Insight Dialogue Retreat - Relating Wisely to Daily Life

     This is a uniquely beneficial retreat, ideal for those who've already attended a few silent retreats and now feel the need to more consistently bring into their daily "householder" lives those wiser qualities experienced during retreat. I had the privilege of attending last year and WHOLEHEARTEDLY recommend it.

     “... breaks new ground in applying the Buddha’s teachings to our lives, relationships, and meditative understandings [...and is] of tremendous benefit to all those seeking freedom in their daily lives.”   Joseph Goldstein

4th Annual Cascadia Insight Dialogue Retreat 
with Gregory Kramer and Mary Burns
Samish Island Camp, Bow, WA (near Bellingham)

May 3 - May 11, 2014

A BUDDHIST PRACTICE FOR CULTIVATING WISDOM AND COMPASSION THROUGH MEDITATION IN DIALOGUE
Humans are relational beings.  We are pack animals, born of mother and father, raised with families and friends.  We work and live with others.  It is no surprise that much of our suffering is people-suffering.  We meditate to understand and be free from suffering.  Yet sometimes a gap arises when interpersonal suffering is being addressed in intrapersonal meditation.  We perpetuate the “island universe” of the individual self even as we seek freedom.

Insight Dialogue is a fully relational meditation practice based on Buddhist Vipassana Insight Meditation and a relational understanding of the Dhamma.  The mind is invited to stillness and keen mindfulness even as we remain in dialogue with others.  Here, we meet the shared human experience that transcends our very real differences in genetics, background, and worldly circumstances.

For each of us, the body is home. We have an unfathomably remarkable brain.   As humans, we are sensitive to light and sound and vibrate deeply with every interpersonal contact.  Recognizing our common foundations, the shared legacy of suffering is understood anew.  Through practice, loving-kindness becomes a lived experience that encompasses each and every specific person we encounter here and now -- whether he or she is a loved one or an enemy.

In this retreat, we will maintain noble silence as a support for traditional meditation and Insight Dialogue.  There will be time in nature to support ease and solitude.  Holding “retreat” as one element in the mosaic of awakening, we will live the following question throughout our time together: “How can this practice support insight right now and how can the Dhamma be carried forward into my entire life?”

Retreat cost:
U.S. or Canadian $500, After April 1:  $530
The registration fee includes accommodations for 8 nights and 24 meals.
Partial scholarships available on first come first-served basis. We invite participants to offer dana (freewill donation) at the end of the retreat to support the teacher and the teachings

For more information:
www.cascadiainsightdialogue.com
cascadiaretreat@gmail.com
Register online:
http://goo.gl/2JEJz
More about Insight Dialogue: www.metta.org

Gregory Kramer has been teaching Vipassana and Loving-kindness meditation since 1980.  He is the director of Metta Programs and a visiting faculty member at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.  Gregory is the co-creator and developer of Insight Dialogue.
Mary Burns, senior teacher of Insight Dialogue, leads retreats worldwide and offers teachings online through Metta Programs.  A long time student of meditation and yoga, Mary is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker; she teaches Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and has studied and practiced for 3 decades at the intersection of western and eastern healing traditions.

India immediately before the Buddha

     "... the Upanisads presented the more mystical belief in a universal and unitary spiritual Reality, called Brahman, which is the true essence, or Atman (Self), of all things. It was believed that the personal realization of this divine essence through insight, matured in the depths of meditation, would lead one to spiritual liberation, or moksa. Liberation was understood to be release from karma (Pali: kamma) and rebirth."

       Mitchell DW. Buddhism - Introducing the Buddhist Experience. ed2, Oxford University Press, 2008.

Harriet Irving Botanical Gardens, Wolfville, Nova Scotia

Our Ego Doesn't Matter

life is infinitely more complex
than we'd like to believe
we like to think that people & events
conspire to please or displease us
but each of us is actually
a very tiny part of a huge totality
anicca
anatta
dukkha 

Old Growth Forest near Kentville, Nova Scotia

Do We Really Need More "Nuclear Giants" who are "Ethical Infants"?

     “Higher education looses upon the world too many people who are masters of external, objective reality, with the knowledge and skill to manipulate it, but who understand little or nothing about inner drivers of their own behavior. Giving students knowledge as power over the world while failing to help them gain the kind of self-knowledge that gives them power over themselves is a recipe for danger – and we are living today with the proof of that claim in every realm of life from economics to religion. We need to stop releasing our students into the wild without systematically challenging them to take an inner as well as outer journey.”

        Palmer PJ, Zajonc A. The heart of higher education: A call to renewal. Transforming the academy through collegial conversation. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, 2010.

 

Poem

life


inbreath
outbreath

Acceptance, Rejection, Groundlessness

     How others perceive and treat us forms a large part of our self-concept. It all starts with how our parents treat us. "a leading theorist in inner child work ... estimates that 80-95% of people have not received the love, guidance, & other nurturing necessary to form consistently healthy relationships and to feel good about themselves and about what they do." Kneisl CR. Healing the wounded, neglected inner child of the past. Nurs Clin North Am 1991; 26(3): 745-55.
     That's a shaky start! But if you're intelligent, sociable, wealthy, good looking, talented, well-connected and lucky, things can work out pretty well. For most of us, only a few stars align - briefly. We simply can't count on externals - including people - for lasting satisfaction. However dukkha & anicca are pretty reliable.
     On one level that's a bummer, on another it's fine. Obviously we gradually let go of the first, and learn to stabilize in the second - if we don't we become progressive more bummed-out with life as it is. If we do, quality of life continuously improves, despite the fact that our stars' alignment keeps deteriorating.

 

Degree of Dependence on Conditions

     A drug addict is physically-dependent on - locked-into - one or more substance(s). How strongly do YOU - supposedly a non-addict - depend on stuff - not to feel 'good' - but simply not to be anxious nor panicky?
     One of the benefits (or drawbacks, depending on your ultimate goal) of meditation practice is that you perceive increasingly clearly (soberly?) exactly what & how strongly various things attract (clinging) or repulse you (aversion). 

     NOW you get to immediately CHOOSE to act according to the delusion that chasing what attracts, & running from what repulses WILL do it for you - OR that it WON'T. 

     The default lifestyle for most is far from clarity about such things, but a constant state of distraction ie compulsively reacting to external (& internal) stimuli to seek comfort and avoid discomfort - the "approach-avoidance dichotomy". These folks "externalize" - blame their state of being on others, the external environment etc - have an external locus of control. This is considered to be a state of slavery according to Buddhist psychology, AND most importantly, both Western & Buddhist psychology says it doesn't work.
     So, the only useful path is renunciation - giving up on the delusion that external gratifications will do it for me (anicca & dukkha) and to realize in a very direct, personal way that even the concept of "me", as we typically understand it, needs to be seriously re-examined (anatta).

     Old habits are ridiculously sticky - keep repeating AND trying your best to EMBODY the Bodhisattva vow:
     "Beings are numberless, I vow to free them;
     Delusions are inexhaustible, I vow to end them;
     Dharma gates are boundless, I vow to enter them;
     The Buddha way is unsurpassable, I vow to attain it."

Gutkin www.dpreview.com