Loving Kindness Meditation (Metta) led by Julian Briggs

Julian Briggs is leading a day of loving-kindness meditation at Shirley House on Saturday 31 October, from 10am to 5pm. It's a full day's retreat run as part of Sheffield Insight Meditation, and the focus is Metta Bhāvanā — the cultivation of loving-kindness as taught in the Insight Meditation tradition.

The day is structured around guided sitting and walking meditation, alternating with short Dharma talks that follow the Metta Sutta. In that sutta, the Buddha describes eleven benefits of cultivating goodwill, including sleeping and waking easily, being dear to beings and being protected by the devas. The talks draw from that text, so you'll get a sense of the tradition's take on the practice as well as the actual doing of it.

Noble silence is observed throughout the day, which means you'll spend the hours in quiet rather than chatting between sessions. Once the formal part of the day wraps up, tea is shared to build sangha — the community of practitioners — so you can catch up with the other people there before heading home. The retreat is open to both newer and experienced meditators, so you don't need to have a long practice under your belt to join in.

It runs from 10am to 5pm at Shirley House, 31 Psalter Lane, Sheffield, S11 8YL, and costs between free and £12.