might be experiencing the limitations of a meditation habit designed just to help life run more smoothly. You might feel the need for something more substantial, fulfilling and thoroughgoing. The LBC provides intensive meditation retreats, weekly Buddhist study groups, single-sex environments, and an intensified vision of friendship – all in the context of a worshipful attitude to life.
What we recommend:
Set up a daily meditation practice or lengthen it
We'd recommend coming along regularly to one of our weekly meditation classes to build momentum and refresh your inspiration.
To support your home meditation practice, we've created Buddhamind, a meditation app tailored to help you go deeper with the practices we teach at the LBC.
Go on a longer retreat
We run retreats year-round. We would especially recommend the 9-day Spring and Summer Retreats or the 10-day Winter Retreat.
And if you're up for a challenge, our intensive meditation retreats are an ideal way to take your practice to the next level.
To see our fill list of retreats and book now, visit our Retreats page
Join a study group
These tend to run weekly with a single-sex group of the same people, discussing key Buddhist texts and how they relate to our lives. For more on this, contact the Mitra Convenors (details below).
Take part in a new kind of community
We are communal creatures, so the only way to practise Buddhism effectively is to do so in a community of people who share our vision of life – a mutually supportive environment that fosters the best in us. The vision of the LBC is to create a new kind of community, one that goes beyond all differences, helping us to live out our potential.
What we recommend:
Join a class team and help out
If there's a class that you're regularly attending, and you'd like to help out, just speak to one of the Order Members leading the class.
Alternatively, you can visit our 'Volunteering' page to find out about the different ways you can help out at the centre.
Meet up with Order Members - just ask!
We all need a bit of guidance on our path. Order Members have made Buddhism their whole life, and are here to support others. So if you're wanting to get to know them, don't be shy!
Make a commitment
You might realise you want to make meaning and value central to your life. You might decide you’re a Buddhist, and this is marked by becoming a mitra (friend) at the LBC: a ceremony in which you publicly declare your deepening involvement in the Buddha’s teaching. You might even want to ask for ordination into the Triratna Buddhist Order, dedicating your life to Buddhism.
What we recommend:
Meet the Mitra Convenors to discuss your next steps
Go on an intensive retreat
With longer periods of silence and a single-sex environment, our intensive retreats are a chance to deepen your engagement with your own mind, and with the London Buddhist Centre community. See our intensive retreats on our Retreats page here.
Explore Triratna’s unique approach to Buddhism, elucidated by Sangharakshita
The London Buddhist Centre is part of a wider Buddhist community, called Triratna, founded by Sangharakshita. Find out more about the community here.
Mitra Convenors
At the LBC we value single-sex activities as a support for one’s deepening spiritual practice and we have men’s and women’s Mitra Convenors whose role it is to orientate new people into centre activities. If you identify as trans or non-binary then you're very welcome here - do get in touch and we can work out in discussion the best way of participating in the centre for you. We want to engage with everyone on an individual basis, in the spirit of friendship, and for everyone to feel at home at the London Buddhist Centre.
