Approaches To Meditation Retreat

  “Approaches to Meditation” Weekend retreat, May 16 – 18, 2014 Dr. Hilary Rodrigues, Professor of Comparative Religion at the University of Lethbridge, has facilitated a weekend retreat once a year for the past six years at the Swanwick Centre/Krishnamurti Educational Centre of Canada.   This year the title of his workshop was “Approaches to Meditation”.   Hilary has a wide knowledge of the many traditions and practices of meditation as well as of Krishnamurti’s teachings on the subject, and he has a deep personal experience of the spiritual search.   His manner of presentation is at the same time very erudite and humorous,  profound and light.   The attendees expressed how much they enjoyed the weekend spent with Hilary and the other participants and the hope that he will return again. The retreat began on Friday night with a talk by Hilary entitled “Can Anyone Really Ever Meditate?”   Twenty-one people showed up for the event and the comments afterwards were to the effect that the talk was exceptionally clear and informative.  A number of meditative approaches were discussed, ending up with Krishnamurti’s “non-meditation” approach.   A lively discussion followed which went later than expected due to the eager participation of the group. The remainder of the weekend was attended by fifteen people, some from as far away as Hawaii and Texas, and began on Saturday morning with a short talk by Hilary on “Awakening/Transformation”, with a number of quotations from various sources to stimulate inquiry.   The talk was followed by a group dialogue.   After lunch and some time to walk in nature on the beautiful property there was another short talk entitled “Meditative Methods”, again with some quotes and an engaged group dialogue.   After a tea break there was a “Question and Answer” session with a free flowing dialogue.  Saturday evening included a talk on “Mindfulness and Choiceless Awareness of What Is”, followed by a group discussion which again went on rather late because of the high level of interest in the topic and the interchange. On Sunday morning, after more time to be outdoors in the lovely weather, Hilary gave a short talk on the question “Which method is best for transformation?”   The talk again led seamlessly into a group dialogue.   After lunch and free time a half hour video was shown of Krishnamurti speaking on meditation from the Real Revolution series of talks in Ojai, in 1966.   There was then time for a final dialogue and closing sharing.  There was a sense of having covered quite a lot of ground over the weekend and also that there was probably much more to explore and discover.  It was very refreshing for participants to spend time in such a conducive environment and it seemed that most were definitely intending to return.