New Year Retreat 2024-2025: Meditation, Contemplation and Devotion

Year’s end, all
Corners of this
Floating world, swept
(Basho)

Over the years, the New Year retreat at Taraloka has felt special. The light is
lengthening and, deep within, the earth is quietly renewing itself. It is a natural time
for contemplation.

Together, we will meditate, be with the landscape and share devotional practice in the
presence of beautiful shrines. We will open to the depths of mindfulness and metta.
An important part of our practice will also be relaxing and simply being with our
experience. We thus begin to let go of our busy lives, together with the tension and
mental proliferation that take us away from how things truly are and from how we
more deeply are. This retreat is also an opportunity to reflect on the old year,
including moving on from what might be burdensome, and to open to appreciation,
gratitude and beauty.

We will gradually move into about six hours of varied practice each day and about
three and a half days of continuous silence. Of course, we will say goodbye to the old
year and welcome the new: particularly through an imaginative evening of ritual.
There will be the support of presentations, meditation reviews and guidance, the
inspiration of the Dharma …. and of a cheerful, companionable fire each evening.
This is surely one of the very best ways to begin the New Year.

Everywhere
the first bird of the year
has sung a valentine
tuned to the last
winter star.
(Kathleen Raine)