This talk introduces a way of participating in a silent retreat that leaves room for all aspects of our life. Martin discusses some orientating reflections that run throughout the retreat, beginning with the ongoing questioning of our experience as we settle more deeply into it; 'what is happening now?'

We naturally want to reject, ignore, deny, our unpleasant experience. In this talk Martin both encourages us and shows how to turn our attention "fearwards", daring to look deeply and to see clearly through our defenses and distractions, to freedom from fear.

This talk explores maintaining an open and inquiring attitude to all that arises. We are reminded that there is no wrong experience, no feeling we shouldn't have; that all experience is worthy of our caring, curious, contactful attention.

We come to dharma practice with a longing for freedom. This talk explores both the longing, in its importance for awakening the heart and nourishing the spiritual journey, and the Freedom of Being - our capacity to fully and freely inhabit and respond to life, to which this longing points.

We get pulled away from ourselves in different ways. This talk explores both the mechanisms of how we get disconnected from being present, and how come those mechanisms exert such a powerful pull on our consciousness. The exploration encourages a careful and caring investigation of those obstacles, as the way to understand, and liberate them.

We struggle with all the things we have to DO. We struggle with DOING our spiritual practice. What is the struggle? What is the Doing that we invest in and feel to be hard work? This talk explores both the doing that we find ourselves stuck in, and the natural unfolding of experience that we can recognize, allowing us the freedom of being where we can be at rest and ease, even in the midst of busy lives and much apparent doing.

Opening talk for a retreat that explores our reactive mind, recognising and liberating our habitual compulsion, negativity and fear, pointing towards the freedom of being that is our True Nature.

Opening talk for a retreat that explores our reactive mind, recognising and liberating our habitual compulsion, negativity and fear, pointing towards the freedom of being that is our True Nature.

We all seek happiness, but what are we actually seeking? This talk explores a deepening understanding of the conditions for happiness, and the struggle inherent in our searching for it. Martin points to our deepenng capacity for recognizing and resting with what the Buddha referred to as 'a path of happiness, leading to the highest happiness, which is peace'.

This talk explores three essential qualities of awareness: the precision and brightness of moment-to-moment connection, the investigation of experience through Curiousity, and the allowing of things to unfold with Care. These aspects, which in free translation correspond with the qualities of Samatha, Vipassana and Metta are shown to be both qualities we can cultivate, and the natural orientation of the truly meditative mind.