Here's a souvenir photo-montage for the Urban Retreat's Metta Wave. It should fit nicely onto an A4 sheet if you want to print it out.  

An amazing 570 people registered on the retreat from around the world, and we've loved reading all the messages of appreciation that have come in - thank you!  We'll be sending out a survey soon asking for any feedback you might like to send our way, we'd really like to hear how you found it so we can make the next one better...

Unfortunately, we can't embed the full sets of documents though you can read them online directly on our Issuu stack.

But you can download them all here!

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And here is a complete set of all the recordings from the Urban Retreat 2013, including all the introductory material by Vajragupta and others, the daily guided meditations, and Vessantara's full series on the stages of the Metta Bhavana...

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Here is a set of all the talks given for the Urban Retreat 2013, including introductions by Vajragupta and others, as well as the full series on the stages of the Metta Bhavana by Vessantara.

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Here is a set of the complete guided meditations (with introductions) from the Urban Retreat 2013, led by Vajragupta.

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Here's the complete playlist of all the videos from the Urban Retreat 2013 on Loving Kindness. This includes all the daily teachings on video from Vajragupta, daily reflections from Subhdaramati, all of our Metta Highlights news films from around the world, and introductory talks, as well as a posture guide for meditation.

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Here's the complete playlist of daily teachings on video from Vajragupta.

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Here's the complete playlist of reflections from Subhadramati's excellent book 'Not About Being Good'

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Well folks, we're drawing to a close here on the online space for this year's Urban Retreat. It's been a wonderful week and on the team we've loved being in touch with all those who took part here - as Vajragupta said, thanks so much for all of your efforts and engagement and the generally beautiful spirit in which this online retreat has been conducted.

We wanted to finish with a few posts that we hope will support you in keeping a focus on loving kindness in your life as the new week comes in and the busyness of life impinges even more on your days without the structure of a formal retreat to help. Firstly, we have five recommended next steps for you! Any one of these ways will help you keep the warmth of metta -- and the still coolness of mindfulness -- as part of your daily awareness and personal practice:

1. Stay connected with other Buddhist-friendly people! : There are Triratna Buddhist Centres -- and other kinds of Buddhist groups -- all over the world. If you aren't already, taking part in a community and exploring practice with others is a really great way to keep up the momentum you've built during the Urban Retreat. Here is a list of all our Buddhist Centres and Projects around the world.

You can also stay connected with the worldwide community within Triratna by following our new Community Spaces on The Buddhist Centre Online. + follow:

News: thebuddhistcentre.com/news Great, thoughtful reporting from our team on what's happening around the Triratna Buddhist Community internationally.

Community Highlights: thebuddhistcentre.com/highlights The best of what people in our community around the world post to the web about their own situations and Buddhist practice.

Features: thebuddhistcentre.com/features Headline stories and original Buddhist media content, including live, in-depth web coverage of major Triratna events.

2. Meditate online! If you can't get to a Buddhist Centre, we'll be having regular meditations via Skype/Google Hangout, twice a week starting this week. Meditations will be Tuesdays at 2.30pm EST/ 7.30pm UK and Thursdays at 11am EST / 4pm UK. You can find more details here. + follow our Online Meditators space!

3. Take the Dharma into your workplace! We spend most of our waking lives at work, so we can't afford to wait to retire before we can practice the dharma life there. The group dharma@work is a new forum to discuss how we can integrate these two aspects of our lives, exploring different aspects of how to take our dharma practice to work more wholeheartedly. +follow dharma@work now!

4. 21 Day Meditation For Recovery! This brilliant new meditation venture is underway today! A series of 15-minute meditations to support you in your abstinence from addictions, compulsive behaviours, and to promote sobriety of mind. From the great people at the Eight Step Recovery Project. + follow 21 Day Meditation here!

5. Support others to practice the Dharma! A sure-fire way to strengthen your own engagement with Buddhist meditation and practice is to connect with others and support them too. One of the most inspiring contexts for this is the India Dhamma Trust. They work to support millions of Buddhist men and women in India who have little knowledge of what Buddhism is or how to practice it. Who are desperate to find genuine and effective Dhamma teachers and practice communities, hungry for the Dharma, and its potential for spiritual transformation and social uplift. + follow and support India Dhamma Trust today!

After this we'll be posting various 'complete sets' of the retreat teaching and talks for easy access anytime. We will close off comments and posts in a few days and then archive the space. As a participant you'll still be able to see the whole retreat space anytime: posts, comments, etc. (only the teaching will be available to the wider public to view).

May we all be well!

We’re nearly at the end of this urban retreat… Thank you to you all for your participation, your engagement, your posts and contributions, shrine photos, and for the way all this has been flavoured and pervaded by metta!

A big thank you to those who helped provide materials and resources for the event. Thanks to Subhdramati and Vessantara for the daily talks and reflections, and to Manidha, Natalie Willmer and Upekshadaka for proving talks in the run-up to the event, and then to Graham, Munisha, and especially Upekshapriya from Clear Vision who produced the newsfilms and also helped film other materials, and to Lokabandhu for the metta wave poster and “map”.

Also thank you to the team for the event, who looked out for any way they could respond helpfully to comments and questions. They were: Advayasiddhi, Amalavajra, Candradasa, Lokabandhu, Manidha, Munisha, Sraddhabandhu, Suvannavira, and myself.

