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retreats
Teachers: Phillip Moffitt, Tuere Sala and Dana DePalma
Prerequisite: Completion of one (or more) 6-night (or longer) silent, residential insight meditation retreat.
Description:
The Nine Bodies Insight meditations and teachings presented in this online retreat offer a new method of practicing Insight meditation. We start with establishing mindfulness through the practice of arriving and then turn towards the consciousness of the physical body. Through a series of guided meditations, we will explore ever more subtle levels of consciousness. This map offers a means for tracking and classifying meditative experiences which can help you stay present with whatever arises. Moreover, this method of practice may increase the stability and clarity of your mindfulness and enable the arising of insight.
This method integrates the Nine Bodies teachings on the nature of consciousness from Himalayan yoga master Premvarni Balyogi with Insight meditation dharma teachings.
This retreat includes 3-4 detailed guided meditations per day, dharma talks, walking meditations, and small group meetings. Due to the progressive nature of these teachings, please plan to attend all teaching sessions.
Marin Sangha is a mindfulness meditation (vipassana) group in Marin County that puts special emphasis on living the dharma in daily life. The evening’s agenda includes guided meditations, mindful movement or walking meditation, and insightful talks that draw upon various aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. Sangha means “community.” Since our inception in 1998, Marin Sangha has been committed to creating a safe and welcoming community where dharma students can come and explore how Buddhist teachings might unfold in their everyday lives. We invite students of all levels of meditation experience and beginners are especially welcome.
Normally, we meet Sundays, 6:00-8:00 p.m. in the Bayview Room of the St. Luke Presbyterian Church. During The Pandemic, all meetings are live-streamed. Please click here for details on how to connect to our Virtual Sangha.
Marin Sangha is a mindfulness meditation (vipassana) group in Marin County that puts special emphasis on living the dharma in daily life. The evening’s agenda includes guided meditations, mindful movement or walking meditation, and insightful talks that draw upon various aspects of the Buddha’s teachings. Sangha means “community.” Since our inception in 1998, Marin Sangha has been committed to creating a safe and welcoming community where dharma students can come and explore how Buddhist teachings might unfold in their everyday lives. We invite students of all levels of meditation experience and beginners are especially welcome.
Normally, we meet Sundays, 6:00-8:00 p.m. in the Bayview Room of the St. Luke Presbyterian Church. During The Pandemic, all meetings are live-streamed. Please click here for details on how to connect to our Virtual Sangha.
Teachers: Phillip Moffitt and Jennifer Ward
This is a tumultuous time full of change as we navigate the pandemic, the need for social justice, along with political, environmental, and economic challenges. As a result of these challenges, you may have experienced a change that’s beyond your control or perhaps you’re recognizing the need for personal change. Change brings up anxiety and uncertainty and it can also be exciting to connect with bigger visions for ourselves and our world.
Research shows that meeting change with mindfulness and being empowered to navigate uncertainty allows us to experience a deep sense of well-being even when life is difficult.
Some of the tools we offer in this workshop are:
- Reflecting on your life and assessing what’s out of balance.
- Using our “Journey through Change Map” to orient yourself in your change.
- Recognizing habits of mind that undermine you and learning to disengage from them.
- Creating a plan for skillfully navigating your change.
Expect a weekend of dynamic inquiry and learn to meet change with confidence and clarity.
In this 20th offering of Poetry Day, our usual sitting and walking practices will be informed by periods of reading poetry to each other. Each poem is carefully selected by Phillip Moffitt with an eye toward selections that point us to Dharma insights.
Poems of this nature comfort us, and inspire us to take our meditation understandings into our daily life such that we see the world through Dharma eyes and respond from the Dharma heart. This is a day of fun and lightheartedness, and if you haven’t ever read a poem in front of others, don’t miss this opportunity to free your voice and find a new form of expression.
with Guy Armstrong, Sally Armstrong, Andrea Fella, and Dana Scott
The first half of this retreat will focus on the development of concentration (samadhi), the collectedness and unification of mind that gives it strength and stability. The development of concentration, which comes from cultivating a relaxed attention and ease of mind, can bring joy to your practice and lead to the skillful use of pleasure in the meditative process. Concentration is also a key ingredient in the deepening of meditative insight.
The second half of the retreat will build on the foundation of concentration to explore the nature of awareness, or consciousness, which is the heart of sentient life. Awareness is always with us, revealing the phenomena of our experience, yet we may not have learned how to use it as a focus in meditation. As we deepen our connection to and understanding of this mysterious capacity for knowing, it becomes a powerful pathway to inner freedom and liberation.
with Tuere Sala, Dawn Scott and Matthew Brensilver, PhD
Beneath the fragmentation and pain of this time, something is rumbling deep in our minds. It is as if the tectonic plates are moving inside us, but we don’t know exactly where everything will land. How can we stabilize ourselves and leverage the moment to understand the Dharma more deeply and soften our hearts more fully?
This Insight retreat will explore the power of goodness amidst the intensity of our human condition. The pāramīs serve to guide our hearts: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolution, lovingkindness, and equanimity. These forces of goodness do not erase suffering, but guide us towards wisdom and compassion.
Practicing within our own homes offers an unusual opportunity. Our home can offer a sense of comfort but our habit energies are often strongest there. Home retreat can be transformative in ways we do not experience in residential retreats. It allows us to deeply integrate this spiritual path into our living space, creating the visual and temporal reminders of path and practice in our own home.
Traditional meditation instruction will be combined with a spirit of lovingkindness and silent sitting and walking meditation, Dharma talks, and small group practice meetings with teachers. This retreat is open to new and experienced meditators.