Category / Retreats

This May I'm delighted to say that I'll be a keynote speaker at Future Everything in Manchester, which was recently named by the Guardian as one of the world's top 10 ideas festivals. They originally contacted me to speak about my festivals innovation work but having encouraged them that it'd might be *much* more interesting if I cover the topic of innovation in meditation and Buddhism.   Recognising that it'll be a subject that will be brand new for most of the audience they agreed and when asked on content, they gave me the brilliant brief of just making it the most unusual and striking talk of the conference. I've named the talk "How Generation Ys can become Generation Wise" and I have 6 weeks or so to get it together.  In the coming weeks I'll be sharing my talk structure and development and gathering feedback on its improvement and refinement. Here are some key areas that I might cover and I look forward to sharing more soon.

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I was recently interviewed by Danny Fisher for the Buddhist Channel where I said some clever things like:

I think urban meditation is a new emerging genre of practice in the same way that hip-hop came out of other music styles in the 70s and 80's. And like the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash back then in the early scene, not everyone's going to like it...but those that do are going to love it and it will define a new culture.

And

I've done buddhify off my own back - self-funding the build totally myself and I've made a pretty decent product that is changing how people are engaging with meditation. If I had some real investment, though….imagine what I could make. And not just me, there are some - not many, but enough - people out there right now who understand meditation and technology enough but need support. If this sounds like a plea for cash that's because it is...but this is not about dana, it's about turning money into sustainable businesses which also create immense social and spiritual value. That is the opportunity here and it won’t be around for too much longer.

Read the full interview here

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This was first posted on the buddhify blog When I came up the name buddhify one morning on a meditation retreat back in January I realised it was the perfect name for a mobile meditation app I'd been thinking about for a while.  So I made a fairly odd vow to myself - to not go on any retreats at all that year (I had spent much time each year since 2005 on formal retreats) and instead make this idea called buddhify a reality by the time 2011 out.  And having launched buddhify back on November 3rd, we got there with two months to spare :) buddhify was a big risk...and for two main reasons.  Firstly, I have a day job..actually I have a couple and all on a freelance basis.  Therefore all the time spent on the app was either evenings and weekends or time I could have been working for clients and therefore I was by definition losing a whack of money.  And on the subject of money, the build of the app was entirely self-funded so I spent pretty much £10,000 of my own money to get buddhify out there.  That's a lot of money for a lot of people and it's a lot of money for me.  I did raise $4500 for app marketing through a crowdfunding campaign to help it along but that was more the icing on the cake of a big financial commitment on my part. Ok let's put away the violins...enough about my personal risk.  The more interesting risk is that I was making a product where there wasn't a market.  Smart, user-centred modern meditation just wasn't a thing before buddhify so the project is as much about making a market as it is about making an app.  Any smart business advisor out there would say that the best businesses cater for well articulated markets...and that is of course true.  But as an entrepreneur in the space of modern 21st century meditation for audience who haven't maybe tried anything like meditation before, a well articulated market is a luxury.  So we made the gamble that countless entrepreneurs have made before...put a product...

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Today sees the official launch of buddhify, a mobile app product that I have been working on for much of this year. You can find out all about it at www.buddhify.com so I shan't talk much about it directly in this post but what I do want to do is say something about what it means for me and for this 21awake project. I began 21awake.com as a blog in 2008 since I felt I had something to say about modern meditation and modern Dhamma practice.  And it was motivated by both my own wish for a written reflective space and also because I felt that I had some interesting ideas and thoughts that others may value and perhaps I could take part in some new conversations. What I didn't expect was that this blog project would actually become the basis of the practice community that I had always wanted and so I am so grateful to you for that. buddhify changes things now because 21awake has shifted from being a project just about talking to one now also about making.  And so while launch day may seem an odd one to talk about the next rather than the now, that's what I'm going to do. As you may know the vast majority of my paid work is in the field of innovation and in particular supporting arts and cultural organisations test and pilot new ways of working which invariably use technology.  I do that on a freelance basis and when I set up a company in 2009 as the vehicle for my paid work I didn't call it Rohan Gunatillake Consulting or anything like that... I called it 21awake Ltd. That's because I had a hunch. That hunch was that this funny space where meditation, pop wellbeing, tech, design and gaming meet was going to be massive and that my ability to be equally literate in modern meditation, creative innovation and design was a very rare skillset in our time.  So perhaps there might be a whole new industry in the 2010s all around delivery forms of authentic meditation that are genuinely innovative and based around people. I sensed the excitement of what that might mean and named the company...

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I was recently invited to take part in the planning and design of a new type of modern, secular space in the UK which would allow people to explore spirituality, directly and from a number of angles. It is an interesting project, with good intentions and some powerful momentum and having provided my two cents worth, I look forward to following its progress since I'm unlikely given my other commitments to play too much of an active role in it. The whole experience however did start me thinking about spaces, how they encourage us to experience wonder, majesty and occasionally divinity within them and whether that should be designed anew for a modern age. Then yesterday I came to Istanbul where I'll be spending this week as a UK representative on the British Council's Cultural Leadership International programme which is an honour indeed. And with the programme starting tonight I took the spare time this morning to visit two places, the Blue Mosque and Aya Sophia. The former was an odd-ish experience since it's a fully functioning mosque and so herds of us were ushered in and through the incredible space, people took their photos and then moved out. And I stood wishing I could be there at prayer time. Then after a short while I took the quick walk up the way to Aya Sophia. Which I can honestly say is the single...

