Retreats

Topics Include:  1) Learning how to slow down;  2) Review of registration survey results;  3) Review of interview process;   4)  The fundamental purpose of our practice: understanding “bare awareness”;  5)  Bringing pure awareness to our body and our mind;   6)  Learning how to find inner stillness:  the concept of “flow”;   7)  The five hindrances: sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, irritation and annoyance, and doubt;   8)  The default mode network;   9)  How mindfulness amplifies our sensory awareness;   10)  The relaxation process.   

Topics Include:   1)  Seeing the uniqueness in all our lives;    2)  Question: how do we balance multiple sensations happening at the same time in our awareness?   3)  Question:  can you consider one’s intention AFTER an unskillful action?  4)  Learning how to slow down;  5)  Clearing the monkey mind: what is important to pay attention to;  6)  Learning how to yield to our experience;  7)  The difference between concentration and mindfulness meditation;  8)  Seeing our karma clearly: mindfulness as an emotional archeological dig;   9)  Mindfulness as an aesthetic experience and mindfulness as a release from suffering;   10)  Coming to final acceptance in our lives.  

Topics Include:   1)  What do I do if strong emotions arise and tears well up?   2)  How to work with external disturbances;  3)  How do we bring mindfulness into our daily lives?   4)  Is multi-tasking against mindfulness?   5)  What happens in the brain when we meditate?   6)  Trying to figure things out or letting the answer arise intuitively.   7)  Working with boredom;   8)  Why do we get triggered?   9)  Walking like a noble elephant.   10)  The question of suicide.  

Topics Include:  1)  Finding balance and integration in the various polarities of our life;   2)  Not letting our identities define us;   3)  Buddha nature is already within us;   4)  Seeing reality as it truly is;   5)  Moving between thinking and mindfulness;   6)  Moving between bliss and mindfulness;   7)  The significance of visions;   8)  The benefits of deeper reflective awareness;  9)  Learning to work with our minds.  

Topics Include:  1)  Learning how to slow down our monkey minds:  moving from our minds into our bodies;     2)  Meditation as an emotional archeological dig: seeing perfection in our karmic etiology;   3)  Facing suicide in our lives;   4)   Walking like a noble elephant: surviving and overcoming life’s tribulations with a sense of pride and accomplishment.   

Topics Include:   1)  The difference between mindfulness and concentration practice;   2)  Clearing the monkey mind;   3)  Learning to yield to our experience;  4)  Mindfulness as an aesthetic experience as opposed to mindfulness as a release from suffering;   5)  So, what is this all about?  Why do we do this practice?

Topics Include:  1)   Introduction to the first day of the retreat;  2)  Summary of registration surveys;  3)  The fundamental purpose of mindfulness: the development of clear focused awareness;  4)  The role of karma in our life: the creation of our “self”;  5)  The concept of “bare awareness”;  6) How we subjectively process our experience and don’t see it the way it actually is;  7)   How awareness plays out through our six sense doors;  8)     The role of the concentration practice:  the idea of “stillness”;  9)  The definition of mindfulness;  10)  The Five Hindrances or obstacles to the practice;  11) The default mode network;  12)  Meditation as a skilled-based activity;  13) How meditation amplifies our sensory awareness of the world and the dangers of emotional fragility;  14) Guidance for leaving the retreat and returning home.     

Topics Include:  1)  Question concerning compassion practice;  2)  Working with unpleasant noises and sensations;  3) Noticing negative emotions during walking meditation;  4)  Seeing the karma that informs our lives: understanding that everything is OK;  5)  Living with our karma with wisdom and understanding;  6)  Meditation as a form of mental  training;  7)  Seeing the difference between thinking and being aware of thinking;  8) Mindfulness as a way of seeing impermanence, suffering and non-self: the traditional practice;  9)  Mindfulness as a way to find beauty, joy, happiness and gratitude in our lives through the six sense doors:  mindfulness as an aesthetic experience;   10)  The importance of breathing; the various forms of breath awareness;  11)  A simplified form of pranayama breathing;  12)  Right energy: applied attention and sustained attention on the object;  13) The importance of opening to our negative emotions:  the development of the Wisdom Path;  14)  Question on sustaining our attention on our mind states and why mind states tend to disappear.  15) Can we own our feelings and accept responsibility for who we are?

Topics Include:  1)  The process of noting phenomena: dis-identifying with our experience;  2)   Learning when to let go and when to engage our experience;  3)   How do we control a mind that is out of control?  4)  Opening to pain with mindfulness or adjusting to pain with mindfulness?  5)  Dissatisfaction or aversion as a form of self rejection?  6)  Finding joy, happiness and a sense of connection with our experience. 

 Topics Include:  1)  Allowing the fortress to open: how to let the light in;  Are  you ready for your freedom?  2)  Learning to let go of judgments;   3)  Acceptance vs. agency:  When to accept something and when to confront it;  4)  Breaking Noble Silence;   5)  Feeling a sense of gentleness and compassion arising;   6)  Feeloing a complete sense of open awareness;   7) What do I need so I don’t have to be reborn iin the next life?  8) Seeing our lives with a conscious sense of self awareness.  9) Palliative notions of love and compassion:  noblesse oblige.  

Topics Include:  1) the prayer for the Sharing of Merit;  2)  the Prayer of Aspiration;   3) Signs of progress in the meditative practice: the jhanic states; the Sixteen Stages of Awakening; and the Four Stages of Enlightenment;     4)  the unpredictability of the mind;  5)  Some “zingers” from the interviews;  6)  Maintaining a sense of gratitude and compassion in an age of division, polarization and hatred;  7)  How to overcome straining and striving in our practice.  

1)The fundamental purpose of the practice and the retreat; 2) Seeing the four sense doors, the body and the mind; 3) the two levels of awareness: basic awareness and subjective processing; 4) The idea of stillness; 5) Stillness in movement: the concept of flow; 6) The continuous stream of mindfulness; 7) The five hindrances: sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skepticism and doubt; 8) The default mode network; 9) The purpose of relaxation; 10) Understanding how our body is a bio-electric phenomenon; 11) closing instructions for going home.

1) The noting process; 2) Breathing; 3) Right energy; 4) RAIN, recognition, acceptance, investigation, and non-attachment; 5) SINC, suffering, impermanence, non-attachment and compassion; 6) the teaching of the two darts; 7) The Prayer for the Sharing of Merit.

1) Forgiveness Prayer; 2) the power of meditation; 3) The importance of slowing down; 4) Balance in walking and sitting; 5) Unexpected physical and mental experiences; 6) Feeling a sense of danger; 7) A story about taste; 8) Patience in the face of strong negative emotions; 10) Looking at patterns of resistance; 11) Learning to live with loneliness; 12) How pain can turn to bliss; 13) The idea of permeability; 14) The statement of things as they really are: the fundamental structure of existence; 15) The last words of the Buddha; 16) Our fundamental embodiment of the structure of the universe, the fabric of the cosmos. 17) Prayer for the sharing of merit.
73 min.

1) The Prayer of Forgiveness; 2) Allowing mindfulness to be flexible; 3) Letting go of fear; 4) The tendency toward self sabotage; 5) The difference between the path and the goal; 6) Prayer for the sharing of Merits.

1) Is Nibbana more of a state of consciousness or a place to attain in consciousness ? 2) How do we work with unusual sensations in the body? 3) What is the connection between karma and climate change? 4) How does karma or past karma relate to the concept of no self; 5) if there is no self, what is it that is reincarnated into the next world. 6) How does living in the Now relate to paying a mortgage or a career?