Beauty and Insight: A retreat on perception
Venue - The Guesthouse, Southern Sweden
“Look. This is your world! You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of colour. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate – look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look – look further.”
This retreat is an invitation to look closely at how experience takes shape, how we see, feel, and make meaning of the world around us. Drawing on the Buddhist teaching of the Five Skandhas, the five threads (sensation, feeling, perception, mental habit, and awareness) that weave together to form what we call "experience," we'll explore perception not as a fixed or neutral window onto reality, but as an ongoing, interactive process.
One way Buddhism speaks of insight is as "seeing things as they really are," or yathābhūtadassana, in Pali. But this doesn't mean seeing the world without any interpretation at all, as if that were even possible. Instead, it invites us to notice how perception actually works: as a living, dynamic relationship between ourselves and the world. We shape the world, just as it shapes us.
When we begin to see the extent to which we are creating our own experience, we can begin to choose, consciously and creatively, to shape a life of beauty and meaning.
The arts offer fresh windows onto this process. Alongside Dharma teachings and meditation, we'll explore what art, film, poetry, and music can reveal about the nature of perception. To support this exploration, there will be long periods of silence each day, and two or three days of complete silence in the middle of the week.
Who's this retreat for?
It's for those of you who've been practising meditation and Dharma for a while and want to bring the teachings into relationship with the arts. It's equally for artists drawn to explore the connections between Dharma and their own creative practice.
This isn't an introductory retreat, so some basic familiarity with core Dharma concepts, like the 4 Noble Truths and the 3 lakshanas, for example, will help you get the most from the week. That said, you don't need to know a great deal about Buddhism to feel at home here. What matters more is that you're comfortable meditating without being led, and open to silence, for a good part of each day, and for a couple of whole days in the middle of the retreat.
What will a day on retreat look like?
A typical day:
7.30 Open practice
9.00 Qigong, intro to the day's theme, and led meditation
11.00 The Big Brunch
12.30–2.30 Dharma teaching and meditation
Free time
4.00–5.00 Work period
5.30 Three-course dinner
7.30 Film, music, poetry
8.45 Closing ritual
The day starts with open practice: time to design your own practice, whether that's meditation, walking meditation, writing, or bodywork. We then move into our collective programme with qigong. Over the week you'll learn a flow, a sequence of movements to take home with you. From there we move into led meditation, with an introduction to the day's theme.
Then it's time for the big brunch: home-baked bread, eggs, cheese, kimchi, fruit, nuts, yogurt and kefir. Each day looks a little different, depending on what's in season and what we've been inspired to make.
Next comes the main teaching session. Each day we explore one of the skandhas, form, feeling, perception, volition, consciousness, not only through the Buddha's teaching but through how different artists have worked with them too. There's time within the session for meditation and discussion.
After some free time, we come together for a work period: the small jobs that keep the community running, plus care of the garden. Cooking, though, is taken care of for you.
In the evening we gather for a leisurely three-course dinner, followed by an evening of art, poetry, music, film, image, closing with a short ritual.
What we hope you'll get from this retreat
Nourishment for your body, heart and mind
We hope you'll leave nourished, in body, heart and mind. At the heart of the week is the Dharma, qigong and meditation: time to take your understanding deeper, learn new ways into practice, and discover qigong, meditation in movement. Around that, you'll find good food, beautiful countryside, the sauna to relax in, and the new friendships that develop when a small group shares a week like this together.
A fresh and creative look at the teachings
At Red Ladder Studio, we're all about bringing the teachings alive, so they feel fresh and exciting again. It's easy for practices we once loved to lose their fascination over time, but with a little help, it's possible to fall back in love with them. We hope you'll leave with a renewed love for the Dharma, and real excitement about how to weave it into your everyday life.
Practical ways to take the teachings back into your everyday life
Going on retreat, we often feel we're leaving our lives behind. But if practice is going to make a real difference, we need to bring our lives into the retreat, not escape from them. Many aspects of our retreats are rooted in the everyday: physical exercise, good food, garden work, conversation. You're encouraged to work with the challenges of your life at home here with us, to gain perspective, and to go back resourced.