TENDING THE FIRES: Eros, Dharma, and Forging a Path in Destabilising Times with Adam Lobel & Catherine McGee

Name: Tending the Fires
Start: 2025-06-21T00:00:00+01:00
End: 2025-06-22T23:59:59+01:00

A non residential weekend at the London Shambhala Centre with Catherine McGee and Adam Lobel – June 21st and 22nd

Fire can be both gorgeous and terrible—a symbol for sacredness, yet also an image of the flames of greed, hatred, and delusion. While we see a world on fire and hear the call of the Buddha to extinguish the flames, we also know that the fires of love and of creative imagination are among our most incredible, compelling, and needed gifts. Celebrating the summer solstice, when the sun is at its greatest strength, we explore images and meanings of fire.

An alchemical maxim says: She who masters the fire, masters the work.

What ways of practising orient us to sanity while meeting the intensity of our times? And what ways of being can be rooted in the depths we know and intuit while doing justice to our love for the world?

In its heart, our workshop explores what ways of looking might allow the fires of our times to become initiatory.

This weekend Adam and Catherine will reflect on how they are grappling with these questions and invite us into practices to deepen our own inquiries. They will draw upon four ways of looking : 1. Early Buddhist teachings, the path of unbinding the tangle of self, other, and world. 2. Buddhist Tantra, a tradition that works with intensities alchemically. 3. Soulmaking Dharma in which our relationship with loving desire—‘Eros’—is seen as a key factor in restoring and expanding senses of sacredness. 4. The Four Fields, a contemporary ecological and social teaching on the embodiment of awakening.Together, these offer a multidimensional investigation drawing from the wellspring of our traditions.

Whether you are someone for whom fires are burning like a bonfire, or have burned out and turned to ash, or someone who doesn’t relate to or see much fire in themselves, you are welcome.

Creating a hearth to tend the inner and outer fires with care, interest, and passion this weekend works with alchemical images and mysticisms of sacred fire to help us tend the flames of our times. You are invited into the “forge” of a living inquiry to learn together.

There will be periods of guided and silent contemplation, shared inquiries with the sangha, reflections from the teachers, and periods being together in both silence and conviviality.

Teachers

Catherine McGee has been teaching Insight meditation In Europe and the US since 1999. She has long been associated with Gaia House, an Insight Meditation centre in Devon, and is a member of their teacher council. It was at Gaia House that she developed a creative friendship with Rob Burbea and from 2014 she collaborated closely with him in forming and shaping A Soulmaking Dharma until his death in 2020. Catherine teaches yearly at theInsight Meditation Society in Barre Massachusetts and the Barre Centre for Buddhist Studies and is a guiding teacher for OneEarth Sangha- (oneearthsangha.org) a virtual EcoDharma centre supporting a global community in the Path of Engaged Practice.

Adam Lobel, Ph.D, practices at the threshold of ecologies, Buddhist-inspired meditation and philosophy, and psycho-social political change. His work in the world weaves these practices together in a teaching called the Four Fields. Adam is a scholar-practitioner of philosophy and religion, focusing on Dzogchen Tibetan Buddhism and contemporary theory. A professor of Ecopsychology at the Falk School of Sustainability and a Focusing professional, he is curious about cultural therapeutics. He runs an ecological consulting organization called 4F Regeneration, teaches in the Ecosattva Training, is a Guiding Teacher for One Earth Sangha, a GreenFaith fellow, and is active in ecological justice movements. Adam teaches a critical style of contemplative training that seeks to avoid enclosure in neoliberal mindfulness while disclosing effortless awareness. He lives in Pittsburgh, PA with his family where he protects lands from the petrochemical industry. For more on Adam’s practices: www.releasement.org

Timings

Saturday: Tea/coffee & registration 9.00am, start 9.30am. Finish 6.30pm
Sunday: Tea/coffee 9.00am, start 9.30am. Finish 5.30pm

Cost for the weekend

The early bird registration fee of £65 is available until two weeks prior, after which time the fee will be £75. Plus your generosity (dana) offering to the teachers. We have kept the cost for the weekend as low as possible and at the end of the weekend you will be invited to make a dana offering to the teachers. Catherine is completely dependent upon dana offerings for her livelihood and Adam has agreed to offer the course in this spirit this weekend. Dana is a heart gift to thank the teachers.

A concession fee of £35 is available, and a sponors fee of £100 is offered to help support the concession fee places.

Please contact [email protected] to arrange a concession or sponor fee.

We do not want cost to be a barrier to anyone attending and understand that these are challenging times financially for many people – please do not hesitate to contact us if you require a further concession.

Payment Terms and Conditions
Please register and pay in full on registration, ensuring you click on the relevant price option to go through to PayPal where you can also pay by credit/debit card. Cancellation up to 1 week before the programme will receive a full refund, after that there will be a £20 fee charged for cancellation up until two days before, after which no refund is granted.