A Buddhist home retreat for exploring a path of radical transformation and insight

Hosted By: Karunadevi, Shraddhavani, Viriyalila & friends
Friday, August 21st to Thursday, August 27th, 2026
Online via Zoom - see session times below

Event Description:

In the traditional mandala of the Five Buddhas — Akshobhya, Ratnasambhava, Amitabha, Amoghasiddhi, and Vairocana — we typically focus on the male forms. There are actually ten Buddhas, including five in female form: Locana, Mamaki, Pandaravasini, Green Tara, and Akasadhatisvara.

Considered as pairs, they represent the unification of compassion and wisdom, and each pair is associated with one of the five skandhas: form, feeling, perception, volition, and consciousness. Arranged in a mandala, the five pairs represent a meditative path, whereby our conditioned responses to day-to-day existence can be transformed with awareness. The mandala as a whole represents the integration of wisdom and compassion and is a practical path to insight.

In this home retreat, Karunadevi and team will lead us in meeting the five Buddha pairs in meditation and visualization. The symbolism of each pair of Buddhas is vast, comprehensive, and multifaceted. We will explore how these symbols relate to our human qualities and tendencies through meditations, talks, readings, discussions, and devotional practices.

Please join us on this magical journey of self-discovery and insight.

This retreat is generously supported by the Lenz Foundation and FutureDharma.

Attend any or all conversations in Zoom.

This event will be recorded and may be published online for others to access. Only the leader's video will be used except where users consent to appear spotlighted in a public conversation. Private conversations in breakout rooms will not be recorded.

Session Times:

Friday, August 21st - Thursday, August 27th, 2026

The retreat starts on Friday, August 21st, at the second daily session, and ends on Thursday, August 27th, at the third daily session.

Event Registration:

Register at the link below.

REGISTER HERE

Suggested Donation:

Suggested donation for the whole retreat:

$230 /£175 / €200 / $330 AUD

Or drop in for $50 / £40 / $75 AUD / €45 per day.

Get one ticket and come to any session you wish!

Like all Buddhist Centre events, this retreat is offered by donation rather than charging a compulsory ticket price. We want to do this because we never want money to be an obstacle to taking part in a supportive community, and we know many people are struggling financially. The amount we suggest reflects the huge amount of work and love that goes into putting on events we hope will benefit everyone attending. If you can, please donate today. Thank you!

About the Leaders:

In 1993, Karunadevi was the first American woman ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order on US soil. She lives near San Francisco with her husband Acarasiddhi and has two children and two grandchildren.

In 1988, she began a meditation and study group in her living room, which became the San Francisco Buddhist Center of the Triratna Buddhist Order in 1991.

After ordination, she helped in the development of the ordination training program for women in North America, became a private and public preceptor, and is a beloved teacher to scores of women who passed through that program over the decades of her leadership, as well as many more who have heard her speak in Triratna Buddhist centers and online programs.

Recently, she turned over coordination of the ordination training process to other experienced Dharmacharinis and continues to serve as mentor, preceptor, and kalyana mitra.

She also worked as a teacher and educator devoted to developing programs for under-served youth. She was co-founder, fundraiser, and executive director of the Daly City Youth Health Center from 1988 to 2000. She retired from paid work in 2005.

Shraddhavani (Bettye Pruitt) was ordained by Karunadevi in 2018 at Akasavana Retreat Center in Spain. She lives in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and is part of the team running the Portsmouth Buddhist Center. She regularly hosts online meditation at The Buddhist Centre Online, as well as silent meditation retreats at Aryaloka Buddhist Center in Newmarket, NH. She is currently serving as a trustee and chair of Dharmachakra. She has two daughters and two granddaughters.

Before retiring from professional life in 2013, Shraddhavani had a long career as an author, consultant and dialogue facilitator. In the early 2000s, she worked with the UNDP in Latin America on an initiative to develop regional capacity in multi-stakeholder dialogue in support of democratic governance. Based on this work, she co-authored Democratic Dialogue: A Handbook for Practitioners (2007) and coordinated a global network of dialogue practitioners, The Generative Change Community, from 2005 to 2009.

Shraddhavani is formally trained as a social historian (PhD Boston University, 1981). She is a former member of the Society for Organizational Learning and was co-chair of its council of trustees. In that context, she helped to develop the practice of learning histories. She is the author of six books and a prize-winning article of early American history (William and Mary Quarterly, 1984), which challenged widely held assumptions about the self-sufficiency of American farms in the pre-industrial era.

Viriyalila, whose name means “playful, spontaneous, creative energy in pursuit of the good,” has been meditating and practicing Buddhism since 1994. Ordained by Karunadevi into the Triratna Buddhist Order in 2005, she has a passion for collaborative organizational teamwork and has served on a variety of councils at local, national, and international levels, including Aryaloka and Portsmouth Buddhist Centers. In 2022, she became a private preceptor and is a member of the ordination team for women in the US and Canada.

Initially trained as a Recreation Therapist, Viriyalila has a passion for the arts and creative storytelling which she often incorporates into Buddhist rituals and Dharma study. She is part of the Dharmachakra team, having curated a weekly FBA podcast and twice-weekly Dharmabytes podcast from the vast Free Buddhist Audio archive for the past 15 years. From 2012-2016 she trained as an Acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist and has a thriving private practice in Exeter, New Hampshire.

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