IMS’s Retreat Center first opened its doors in 1976. It offers a yearly schedule of meditation courses, lasting from a weekend to three months. Most retreats are designed for both new and experienced meditators. Recognized insight meditation teachers from all over the world offer daily instruction and guidance in Buddhist meditations known as vipassana (insight) and metta (lovingkindness). While the context is the Buddha’s teachings, these practices are universal and help us to deepen awareness and compassion.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Sets the condition for wisdom to arise - help us see through the concotions of perception, thought and view.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An exploration of the First Establishment of Mindfulness
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Dolls, loss, love and the narrative cure. Kafka consoles a girl with a series of letters about a lost doll. An excursion into four different and indispensable tasks for any contemplative practitioner: (i) Calming & stabilzing (ii) Dis-identification and decentering (iii) Deep Inquiry and thorough contemplative Investigation (iv) The bigger Picture – gaining an universal perspective on the personal
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Satipaṭṭhāna as map of experience. Somatic - hedonic - affective - discursive 'raw-materials' in these four categories. Relationship between these channels. Citta and the particular challenges with the states of the mind as objects of practice. Establishing a somatic vocabulary for your moods. The ending of something as an easy connection point to citta-states.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Breakdown of types of ignorance in Buddhist teaching. Unpacking some of the terms avijjā and moha. Sketching their different use in the old texts despite their occasional synonymous use. Excursions into conditionality.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) 40 Mins of mettā practice with aspects of compassion and forgiveness.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What happens when I'm *not* mindful? (i) Loss of fluency in our attention — (ii) Loss of the here & now (iii) Loss of the space: collapsing into things. (iv) Loss of embodiment (vI) Loss of the other
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Hindrances – a glance at the list of troubles and how they manifest . The different starting points of Buddhist and Western psychology. The Buddhas vision of freedom Different types of troubles: soteriological hindrances (samyojana), afflictions (kilesa), inflations (āsava). A detailed look at the 5 nivāraṇa, the five psychological obstacles to the cultivation of stillness as the basis for insight and understanding. The phenomenology of their manifestation.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Meditation on friendliness and kindness
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Morning instructions
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Detailed advice on posture, sitting and connecting with the body. Followed by guided body contemplation exercise using the 6 sense channels.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) This talk explores how mettā and the brahmaviharās are both means and ends on the path to liberation — the very ground that allows insight to arise, and the natural expression of the freedom that results.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Guided meditation metta body scan and QA
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Joy is not a break from meeting the world's pain — it's what makes it possible to keep meeting it. An exploration of mudita, appreciative joy, and the many ways the heart can learn to rejoice.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What does it mean to let suffering touch you without being consumed by it? This talk traces a path from empathy through grief to the inexhaustible compassion of the bodhisattva — and offers practical steps for cultivating it from the inside out.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Receiving care meditation and QA
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Introducing metta practice
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) What matters is what we cultivate, how we care and how we respond
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) a dharmette and guided sit on opening the heart toward those who are difficult to hold.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) 15 minute intro and guided sit
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) An exploration of the First Establishment of Mindfulness
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) 15 minute intro and guided sit
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflection followed by a guided meditation on death (maranasati)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Guided Meditation on the 5 elements with a poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflection & Guided Meditation on the 4 Elements
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflection followed by Guided Meditation
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Guided Meditation on the Five Faculties and Metta
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflection on the Three Refuges followed by a guided meditation on the Five Indriya
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Dharma reflection on the Five Indriya
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflections on the Paramis of Effort and Patience. References the Sona Sutta (AN 6.55) and Upanisa Sutta (SN 12.23) Vimalakirti and the Awakened Heart by Joan Sutherland and Ann Carolyn Klein's story In The Hidden Lamp: Stories From 25 Centuries of Awakened Women.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Metta-Infused body scan using the poem 'St Francis and the Sow' by Galway Kinnell as inspiration.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Reflections on the Paramis (Particularly Dana and Sila) as essential capacities for awakening as well as relating skillfully to oneself and thw world (AKA 'This Life') This talk references the song 'Go Easy Kid" by Monica Martin, Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit and Am I Helping, Fixing or Serving? by Rachel Naomi Remen
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) In the receptive awareness style of practice taught by Sayadaw U Tejaniya, people often ask how the Brahma Viharas fit in to the practice. This talk describes several ways the BVs connect with this style of practice.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Practicing with wise view and effort.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center)
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Meeting aversion with mindfulness can lead to freedom from suffering
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Evening chanting of the Suffusion of the Brahmaviharas followed by toning with Sabra on the shruti box
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) Drawing on the story of Pukkusāti meeting the Buddha, this talk explores four core resolves: not neglecting wisdom, protecting the truth, cultivating generosity, and training in peace. With reflections from retreat practice and daily life, the talk invites us to orient the heart again and again toward these qualities as a path of gradual cultivation and inner freedom.
(Insight Meditation Society - Retreat Center) A Dharma talk and guided equanimity practice exploring steadiness of heart in uncertain times; How to care deeply without hardening, collapsing, or turning away from the complexities of modern life.
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