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2025
MLE Retreat 2025
Click here for the application form
Deadline: Friday 4th April 2025 at midnight CEST
MLE Retreat Dates: 23rd – 25th July 2025 (arrival on the 22nd)
ESRI 2025 Dates: 27th – 31st July 2025 (arrival on the 26th)
Location: Rangjung Yeshe Gomde, Austria
Please watch the introductory video (below), where retreat facilitators, Dr Marieke van Vugt and Dr Martijn van Beek, explain the history and thinking behind the MLE Retreat.
MLE Retreat July 2025: “Down to Earth: Exploring Meaningful Ways of Living, Together”
In this year’s retreat, we will draw upon many of the same tools of inquiry as in previous retreats — seated meditation, gentle movement, journaling, and dialogue — but with an eye to how we might bring our practice more fully into the brambles of our everyday lives. How might our contemplative practice more intimately inform our ways of relating to the world(s) at hand? What alternative pathways open up when we approach these worlds with a mind of inquiry and a capacious heart? How can we set robust aspirations for ourselves while still remaining “down-to-earth” in our expectations? What might it look like to live together meaningfully in a world in which we are witnessing increasing fragmentation and polarisation? How do we form a reliable sense of meaning when the grounds beneath us feel volatile and precarious?
True to the title, we will place our focus this retreat on exploring openly some of these questions together, using the tools we have at our disposal from contemplative practice and dialogical inquiry.
Costs (for MLE Retreat & ESRI 2025)
| Research Fellows | Senior investigators | Professionals | |
| ESRI only (camping at Gomde with own tent and equipment) | € 400 | € 600 | € 900 |
| ESRI only (camping at Gomde, renting tent and equipment) | € 500 | € 700 | € 1000 |
| ESRI only (shared room at Shantihouse)* | € 600 | € 800 | € 1100 |
| ESRI only (shared room at Gomde)* | € 700 | € 900 | € 1200 |
| ESRI + MLE Retreat (camping at Gomde with own tent and equipment) | € 600 | € 800 | € 1100 |
| ESRI + MLE Retreat (camping at Gomde, renting tent and equipment) | € 700 | € 900 | € 1200 |
| ESRI + MLE Retreat (shared room at Shantihouse)* | € 800 | € 1000 | € 1300 |
| ESRI + MLE Retreat (shared room at Gomde)* | € 900 | € 1100 | € 1400 |
These prices cover the whole program, chosen accommodation type, and all food and drink.
*Please note that indoor accommodation is limited, and will be assigned on a first come, first served basis.
Financial Support
Participants of ESRI (and the MLE Retreat) are expected to cover their own registration fee and travel costs. Fee discounts might be available for selected (PhD) students and early career scholars, with a particular priority given to scholars coming from Eastern Europe, the Baltic countries and Russia.
If you have the means to make a donation in support of participants who could not otherwise afford the fees, we would be deeply grateful for any level of donation. You can state your intention to make a donation in the application form or write to office@mindandlife-europe.org.
If you would like to be considered for financial support, please submit a written request in the application form with details of your financial situation (max. 300 words). Please note that MLE operates on a limited budget, and will only be able to provide support to selected recipients.
Marieke van Vugt is an associate professor at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science, and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen (Netherlands). The research in Prof van Vugt's lab focuses on how, when and why we mind-wander, and what the fundamental cognitive operations are that underlie meditation and mindfulness. Most recently, she started to investigate how analytical meditation practised by Tibetan monks and nuns affects cognition and emotion. She addresses these questions using a combination of computational modelling, neuroscience, and experimental psychology tools. She very much enjoys projects where science, art (particularly classical ballet), and contemplation meet.
Martijn van Beek is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and affiliated with the Interacting Minds Centre, both at Aarhus University, Denmark. Having worked and conducted research for many years on politics and development in Ladakh and elsewhere in the Himalayan region, for the past two decades his research has increasingly focused on the meeting ground between contemplative traditions, especially Buddhism, consciousness research and modernity. His research seeks to contribute to refining our understanding and the significance of emergent forms of contemplative ways of living for people and for the planet. He is also engaged in research on the (micro-)phenomenology of contemplative practice and experience. Martijn teaches sustainable ways of living and contemplative life in context, in theory and in practice at Aarhus University and elsewhere. He lives at Vaekstcenter, a contemplative community in Denmark.
25-07-2025 05:00 PM