Get Ready for the Green Tara Retreat from Afar

January 6-March 28, 2021

Join a community of meditators around the world to take part in the annual Sravasti Abbey Retreat from Afar

Retreat from Afar coincides with the Abbey’s annual winter meditation retreat.While the monastics are in retreat, you can join us and several hundred meditators all over the world, including about 200 practitioners in US prisons.

This year, we focus on the Green Tara practice and Lamrim Meditation.

Tara represents the enlightened activity of all the Buddhas and is especially efficacious for eliminating obstacles and bringing success.

Doing the Tara practice is an excellent way to develop compassion and forgiveness towards yourself and others. The practice also helps us to purify a great amount of destructive karmic seeds on our mind stream and to create a huge amount of merit which enriches our mind and is the cause of happiness.

Watch the Abbey community recite Tara’s mantra together 108 times.

How does it work?

To join in the 2021 Retreat from Afar, you commit to do at least one practice session of the Tara sadhana every day, including one mala (108 recitations) of Tara’s mantra.

Here is the practice text we will use.

There is no charge. Your voluntary offering generates merit for you and supports the Abbey to continue offer the Dharma freely worldwide.

Want to help your fellow retreatants in prison?

Retreat material are emailed to you each week, but there’s no email in prison. Hard copy practice packets are snail-mailed to the prison practitoners at a cost of about $2,650. You can support their retreat and make merit by making an offering toward the prison Dharma mailings. Go to the Donate page. Under the drop down called “My donation is for …” choose  “Prison Dharma Fund.” You can add more notes in the Comments box.

To sign up:

Retreat Preparation & Resources

Many conditions must come together for you to be able to do retreat. You create these causes and conditions by preparing internally as well as externally for the retreat experience.

Set a specific time each day when you will do your practice. At the Abbey, we will do five, 90-minute sessions daily, but for folks at home, one session of about an hour a day is fine.

Tara Resources

We’ll rely on Ven. Thubten Chodron’s book: How to Free Your Mind Tara the Liberator.

Download the Green Tara sadhana. It’s also found in the red Pearl of Wisdom Book II.

Here are some videos to get you started. In these various teachings, Ven. Thubten Chodron, Ven. Sangy Khadro, and Abbey community members give general retreat advice and an array of teachings relating to Tara, including talks on emptiness, Tara’s omniscient mind, refuge, and much more. 

Lamrim Resources

Learning Lamrim—the stage of the path to awakening (gradual path)—is another important preparation. 

In each meditation session you will do Lamrim meditation. This is a powerful way to gain insight into the Buddha’s teachings. Please read some lamrim books and think about and meditate on their contents.

Thought-training Resources

Become familiar with the thought-training teachings, so you can work with issues as they come up in retreat:

As you gain familiarity with all these practices—Tara Meditation, the lamrim topics, and thought-training teachings—your understanding will deepen as your readiness for retreat grows.

Practice with a Community

The Sravasti Abbey Lay Community Practice Group meets every morning at 6:30 a.m. (MST). volunteer leaders guide you  through all the preliminary practices, the Tara meditation, and a lam rim meditation. Please join when you can.
 
An abbey monastic leads the group on Saturday mornings. This will continue through the winter retreat.
 
The group also meets on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday evenings at 7:00 p.m. (MST).
 
The Zoom link for all practices is the same and is below:
 

Kathy Elton is your host. Write her directly for info and the passcode.

Join Zoom Meeting

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