Taking a closer look at Buddhism
Seeding a Buddhafield
The seeds of Buddhafield were planted more than 30 years ago by a group of people with a vision to teach meditation in the Healing Fields at the Glastonbury Festival.
They funded this radical venture by selling mala beads and sponsored activities such as all night meditations. They were supported by the goodwill and generosity of many people who loaned their canvases and their land.
Buddhafield has grown into a web of community, land management, charitable work and ethical businesses. We offer retreats, a drug and alcohol-free festival, family-friendly activities, a vegan cafe, and a socially engaged camp.
Buddhafield’s guiding principles
Over 2500 years ago, in northern India, a wandering seeker found a grove of trees and sat in meditation under a beautiful Peepal tree. He was determined to find a solution to the dissatisfaction and lack of meaning he experienced and witnessed around him.
The Buddha's awakening vision of a profoundly interconnected universe on a full moon, May night continues to flow into the modern world. This vision is at the core of Buddhafield's principles.
Buddhafield provides conditions where our habitual defences can soften, and we experience a depth within us. Like the Buddha, as our awareness deepens, we begin to see more clearly how the flow of life within and around us is deeply intertwined. We feel ourselves and the world come alive.
“... to feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy of your surroundings.”
David Whyte, Everything is Waiting for You
Why a Buddhafield?
From a practical perspective, it describes people practising Buddhism in a field together. However, there is a deeper and profound meaning.
The Buddha described how a ‘buddha-field’ is a perfect place for practice. Sangharakshita (the founder of the Triratna Buddhist Community) in his 1979 talk ‘Building the Buddhaland’ describes a ‘buddha-field’ as having the qualities of “...friendliness, compassion, joy and equanimity…”
In essence, a ‘buddha-field’ is a place where the best of human qualities are realised, expressed and embodied.
The simplicity of living outdoors, under canvas, whatever the weather, can throw up challenges for us too. As we turn towards what is painful in ourselves, and in relationships with others, deeper connections are made, and friendships are forged.
We discover rich seams of inner, jewel-like qualities such as resilience, kindness, authenticity, bravery, empathy, and generosity, to name but a few. And we see those qualities in others too.
“Let me practice a patience bold enough to hold every weather, trusting the elements, the beauty of rain, all its shades of grey.
I want whatever's real to be enough..”
Linda France, Dreaming the Real
Practice in Action
In the 21st century, we are grappling with living in a time of harmful systemic issues, detached from our place within life, hardening the edges of the individual, with a deepening crisis of meaning.
Yet what the Buddha realised sitting under the Bodhi tree on that full moon night is just as relevant today, with an ever-increasing sense of distance, disconnection, and painful polarisation.
As a society, we seem to be losing our capacity to share a common purpose, with our ancestral rituals and rites of passage fading in memory, creating more and more distance between us and the world we inhabit, including the creatures and the land to which they belong.
Buddhafield's expression of the Dharma (the Buddha's teachings) is a powerful antidote to our individual and collective sense of dissatisfaction and disconnection.
What does Buddhafield do?
We sing, we love, we forgive, we care, we give, we celebrate, we listen, we practice, we dance, we work, we offer, we meditate, we create, we play, we chop, we build, we chant, we cook, we eat, we mend, we share, we cry, we are vulnerable, we realise, we offer, we study, we walk barefoot, we give, and we embody.....
Buddhafield’s activities enable us to express the intimacy of care and connection with ourselves, others, and the land, which can hold our deepest longings.
We take part in a Buddhafield retreat to live simply on the land, under canvas, whatever the weather, where we meditate, engage in rituals, and reconnect with a resilience within us, so we can turn towards our lives with a refreshed perspective.
We resource ourselves by attending the Buddhafield Festival and return with love and joy.
We participate in our family-friendly Village retreats and experience a loving, multi-generational community.
We attend our socially engaged camp, Green Earth Awakening and experience a much-longed-for intimacy by expressing our love and grief for the world through engaging in workshops, talks, rituals, and living together under autumn skies.
We tread the ancient pathways on Yatras, our walking meditation retreat, in silence together and find we can hear what it is we most truly value.
Perhaps what is most satisfying is to take all that we have experienced and learnt, returning back to our ecosystems - to our children, parents, lovers, and loved ones, colleagues, friends, neighbour-hoods, and beyond.
Images: Sagaravajra, James Ratchford and Keaton Brignall McDougall