The Autumn is swooping in, and with it some rather substantial events have taken place at Padmaloka.

Probably most stand out, is the Support team completing the peaks for Guhyaloka

(Which you are very much still able to donate to if you so wish)

It was a grueling task, with about 30 hours of driving over a 48 hour period, with 3 hikes, including a difficult final Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) with gale force winds and torrential rain on the last climb at 2 am. Still, we did it in 22 hours, with a high degree of harmony and a serious amount of snacks. The car rides alone were a crucible of friendship.

James Mildren, the Gardener, was not on the Peaks challenge, because he was running a whole marathon for Guhyaloka

Currently, we are in our Community At-Home, one of two events in the year that the entire community absolutely has to attend, a week of community bhavana, we eat together, meet up, study, relax and establish and deepen the core of the community. It is an incredibly important part of the Padmaloka calendar, and is a big part of creating the atmosphere which we do our best to share on retreats.

Both of these events are a practice of Kalyana Mitrata, of which the Order retreat of the same name is coming up in November 21st, and in the spirit of that I have asked Sanghajit to write a little about his experience of that retreat.

Sanghajit wrote: 

Three years in a row

In 2022, 2023 and 2024 I went on the same retreat at Padmaloka three years running: Kalyana Mitrata. I probably should have been broadening my Dharmic diet. The real reason I kept going back is less noble. With three kids going through school, and limited time and funds, it was the retreat that fitted my life.

Any excuse to get to Padmaloka is all you need really. The place has a magic of its own. Padmavajra, Surata, Satyaraja, Dhammadipa: the men who brought you up in the Dharma life are there, and it’s a mythical journey, every time.

The formula is simple: a standard retreat programme, talks on the four tantric rites, groups exploring what friendship means in the Order, and puja each evening. It isn't trying to be the Transcendental Principle or Mythic Context, where you could go ten times and still unearth fresh gems. Its depth is in the people.

Because most Order members come only once, each year I met a completely fresh batch of men, from both ends of Order life. At one end was Vajramati, ordained decades ago, back in Norfolk to "retire" after thirty years pioneering the Dharma in America. At the other was Varabandhu from rural Ireland, only just ordained. We talked about surfing the Irish coast, and I've followed his work on a new retreat centre for the Dublin sangha ever since. I also reconnected with old friends like Maitrivasin, who had left a very involved sangha life in Sheffield for Turkey, finding his way in the Dharma while reconnecting with his childhood roots.

Each evening you gather in small groups and hear your brothers' life stories. One year I was blessed to overlap with a contingent of public preceptors from India. Yashosagar told us about growing up in the slums of Pune, and about losing his father, literally: a drinker, he wandered off one day and was never seen again.

You sit in a room in Norfolk hearing that, and the Order stops being an idea. You see, fully and up close, how different Order members' lives are, and how each gives expression to his inspiration in his own way. You stop trying to be the Order member you think you should be, and you become more yourself. It's the only way to be yourself: to be with others.

So that's why I went three times. Once a year I got Padmaloka, the men who formed me, and a room full of brothers I'd never otherwise have met.

If you're newly ordained, come. If your chapter has never been away together, come as a chapter. It's simple, un-fancy, and good.

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