The Journey and The Guide
A practical course in Enlightenment
Eight Tuesdays from 4 Oct | 7.15–9.30pm (in person) 8.15-9.30 (online) | In Person or Online
How can we make the most of our life? The most important question that we face can also be the hardest to answer.
Join in for a ‘practical course in Enlightenment’, where we'll be stepping onto a journey of discovery. Mixing poetry, myth and down-to-earth instruction, we will explore how we can follow in the Buddha's foot-steps, day by day, week by week, so we can reach our own full potential. The course is based on the book by Maitreyabandhu, a prize-winning poet and teacher at the London Buddhist Centre since 1990.
The in-person sessions include guided meditations at the start of each session at the LBC, interactive teaching, weekly group discussions and a hard-copy of the book.
Zoom sessions feature interactive teaching, weekly group discussion and a digital copy of the book.
All participants will be sent weekly follow-up emails with pre-recorded guided meditations, a session summary and home practice for the week.
Led by Danayutta and Prajnaghosa.
Eight Tuesdays, starting Tue 4 Oct, 7.15 –9.30pm (in person) or 8.15–9.30pm (online). In person: £120 / £80 / £50. Online: £80 / £50 / £40.
Course outline
As well as meeting online each week for teaching and discussion, the course includes guided meditations and other online resources for you to use at home. This is what we will be covering week by week:
Week 1: Setting up the conditions for metta to arise.
We will explore what loving kindness really is (and what it isn’t!), and the positive habits we can create for it to arise in our lives.
Week 2: Start from where you are
We will look at ways of engaging with the practice and explore how to relate to ourselves in with openness, clarity and empathy.
Week 3: Being a friend and awakening joy
We will look at how to bring every-day joy into our lives and how we can respond to our friends with curiosity and appreciation.
Week 4: The heart of the practice and the relative stranger
Most people we encounter are relative strangers to us – in this week we will explore how to meet the world with confidence, letting go off fear, anxiety and judgement.
Week 5: Cultivating courage and dealing with difficult feelings
How we respond to pain and discomfort can either lead us to further suffering or to courage and compassion. In this week we will discover the moments of awareness where we can make a conscious choice for freedom.
Week 6: The metta revolution
Practice of loving-kindness can radically transform our own lives and the world around us in very practical ways. In the final week we will look at the wisdom and poetry contained in the last stage of the practice.
“I've always found the Metta Bhavana harder to engage with than the Mindfulness of Breathing but doing this course was a way of really delving into the richness of the practice and I quickly started to feel the effects, on and off the cushion. I loved the grounding effect of sharing our insights and experience within groups each week. I'm looking forward to doing the course again.”
Colette - Previous course participant
“I did the course in the midst of Covid and all the lockdowns. I was in a difficult place and struggling with lots of unwanted feelings. The course provided me with lots of practical meditative tools for navigating painful states and the course leaders' way of teaching and the wisdom they shared also provided lots of inspiration for what I could become if I practiced metta regularly.
Although I still experience anger and other painful emotions, I now have a solid metta practice to lean on and that provides me with a beacon of light in difficult times.”
Astrid - Previous course participant
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If financial difficulties prevent you from doing the course, please contact bookings@lbc.org.uk to discuss some options.
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