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In a couple of days time the Buddhist Geeks kickstarter campaign will close.  And it will close successfully, sailing through its $20k target with days to spare and in fact going a little bit higher than target.  This follows the equally successful campaign for buddhify which ran via indiegogo recently.

Having been involved in both campaigns and their being my first forays into crowdfunding, it's naturally made me wonder how they worked.  And while both had the same great outcome, they were both quite different stories.  First let's look at Buddhist Geeks.

The Buddhist Geeks campaign was all about the raising the funds necessary to ensure the 2012 conference went ahead.  It was a clever play by the Buddhist Geeks team who despite being quality and passion-rich are relatively cash-poor and therefore required upfront funds to guarantee the beautiful venue in Boulder.  The alternative routes would have been a bank loan or targetting a high-net worth investor and while those were both reasonable, the crowdfunding route was more attractive for two main reasons.

This was because it was a way of pre-selling #bgeeks12 tickets very shortly off the back of the brilliant inaugural conference this summer and also it was a way of engaging the growing Buddhist Geeks community to feel a stake in their growth and success.  As Vince Horn will agree, Buddhist Geeks has only always been possible due to the generosity of its community and the kickstarter campaign was perhaps one of the finest and most obvious examples of that for without it, the 2012 conference would not be possible.

So in summary, Buddhist Geeks campaign worked because:

1. high quality product (excellent...
   
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This week I shall be submitting buddhify to the iPhone appstore and all things going to plan, it will be live there and on the Android market by the end of the month. A lot of people will like buddhify for the accessible, playful and inventive introduction to urban meditation that it is. There will however be a minority of people who will not like it for various reasons. When innovating in a space like meditation, this is totally normal and expected and so I am writing this post so as to pre-empt any criticism or questions people may have. Ok so let's have a look at what that might come up: 1. buddhify is trivialising meditation buddhify is looking to fill a gap - an accessible and attractive introduction to urban meditation.  It is not a complete system nor pretends to be.  And it explicitly invites users to explore their interest in meditation further through existing channels out there. 2. buddhify is taking the name of Buddhism in vain Ok so this name thing is important. I chose this name for two primary reasons. Firstly I find it frustrating that some mindfulness-based products & services which clearly have Buddhist origins or inspirations very rarely reference it and so buddhify very explicitly states its origin while it's small b indicates that it's not an actually Buddhist product. And the second reason is that I called it buddhify is because it's just an incredibly catchy name. 3. meditation teaching should be free If you've read this blog before, you'll know my line on this is that sustainable is more important than free. Taking buddhify to market will have cost me thousands of pounts on top of the $4500 I raised through indiegogo and so I am pricing the app at a very affordable £1.99/$2.99 to give myself the chance of at least breaking even on the project. However if you would like the next 21awake product to be free then please do just invest some serious money in my company and I'll more than happily do so. 4. buddhify doesn't do X It is what it is, an introduction to urban meditation and when producing any digital product, you have to limit scope. And the ways...

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I've been asked to lead a group meditation maybe three or four times in the last couple of years with the most recent being this Friday. And what I notice is that in the rare instance when I do lead a group meditation, as I outline the instructions my mind tends to be in a rock solid concentration - many orders of magnitude more stable and compact than I can typically access in a standard individual meditation. Given that my concentration in general individual practice is relatively light, I was wondering if anyone could suggest who I might be able to access at least some of this more remarkable level of concentration which I experience while leading a group. What do you think might be happening?  

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This is the video for the indiegogo campaign for my buddhify project. Indiegogo is a great crowdfunding platform where you can help support all sorts of innovative creative projects and buddhify is an innovative creative project I'm producing to fill a gap in the meditation world. The story is that I've personally stumped up thousands of pounds to make this app get built and am inviting people such as you to help crowdsource the marketing and PR budget so it can get out to as many people as possible. So if you'd like to contribute, visit http://www.indiegogo.com/buddhify for all the information which includes all the lovely perks or rewards you get for your contributions which include copies of the app, limited edition t-shirts and personalised meditations. The campaign ends in 11 days and we're almost there so anything you can give to support is massively appreciated. I've never asked for dana before but here we are...and it will make a big difference. http://www.indiegogo.com/buddhify

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The last weekend of July saw the first ever Buddhist Geeks Conference held in Los Angeles.  As event designer, co-producer, MC, speaker, unconference facilitator and tech support...you'll probably understand why it's only now that I'm starting to recover from my fatigue.  And as exhausting as #bgeeks11 was due to my various roles, the word that best describes the event was exhilarating. There have already been a number of very good write ups so I shall to keep my highlights, learnings and take-aways concise and distinctive. Getting the setup right. Buddhist Geeks founder Vince Horn gave the welcome on the Friday evening of the event and he got it pitch perfect.  He described the event as an invitation to explore three interdependent questions:

• how do we support the time-honoured traditions and teachings of Buddhism?
• how do we ensure relevance in an emerging global culture?
• what is the skilful use and reaction to developments in technology and science?

Buddhist Geeks has never set itself up to be a place for definitive answers just better questions.  Therefore as he kicked off the conference, Vince invoked Rainer Maria Rilke in that he asked us to not just think about the questions but to live them. Real diversity.  Lots of Buddhist organisations are interested or even obsessed with diversity - especially I understand in the US.  The typical reaction to this is to create programmes for specific groups - young people, LGBT, ethic groups etc etc.  However I'm not convinced that this is the right strategy.  My preference is to go the other way around and create environments and experiences which attract a wide range of people but which is united by a common theme which is independent of this or that...

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