LISBON BUDDHIST CENTER
Our centre is home to a community of practitioners in the heart of Lisbon. We study and practice meditation and Buddhism, with an emphasis on friendship as a means of human development.
Our classes are open to all, Buddhist or not. Newcomers are taught from scratch and more experienced meditators will find courses and classes allowing them to deepen their practice.
What is meditation?
Put simply, meditation is a direct method of transformation of the mind to live a more meaningful life. We often drift along in our lives somewhat unclear about what is important. Meditation offers a systematic practice and art of seeing through the layers of habits to understand what is truly meaningful, and what may bring about inner peace and mental creativity to express our potential as human beings.
Our meditation practices are inspired by Tibetan and Japanese Buddhist traditions and correspond to what is practiced in the Triratna Buddhist Order. These techniques improve concentration, clarity, and emotional balance, essential to understand and shift our habitual unbeneficial mental patterns, and to cultivate beneficial, spacious and creative states of mind and heart.
What is BUDDHISM?
A systematic method of training to grow as a human being, Buddhism offers a perspective of transcendence and awakening, following the steps of what the Buddha realised 2500 years ago.
Including meditations, retreats, study and daily life awareness practices, among other things, Buddhism is practiced at Agora within a community context, the sangha.
Buddhism is very different from our usual idea of a religion, in several important ways. It has no God we must obey. It has no dogma we must believe in. And it does not ask us to give up our freedom and individuality to any higher authority, but instead encourages us to stand up proudly and take responsibility for our own vision of what it means to be a human being.
On the other hand, Buddhism and Buddhist meditation techniques in particular, are not just another therapy: the aim of Buddhist meditations and practices is not only to resolve psychological problems, but also to open doors to states of consciousness which are beyond the imagination of Western psychology. Buddhism offers a spiritual and transcendental perspective, to help human beings transform our minds and outgrow our self-imposed limitations.
