Retreat i Nymindegab - stilhed og compassion i maj 2023.
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Chodens write up for retreatet:

Buddha Nature and Trauma
The great mystics of the past discovered a place of freedom and peace in the ordinary awareness of the everyday mind. It is like a jewel in the mud of all our emotional issues and struggles. Different religious traditions describe this in different ways. In Buddhism it is called Buddha Nature. This essential nature is whole and free and untainted by any of these issues and struggles. Touching this place in ourselves is liberating.

But it is only part of the journey. Each of us still carries wounds and traumas that have come from the way we grew up and the lives we have lived. They need their own special attention. In the modern west so many of us carry deep trauma and wounding. It often lives within us in a way that is hard to describe. It is like a wound that never heals and affects everything we do in life and the relationships we have. More and more these days there is an awareness of trauma as a huge factor in the lives of so many people.

Trauma can be described as a shock to our system from which we never fully recovered or a deep wound within the psyche that never completely heals. It is understood these days that trauma is no longer just the domain of medical professionals. What is needed is a multi-disciplinary approach. It is one and the same time a medical issue, a psychological issue and a deeply spiritual issue.

What we will explore in this retreat is how we work on both levels – at the ultimate level we are whole and free, whilst at the relative level we might feel wounded and broken. Both these realities need to be respected. Also both are connected. Touching the peace of Buddha Nature (or Awareness) is a point of refuge and security for the part of us that feels broken, while our wounding is the doorway to the part of us that is unbroken and free.

Choden will explore how we can combine these two perspectives in a powerful and transformative way. He will offer practices related to the cultivation of Awareness, as well as Compassion practices for bringing kindness and healing to the trauma we all carry.