Retreats

York Urban Retreat - The Four Reminders: Thoughts That Turn the Mind Towards the Dharma

Sunday 22 March – Sunday 29 March

Unlike a residential retreat an Urban Retreat takes place amongst the normal day-to-day conditions of your life. In this case it lasts for a week and begins and ends with a Day Retreat at the Centre, meditation/reflection each morning Monday to Friday a themed Practice Night, Thursday Daytime Class and Saturday Morning Meditation. A whole week of exploring the Four Reminders in our lives with an opportunity for one-to-one practice reviews during the week on Zoom with Taravandana.

Booking: Both Day Retreats must be booked (see link below) but you may just turn up for all the other activities.

Adhisthana September 2026

Friday 25 September – Friday 2 October

Join Shakyapada and Mahasraddha for a great week at Adhisthana as part of the big Summer Sanghas gathering. Adhisthana is our our main retreat centre in Hereford. Find out more at Adhisthana.org

In 1976, Sangharakshita gave a series of public talks, collectively entitled Buddhism for Today and Tomorrow.

Under four headings – A Method of Personal Development, A Vision of Human Existence, A Nucleus of a New Society, and A Blueprint for a New World – he shared his vision of what the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order had to offer.

From the first of these talks, Sangharakshita tells us:

Perhaps it would be best to assume that nobody really knows anything about Buddhism in the West, and that perhaps we do have to make … a completely fresh start, to take, as it were, a completely new look at Buddhism. And this, we may say, is what the FWBO was founded for in 1967, and what it tries to do. It tries to take a completely new look. It tries to make a completely fresh start… It exists, we may say, to cut the Buddha’s teaching down to its absolute essentials and to make those essentials relevant to people’s lives.

This is an opportunity to experience a full retreat together with your friends from the sangha. We will stay together for groups during the retreat but we will also have an opportunity to meet lots of people