Sari started to practice Insight meditation in 2005 after years of other meditative practices. Sari has practised meditation on long retreats at Gaia House, in Finland and in monasteries in Thailand. She completed her Insight Meditation teacher training in 2020 guided by her close teachers Rob Burbea, Martine Batchelor and Caroline Jones. Sari has been sharing Dharma for many years in Nirodha, the Finnish Insight Meditation community, earlier as a Community Dharma Leader trainee and graduate. Previously, Sari taught secular mindfulness (MBSR) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) and she was a pioneer in teaching mindfulness in schools in Finland. Prior to teaching meditation Sari worked for non-governmental organisations working for global justice, human rights and environmental sustainability. She has written two books about mindfulness, kindness and compassion practices for children. Nowadays she is committed to serving Dharma.
My focus in teaching is to provide the support that students need to turn their life to the dharma, to truth, and to find ways to come out of their pain and suffering. The retreat experience is an invaluable aid to this exploration; however, what matters more is how one integrates this under- standing into everyday life.
I care that students see through the illusory wall between formal meditation and their daily life. Then, what remains is a meditative attitude to all that occurs.
Vipassana practice helps us to become respectful and caring towards ourselves and others. This generates the conditions of mind and heart that allow us to awaken to the truth of who we are, rather than believing in our limited assumptions. As we see the impersonal nature of our own mind, we then experience a deep engagement with life that allows for a complete transformation of the heart. When we know this deeply, we can no longer unconsciously engage in actions that will lead to suffering and the ongoing destruction of our planet.
As a teacher, I am accessible and able to meet people at an intimate level. I am interested in how the language that we use can show where we are holding on. I look to the concepts about reality that people believe in as the key that unlocks the door to liberating insight. People can easily discount their experiences and forget that they hold the seeds to liberation, that the wisdom is already within them. As people speak what is in their hearts, affirmation brings about the confidence needed to take the next step, which can often seem confusing and daunting as one walks into the unknown territory of the mind.
The most compelling part of my practice right now comes in the form of my writing. For a long time, I've focused my teaching and writing on lovingkindness. Now as I look more deeply into lovingkindness, I find that it actually rests on another foundation, the expression of faith.
Faith is the topic I am exploring most in teaching and writing. Today there is a tremendous upsurge of interest in a new kind of faith, based on a practice where people can experience a direct spirituality, one without rigid dogma or compulsory belief in a specific cosmology. This is a spirituality that rests on personal transformation.
Vipassana allows us to take a method of mind training and craft a way of life that is more compassionate, more ethical and more powerful than our unawakened lives. The Buddha's teachings give us an immediate experience of what we can do to change. Faith in the teachings means we align ourselves with a vision of our greatest possibilities. This is the heart of the practice.
Sumedha (Hannah Bagshaw) became interested in spiritual practice in her teens and, after studying Comparative Religion at university, practiced as a nun in the Forest Tradition of Ajahn Chah, based in the UK and for a short time in the US. After disrobing in 2010 she co-founded Ekuthuleni retreat place in France with Noon Baldwin, bringing together ecology, simple living and meditation. She is passionate about how we can reconnect with our deeper being through learning from nature itself - and how we bring that depth back into the world, in how we live and care about each other and the planet.
Suvaco is a former Buddhist monk and a passionate advocate for embodying life in all of its forms. He lives in the South West United Kingdom where he works as a psychotherapist and Tai Qi teacher.
Thanissara, from London, was a nun for 12 years in the tradition of Ajahn Chah and has taught internationally for over 30 years. She is co-founder of Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat, South Africa, Sacred Mountain Sangha, California, and Chattanooga Insight, Tennessee. She has an MA in Mindfulness Psychotherapy Practice from the Karuna Institute UK and is co-author of Listening to the Heart, A Contemplative Guide to Engaged Buddhism, author of Time To Stand Up, An Engaged Buddhist Manifesto for Our Earth, and several books of poetry. She is a member of the Teacher Council at Spirit Rock and co-guiding teacher of Sacred Mountain Sangha.
