One-day online retreat: Opening to the unconditional love and wisdom of our innate awakened nature

Join our one-day online retreat: 

Opening to the unconditional love and wisdom of our innate awakened nature

ONLINE: Saturday, midday to 7pm, 13 March 2027

Overview

The programme of training introduced in this retreat, adapted from Tibetan Buddhism with input from modern psychology, is called Sustainable Compassion Training. From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, our innate awakened nature, often referred to as ‘Buddha nature’, is the basic space of our being undivided from tremendous capacities of awareness, warmth, unconditional love, compassion, and wisdom.

These awakened capacities are always available below our surface consciousness, in the ground of our experience, but hidden by our habits of self-clinging thought and reaction.

In this retreat, we will explore several ways derived from Tibetan Buddhism to become increasingly receptive and transparent to qualities of this innate nature – through sense experience, through relational fields of loving connection, and by settling directly into the intrinsic openness, luminosity, and unconditional warmth of our pre-conceptual awareness. These qualities help us start to unify with their source in the ground of our experience, our Buddha nature. From that depth, we can learn to sense others in their depth, and to hold them in the same unconditional, compassionate qualities.

This contemplative process also empowers our ability to discern the empty, constructed nature of all thoughts and reactions that ordinarily impede care and compassion, freeing the mind for further access to innate awakening capacities that are prior to such constructions.

In this day-long retreat, we will adapt this pattern of practice from Tibetan Buddhism, with some assistance from modern psychology, to make it accessible both for Buddhist practitioners and for people of all backgrounds and faiths who have previous contemplative experience and seek an accessible way to cultivate unconditional love and wisdom.

This retreat will include short talks that introduce guided meditations, Q&A, and discussion.

Teacher: John Makransky, PhD

John Makransky, PhD, has been a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, senior academic advisor and lecturer for the Centre of Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Nepal, a contemplative fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, past president of the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies, and developer of the Sustainable Compassion Training model for accessing innate capacities of compassion and awareness (www.sustainablecompassion.org). John’s scholarly writings have focused on connections between practices of devotion, compassion and non-dual wisdom in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices to meet contemporary minds, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning. In 2000, John was ordained a Lama, a meditation teacher of innate compassion and wisdom, within the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Since 2000, John has taught meditations of innate compassion and wisdom, adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, for modern Buddhists, those in other spiritual traditions, and for people in caring roles and professions who seek an accessible way to access an unconditional power of love, compassion and wisdom.

Who’s it for?

The retreat is designed for people with some experience of mindfulness and/or compassion practice who want to deepen their practice in a supportive, safe environment. As a minimum, you should have a regular practice and should have done an eight-week mindfulness-based or compassion-based course and/or have attended at least a one-day, silent retreat.

Please note, this is not a clinical intervention and it is not advisable to do this day in the heat of a crisis, when it would be important to access your GP or your designated mental health clinician

Prerequisites:

Before the retreat, please read John’s book, How Compassion Works, or as much of it as possible (Shambhala 2025, co-authored with Paul Condon): https://www.shambhala.com/how-compassion-works.html?srsltid=AfmBOookwfHod3z48jke5aPxdBWlagOzQumRp6bu4PZFezIq1h-Levrn.

Alternatively, read “Sustainable Compassion Training” by Condon and Makransky, Frontiers in Psychology, 2020: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7518715/pdf/fpsyg-11-02249.pdf.

Booking

The cost for the day is £75. We also offer a choice of two other options:

£100 – Supporting rate. You can support other participants to attend who are on a low income.

£30 – Supported rate, if you are on a low income and can’t afford the general admission price.

As part of our equity, diversity and inclusion policy, we also have a limited number of donation tickets only, available on a first-come, first-served basis. These are for people who are facing acute financial hardship and who would otherwise not be able to attend. To know more about a donation option, please email spft.smc@nhs.net.

We are striving to make our courses accessible for all. If you have additional needs or learning styles, please let us know so we can support you.

For enquiries: spft.smc@nhs.uk