On Kinnaras Love and Light
Name: On Kinnaras, Love and Light
Date: 18 - 21 July 2025
Number of Participants: Minimum 6 participants and up to 12
Duration: days
Location: Abiding Heart Centre, Castle Douglas, Scotland
Fee: £450*
Teachers: Dr Meyrav Mor, Mr Sudharshan Suwal
* This fee does not include meals or room and board.
This course is also available in Abiding Heart's Centre in Nepal on 1 - 4 October 2024. For more information, click here.
Description
In this retreat we explore relationships, self-transformation, love and compassion through biography work, storytelling, poetry, painting, meditation, contemplation, and being in nature.
The retreat interweaves painting a Kinnara using Paubha art and exploring relationships in our own biography (life story). Meditation, contemplative practices, poetry and storytelling are interwoven throughout the retreat. We go out to nature to be nourished and present.
In Buddhism, Kinnaras are fairies who protect the Buddha's teachings. In some schools of Tibetan Buddhism the kinnara symbolises enlightened activity. There are four types of enlightened activities, peaceful, enriching, magnetising and subjugating. We will contemplate on how such activities can nurture and heal relationships together with awareness and mindfulness, and loving kindness and compassion meditation practices.
A Kinnara is an archetype or a representation of ideal love. They have a human upper body and a swan lower body. They are the archetype of true love, “the lover and beloved ever-embracing.” Ultimately, it is about becoming whole again within ourselves. The Kinnaras also are divine artists who depend on the gods. They reside on the Ten-Jewel Mountain and sometimes in the heavens, where they play music, sing and recite poetry for the gods.
Paubha painting is an ancient Newari Buddhist painting style originating within the Kathmandu community. It has its origin in Indian arts and has travelled to Nepal many centuries ago together with the spread of Buddhism.
The retreat is peppered with wonderful stories about Kinnaras from the Jataka tales and other stories about relationships, compassion, forgiveness and becoming whole again.
