Kadampa Meditation Centre Kent Meetup Group

A DAY RETREAT

This retreat offers a gentle but powerful way to transform how we relate to challenges in everyday life—improving not only our peace of mind, but the quality of our relationships as a whole.

So often in our relationships with others we experience moments of hurt, rejection, or not feeling heard. In these situations it’s easy for frustration to build, and for anger or resentment to arise, leaving us feeling stuck and reactive.
In Buddhist teachings, there is a deeply practical approach to patience that speaks directly to these experiences. Rather than simply trying to suppress difficult emotions, we learn how to understand the mind in a deeper way—so that we are less caught up in taking things personally in the first place.

In this day retreat at the beautiful Wootton Hall, Chelvi will guide us through talks, meditation, and reflection on this very approach. Drawing on Buddha’s insight into the nature of the self, we explore how loosening our fixed sense of “me” and “mine” can help us respond to difficulties with far more space, flexibility, and ease.

Join us for this full day meditation event with KMC Kent’s Senior Teacher Chelvi Mailvaganan.
This retreat is suitable for complete beginners as well as experienced practitioners, and offers a meaningful opportunity to reconnect with a deeper, more reliable source of happiness.

From Overwhelm to Inner Strength:

Life can sometimes feel like too much—too fast, too uncertain, too heavy. When stress and tension arise, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or powerless. But beneath this, there is a deeper resilience already within us—a quiet strength, a natural clarity.

Through Buddha’s teachings, we learn how to access this inner resource, gradually finding a way to move with life rather than struggle against it.
With skilful guidance and simple, practical meditations, we will discover how to make peace with adversity, soften our reactions, and develop a more balanced, confident way of being. From this place, even difficulties begin to feel workable—something we can grow through, rather than something that defines us.

Guided by KMC Kent’s Principal Teacher, James Baskerville, who brings over 25 years of meditation experience, and held in the historic The George Vaults, this course offers a warm, reflective space to step back, reset, and reconnect with a deeper sense of peace and purpose.

Includes a light breakfast and refreshments.

A Transformative Meditation Course

In this half day course, Buddhist Nun Kelsang Oden will explore how to live with greater awareness, peace, wisdom, and compassion by learning to remain grounded in the present. Drawing exclusively from authentic Buddhist teachings and meditations, each session combines practical wisdom, guided meditation, contemplation, and methods for integrating meditation and inner peace into daily life.

Through learning to quiet the mind, let go of distractions, and become familiar with positive states of mind, we discover a deep inner stillness and clarity that allows us to respond to life with wisdom rather than anxiety and other painful states of mind.

Suitable for beginners and experienced meditators alike.

# A Life of Profound Purpose: Beyond the Eight Worldly Concerns

Guided by KMC Kent’s Principal Teacher, James Baskerville, who brings over 25 years of meditation experience, this away retreat takes place at the beautiful Bodhisattva Kadampa Meditation Centre.
With its peaceful World Peace café, tranquil gardens, and the sea just a short walk away, it offers a rare opportunity to step back from daily life and reconnect with a deeper sense of purpose, clarity, and direction.

Everyone needs a sense of purpose—a reason to engage with life that goes deeper than simply reacting to whatever comes our way. Often, that sense of purpose becomes tied to career, relationships, achievements, or the pursuit of comfort and success. These things matter, but they are also fragile. When circumstances change or goals slip out of reach, it’s natural for our sense of meaning to feel shaken.
So we are left with a deeper question: what remains when these outer supports no longer hold?

In this weekend residential retreat, we will explore this question together. Through guided meditation and practical Buddhist teachings, we begin to look more closely at the extraordinary potential within the mind itself—the natural capacity for lasting peace, clarity, and freedom from suffering. It is this recognition that opens the door to a more stable and meaningful sense of purpose, one that doesn’t collapse when life changes, but instead grows stronger through it.
We will also examine the “eight worldly concerns”—our habitual pull toward praise, pleasure, gain, and reputation, and aversion to their opposites. When these quietly shape our motivation, even spiritual practice can become mixed, like healthy food laced with poison: it may bring short-term relief, but not lasting transformation.

As Geshe Kelsang explains in Joyful Path of Good Fortune:
“If we have been practicing Dharma for some time but cannot feel any of its benefits, the reason is that we are not yet practicing pure Dharma.”
Rather than discouraging us, these reflections point to something very practical: the possibility of aligning our life with a deeper, more authentic motivation—one that brings steadiness, clarity, and meaning to whatever we do, regardless of changing circumstances.