Retreat
CTCT HEART WISH
The heart wish and vision of Chag Tong Chen Tong Centre, is to work towards providing easily accessible facilities and conducive environment,proficient Teachers and Retreat leaders for practioners' from all over the world to enjoy and benefit from Retreat, following on from all our many hours, many years listening to and reading the teachings, it is in Retreat, either group or in solitude, where we experience the heart taste ...that sooner or later guides us to Enlightenment.
“Retreat is important because it involves retreating from ignorance, from the dissatisfied mind of attachment and from the self-cherishing thought. These are the fundamental forces from which one must retreat; this is the true meaning of meditation.”
- Kyabje Lama Zopa Rinpoche
By supporting and attending the Retreat Program that CTCT offers you will directly be assisting us to actualize our heart wish.
Thank you so very much in advance.
THE IMPORTANCE OF RETREAT
Advice from Lama Zopa Rinpoche
“Students who are not interested in retreat and practice should realize if they want something for their heart, if they love themselves and want to do something to affect their heart, and fill their hearts with great satisfaction, deep joy, and meaning, then this comes from retreat and practice”.
Lama Zopa Rinpoche
What is the importance of doing retreat? It is not simply to be quiet, to have a break from one’s family. Instead, there are very crucial reasons, very urgent reasons. One simple reason is happiness. The peace and happiness of parents, for example, depend upon their children having affection and compassion towards them. And the children’s peace and happiness depend upon their parents’ affection and compassion. The same is true for couples, partners, teachers and students etc: each member’s peace, happiness and success depend upon the compassion and kindness of the other person. And on a larger scale, the relationship between the leader of a country and its population.
Have you got a Retreat story to share?
Have you a Retreat experience to share ~ a story waiting to be written ~ to inspire, to inform those interested in the practice and benefit of Retreat - short or long term - help build a Community of Retreat practitioners by your example ~ thank you in advance. Please forward your story to
A stream close by to Lauwdo Gompa Nepal ~Nestling in the jade green Himalayan Mountains, amidst the juniper trees, mountain peaks and floating clouds is the most beautiful hermitage of Lawudo .. read more https://www.lawudo.com/index.html
A LONGING TO CHANGE
Ven. René Feusi talked to Ven. Robina Courtin at Kopan Monastery in Nepal in 1996 about his two-and-a half year retreat at Osel Ling in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of Spain.
An article online at Mandala https://www.mandalamagazine.org/archives/older/mandala-issues-for-1996/september/meditation-a-longing-to-change/
Tell us, why you went into retreat, René.
I think at some point when one studies Dharma one wants the experience to be deeper, one wants some taste of it. That’s the main reason I decided to do a longer retreat. And when the idea came about, Lama Zopa Rinpoche said, “That’s a very good idea, but first you do the nine preliminary practices.” I had the opportunity to do a three-year retreat with a Kargyu group of people, but Rinpoche said it’s more beneficial to do the retreat alone. I was 22 years old at the time; I was ready to do a three-year retreat in a group, but I didn’t feel ready to do it alone.
BENEFITS OF LAM RIM RETREAT by Lama Zopa Rinpoche
http://www.fpmt.org/teachers/zopa/advice/pdf/Benefits_Retreat_Lam-Rim.pdf
“Retreat is important because it involves retreating from ignorance, from the dissatisfied mind of attachment and from the self-cherishing thought. These are the fundamental forces from which one must retreat; this is the true meaning of meditation.”
- Lama Zopa Rinpoche