Lastly a very big thank you to the team at The Buddhist Centre Online who hosted the whole thing, and who put in a lot of work behind the scenes designing, creating, and programming… There was a lot of work and preparation went into creating that space and the materials in it…

One way you can express your appreciation is by making a donation. We’ll divide the money between the main projects (Clear Vision and The Buddhist Centre) that were involved in creating the resources; both of these are charities that could really use more funds to help get the Buddha’s teachings out there into the world, in a way that is relevant and accessible to folk in the 21^st century… We've had some really generous donations already (thank you!). Probably another 20 people donating and we'd hit our target of £1000....

Hi everyone, please join us in an hour's time if you can for the live Facebook group discussion on the topic 'Metta In The Face Of World Problems'... How does the work of this urban retreat - and of developing loving kindness in our lives - relate (if at all) to the scale of kinds of issues we face today? Typhoons in the Phillipines, global warming, the war on terror, etc. Is it possible to face these things without being overwhelmed? Hwow does community fit into that?

Bring your thoughts, questions, seeking and let's see what emerges...

Clear Vision have produced this 38 minute film – a compilation of all the five short films that we’ve been showing over the week edited into one video… If you want to download it easily (for example, for showing at a Centre or group) then you can do that here.

You may have seen in the program for the retreat that as well as hosting the retreat materials here, we'll also be doing some online-only events designed to help bring awareness of the practice into that aspect of our daily lives. We can easily spend so much time online - it's a challenge to find mindful ways to engage amid so much distraction! And, of course, not everyone is near a Buddhist Centre... So we're interested in new ways to have a taste of what sangha means and we'd also like to develop resources that can help anyone bring more self-awareness (and, in that sense, more self metta!) into their web use...

1. Listen for daily podcasts (Monday-Friday - at least!)
2. Online meditation: 12th & 14th (Tue/Thu): 11am EST/4pm UK/5pm Europe/9.30pm India
3. Submit questions any time during the retreat for Vessantara by posting here or on Twitter (@buddhistcentre) using the hashtag #urbanretreat. Questions will be answered on the site and on Twitter on Wednesday and Friday (13th/15th).
4. Facebook Group live discussion: "metta in the face of world problems" (Friday 15th, 11am EST/4pm UK/5pm Europe/9.30pm India)
5. Follow us on Instagram (@buddhistcenter) - we'll make an Instagram feed of pictures you send us or post to this space of your Urban Retreat shrine/Buddha statue. (Unless you ask us not to!)

With apologies to those in the southern hemisphere who, we hope, will be sleeping soundly when some of these events are happening. We'll be bearing you in mind though... See you online!

Further to Lokabandhu's post yesterday about the Urban Retreat in German and Spanish, we're delighted to pass on news that the retreat will also be available to Danish speakers, thanks to Advayasiddhi!

Urban Retreat 2013 på dansk

Here's a PDF version of the program for the retreat to complement the online version.

A note on using Issuu (the rather nice way we embed documents on The Buddhist Centre Online): you can usually download by clicking the Issuu document and, when it opens full-screen, choosing the 'share' icon (top right)...

Hello there, just wanted to introduce the "team" for the urban retreat, but before that here is a couple of responses to questions we've had about the event…

1) Is there any charge for the online urban retreat?
It is all free. We will have an appeal for some money on Wednesday and Friday to help pay for future online urban retreats. You are really welcome to contribute if you wish, but we are basically offering this for free…

2) Is there going to be loads of material, too much stuff to deal with?
There is quite a rich mix of course material, but you'll be guided through and you can choose what you want to engage with. I'd say don't forget the whole idea is to intensify your practice for the week. It is about trying to gain the confidence that it IS possible to practice the Buddha's teachings even with a busy life and responsibilities. For this to work, don't take too much on! And don't spend the whole week online! Just choose one or two things that you are really going to engage with and do them as best you can. For example you could do the daily led meditation, or the daily practice reflection from Subhadramati – which is all about taking the practice off your meditation cushion and into your life…

And now to introduce our team: We've got a few people who may make an appearance during the week, offering their own reflections on metta (loving-kindness) and also responding to any comments and questions that you post. They are…

Advayasiddhi (from Denmark), Amalavajra (from the UK), Candradasa (East Coast USA), Manidha (from Seattle, USA), Munisha (UK), Lokabandhu (UK), Sraddhabandhu (from Germany), Suvannavira (in Moscow), and Vajragupta (who lives in the UK, but who is doing the urban retreat at the Berlin Triratna Centre)... quite an international team! Vessantara will also be doing a Q&A a couple of times during the week...

Here's the full retreat program for the online version of the retreat. These resources are also for use by anyone taking part in the Urban Retreat around the world at their local Buddhist centre.

We've also included here details of the special web-only events we'll be having as part of the retreat, including online meditation, Twitter Q & A and a Facebook discussion in our group there. Watch this space for more details!

The Urban Retreat is now available to German and Spanish speakers world-wide: you’ll find the German and Spanish material at these links.

Retiro urbano internacional (en español)

das Stadt-Retreat 2013 (deutsch)

Manidha and Alice here from Seattle in the U.S. sharing a collection of poems we feel inspired by when we think about metta and its central importance for the life of the heart. Drawing on different religious and spiritual traditions the poems bring out some of the qualities of metta and of a person turning their effort towards cultivating loving kindness in their life.

This video was produced and read with the help of our friends in the Seattle sangha!

The Buddha recommended that alongside mindfulness practices, anyone wanting to see deeply into the nature of existence should have a regular and strong practice of kindness... Here is the source text for this revolutionary practice (minus a few diacritics!).

The English translation is by Ratnaprabha, the audio by Joe Richardson.

Listen to a talk on the sutta for the Urban Retreat 2013