Contemplative Community

Śarana: an Interspiritual Community of Contemplatives

Welcome to our online Gatherings in 2024!

These quarterly gatherings are for everyone! Come and make heartfelt connections, practise together with others of different spiritual traditions, listen to what is alive for us as a group, and seed an emerging compassionate contemplative community…!

Dates in 2024:

• Tuesday June 11th - UK: 6pm-7:30pm / Italy 7pm-8:30pm

• Saturday September 21 - UK: 10.00am-11.30am / Italy: 11.00am-12.30pm

• Saturday December 21 - UK: 10.00am-11.30am / Italy: 11.00am-12.30pm

An Interspiritual Path for Contemplatives of the Heart; an emergent Compassionate Community

Contemplation is an initiatory process of entering the mystery without saddlebags or sandals (Coelho 1997, 84). It is unpredictable in nature and involves going down, not up, as Pema Chodron so beautifully describes the journey of the ‘warrior- bodhisattva’(Chodron 2002, 1). It involves welcoming  times of silence into our daily lives and accessing wells of silence in our very being.

We travel down into our bodies, connecting with all the layers of experience held in our cells, the sufferings as well as the joys. We allow the fissures of our hearts to breathe so that we can include more and more of the anxiety and insecurity we all share and which to ‘cope’ we often fail to give time or attention to. As our hearts open to embrace, there is the possibility of connecting with a dimension of being which is experienced as presence, and as ‘ coming home’. There is no ‘within’ or ‘without’ in this experience, just a knowing, a presence, a capacity to be in a fuller, freer way. The eastern term for this dissolving of self-other experiencing  is ‘non-dual’.

Many traditions refer to this mysterious presence as the divine, dwelling in and all around us. We begin to recognise our ‘original face’, as both Zen Buddhist and Eastern Orthodox traditions describe our deepest nature. This dimension is often described in apophatic language (not this, not that), although some spiritual elders of various spiritual traditions refer to it in terms of the source or ground of our being. Another metaphorical  way to refer to it is our ‘non- separate heart’. Pema Chodron refers to this awakening and recognition as experiencing ‘ the love that does not die’.

Of course taking a moment to breathe in the underground station, grabbing a moment alone before a meeting and trying to stay awake for a few moments at the end of a busy day with family doesn’t necessarily feel much like this! But such moments are key to our contemplative journey. They are building our inner resources to become present and embodied; we are learning to nourish our inner life, our ‘being nature’, and we are practising orienting to heart, - continuously. This is part of the profound journey of contemplative prayer: coming to rest in the body and in the heart of our being. St.Paul describes this practice as ‘praying ceaselessly’ (1 Thess. 5: 17-19). 

We start our initiatory contemplative journey from wherever we each are in our lives. The path is one of gradual realization, in the sense of making real through embodied knowing. We recognise and naturally become in-formed by  the mystery in and of our being that we share with all beings. It ‘presences’ us, and this enables us to become more embodied, more fully present and aware as we engage with relationships and the challenges of daily living. In this ongoing context of our life’s journey, contemplation is an activity as well as a ‘resting in presence’ practice. As we immerse ourselves in silence, as we ‘abide in God’s rest’, as Abhishiktananda described it (1967), we re-source ourselves and this brings fresh energy, a new confidence to engage with life. 

Contemplative activism refers to the process through which this radically simple yet challenging contemplative practice transforms us and radiates out through our bodies, words and actions. It has the potential to affect those we are in relationship with, our communities, and even those far away as we include them in the silence of our hearts. Contemplation is an exchange: we take in to nourish our being and this affects our experience, our bodily cells and what we give out in ‘exchange’ as we interact with those around us. It is a learning for us all, as Thich Nhat Hanh points out, to choose what we take in and digest’ with care, so that our engagement with the world is at the very least non-harming for other beings…

(Extract, notes for Hunt Overzee, “Śarana: a Spiritual Formation Project” in New Horizons of Indian Christian Living: a Festschrift in honour of Prof.Dr. Vadakethala Francis Vineeth CMI, Ed. Saju Chackalackal (Bengaluru/Coimbatore: Vidyavanam Publications/Preshitha Communications, 2009))

If you are interested in joining this emerging Path of Contemplatives as it evolves in the coming months please book a place here.