Photograph by kamisoka
What is Śarana?
“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.”
Śarana is an open community of people from different spiritual traditions. Many of us want to ground our lives and connect with each other through contemplative practice as a crucial aspect of open-heartedly engaging in the world to relieve suffering, in however small a way.
We may or may not already be involved in a spiritual or religious tradition, and in addition many of us span different paths historically or concurrently. Whatever our spiritual orientation we can perhaps gain insights and support from those with different worldviews. Everyone who feels aligned to this inclusive way of being a ‘contemplative in the world’ is welcome!
Śarana welcomes diversity and chooses communities of difference, including of spirituality or religion, sex, disability, gender identity, race, culture and age.
The door is open for you to come to any online or in person courses, retreats and gatherings. No commitment is needed other than to your own journey of opening your heart to include others. These offerings are all made in the context of valuing communities of difference; between us there will always be a rich diversity of experience and understandings to share.
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Śarana invites our coming together in these fluid and open ways to co-create communities of responsiveness to the various global and local contexts and challenges we are experiencing in any moment.
In addition, everyone is welcome to come together online several times a year to meet each other across groups, courses and retreats with the intention of simply connecting, listening and being inspired. Let’s see what emerges through our interconnectedness…!
Deepening into connection: compassionate contemplative activism can flow from our shared intentionality. There are, as it were, different elements of contemplative practice, whether during any one day or through the phases of our lives: we take an inward breath of orienting to our intrinsic awareness, pause to experience the ensuing deepening and opening, and let go through an outflow of gestures and actions of love. These are all key aspects of a natural rhythm of transformative practice
Participation in each other’s being and receiving others into our own can be made more possible through cultivating certain heart qualities which we all share and which through practising together as well as individually, can strengthen our commitment to live and work for each other’s deepest wellbeing:
By letting the flower of compassion
blossom in the soil of love
And tending it with the pure water of equanimity
in the cool shade of joyfulness…
– Longchenpa, Now that I am come to Die
Our journeys of opening the heart are inter-personal; and as we grow we can feel an inner strength or confidence to trust and let things be as they are. We can experience a feeling of ‘shelteredness’ and peace as Longchenpa describes, and so our hearts can simply rest in awareness, allowing ourselves to immerse ourselves in these immeasurably great ‘catalysts of being’.
In Sanskrit the word śarana (pronounced sharana) means refuge, and in many of the numerous Judeo-Christian and Indo-Tibetan spiritual traditions, this word has great significance. In most contexts it refers to placing ourselves wholly in the presence of that which we know through experience, or understand to be, the ultimate, the sacred. Whether the theological or psychological framework in question identifies this as in some sense ‘Thou’, or as our own primordial nature (and the two are not necessarily mutually exclusive), this surrendering to simply being, to presence, is an ongoing small ritual of return. We depart from wholeness, transition into a never-ending plethora of tasks, feelings and thoughts, and have this choice again and again to return. We ‘take’ refuge; we surrender at the level of heart to the source of our being, we come home.
Anne Overzee
I have brought Śarana into being partly as a way of gathering together the different offerings I make here in the U.K. and in Italy.
I also have a deeper intention of enabling those drawn to connect in the way I outlined above to simply come together and potentially evolve into something I cannot clearly envision but which has the intention of being ‘cells’ of contemplatives living in the world. ‘We cannot do great things but small things with great love’ said Mother Teresa. Compassionate communities are springing up across the world, due in part to the pioneering work of Prof. Allan Kellehear, who advocates community involvement in integrated care for people. The principles have been adopted in healthcare, especially in end of life care and even by cities. The underlying intention of practising compassionate care for each other lies at the heart of the practice of contemplatives living in the world. Perhaps an Interspiritual community of contemplatives belongs to this ‘compassionate community’ movement?
When I lived in India in the 1970’s I was deeply influenced by the ashram movement, in particular it’s inclusivity of structure: there is a core community of practice; and then people can come and stay, participate, practice together – and move on if they choose to do so. To me this is a refreshingly open way of being part of spiritual community, and seva (service) is included as an integral part of participating.
My own practice is rooted in Vajrayana Buddhism and my background is in Non-conformist and Catholic Christianity. I am continually enriched by the mystical and heart traditions of both these and other spiritual traditions I have encountered; and and seek to ground myself through focusing on embodied experience. Elemental and earth based rituals are central to how I work.
At present Śarana is simply some small offerings I am making in the UK and Italy, with the support of a group of Śarana Friends. However this is just an initial stage, and I have a feeling that something may evolve from our contemplative gatherings and connectedness, and I look forward to a different future shape for Śarana!