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October 24 – December 4, 2010
With Joseph Goldstien, Rebecca Bradshaw, Annie Nugent, Greg Scharf, Andrea Fella
This three-month course, including its six-week partials, is a special time for practice. Because of its extended length and ongoing guidance, it is an opportunity for students to deepen the powers of concentration, wisdom and compassion. Based on the meditation instructions of Mahasi Sayadaw and supplemented by a range of skillful means, this retreat will encourage a balanced attitude of relaxation and alertness, and the continuity of practice based on the Buddha’s Four Foundations of Mindfulness.
Prerequisite is two retreats of a week or more with a recognized insight meditation teacher, or special permission.
For more information: http://www.dharma.org/ims/retreat_detail.php?id=196
Friday, January 29, 2010 9:30am to 4:30pm
What does it mean to ‘leave prison before you get out’? What are the greater implications of teaching the experience of freedom not just as the other side of the gate but rather as a state of mind? This day-long training features two dedicated professionals that aim to share many years of service in the trenches of our prison system. The teaching will address both specific questions related to Buddhist practice as well as how the dharma can be languaged and applied in practical ways to honor everyone’s religious understanding. There will be sharing of what language is conducive to teach meditation in prison, examples of exercises and discussion of prison related hindrances to practice. There will be opportunity to assemble a toolkit of useful applications of how the dharma informs violence prevention, skillful communication and conflict resolution.
Paul Haller is a Zen Priest Co-Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center. He was the head of Zen Center’s outreach program and has spent many years teaching meditation in prisons. He is on faculty at the Zen Hospice Project and at the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies.
Jacques Verduin is the founder and director of the Insight Prison Project, a non-profit that works in San Quentin State Prison. The project focuses on assisting prisoners in healing the pain that they lash out from by transforming the negative habit patterns that trip them up. IPP teaches 20 classes that serve 300 prisoners every week. Through its ‘Insight Out Initiative’ trained former prisoners work in the East Bay School system to teach the skills that help prevent crime.
The results of the Sept-Oct 2009 IMC Community Survey are in. They are broken into three parts and are available in PDF:
Our survey received 322 responses – 242 (75%) from people who attend in person, and 80 (25%) from people who primarily interact with IMC online. Fully 98% report that Buddhist practice has had a positive or very positive effect on their life. In-person population:
- Two-thirds have been participating with IMC for at least 3 years, and more than 17% for more than decade.
- About 60% of attendees meditate at home nearly every day.
- Over 30% of our respondents have practiced meditation for over 10 years, with 98% reporting mindfulness as their primary spiritual practice and metta practice at almost 80%.
- The most frequently cited interest was ‘daily life practice’, followed by residential retreats and sutta study.
Primarily online population:
- This group is unusual in having more men than women, and it is generally a younger (30% under 35 years old) population than attends IMC in person.
- Naturally quite interested in more video options and online courses, but also in a more interactive sangha.
Open-ended comments: Gratefulness for IMC was most common. Access to teachers / mentor support and various ways for connection within the sangha were primary themes.
Passing It On is an independent, ad-free collection of writing and art by lay practitioners connected with the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. The collection celebrates the every-day lives of dharma practitioners, but not in a way that ignores its complexity. The personal essays, short stories, poetry, and art explore the challenges we face and the moments when we rise to meet those challenges.
Passing It On is available in HTML and PDF at:
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/books-articles/passing-it-on/
Saturday, February 27, 2010, 9am to 4:30pm
Beside insight meditation, metta or lovingkindness meditation is a foundational practice of our Buddhist practice. It is the opening to a compassionate heart, the heartfelt wish for the well-being of oneself and others. A day dedicated to cultivating friendliness and goodwill.
Greg Scharf began meditation practice in 1992. He has studied with a variety of teachers both in Asia and the west, and has trained as a Buddhist monk in Burma. Greg has served on staff at the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts, and as a retreat manager in Burma. He also served as attendant to Sayadaw U Pandita, Sayadaw U Lakkhanna, and Pa-Auk Sayadaw, and completed a year-long pilgrimage to India with Ajahn Amaro. Greg is currently participating in a teacher-training program under the guidance of Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and others.
Saturday, February 20, 9am to 4:30pm
This is a daylong retreat with alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation, instruction in mindfulness practice, particularly in mindfulness of the body and a dharma talk. It is recommended for both beginners and experienced practitioners. No interviews. Bring lunch.
Saturday, February 6, 2010, 9am to 4:30pm
This will be a day of silent and verbal exploration of our own dying process beginning now. In a safe, caring environment we will offer the Buddhist teachings on death as well as our own experiences, fears, hopes, concerns. Together we will share our process and do an exercise to help us get more in touch with the reality of our dying and begin to demystify the whole aura around death. Please bring lunch so we can continue to share during the eating time.
Berget Jelane has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 1986. She coordinates and teaches at the San Jose Sangha. As a graduate of the Sati Center Chaplaincy program, she conducts weddings, funerals, and other ceremonies. In her psychotherapy practice, she uses mindfulness with psychotherapeutic exploration to help clients break free of old patterns of behavior.
David Cohn began practice at Zen Center in 1969 with Suzuki Roshi, later becoming a disciple of Baker Roshi. A residential student at Tassajara, Green Gulch Farm, and City Center until 1984, he was ordained as a priest in 1977. David worked for Stewart Brand at Whole Earth for a year, before opening his first restaurant in 1985, another in 1988 and retiring in January 2009. David has been a Zen Hospice Project volunteer since 1998 and Board Member. He maintains connections with Zen Center as a Board member for Everyday Zen and management consultant for Greens Restaurant as well as exploring practice opportunities at IMC.
Friday, January 15, 9:30am to 1pm
This morning class will offer an in-depth study of an important discourse by the Buddha. In a dramatic narrative context, a king asks the Buddha about what benefits come from the religious life. The Buddha responds by describing the stages of Buddhist practice. The sutta is the second discourse in Long Discourses. A translation can be found online at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.02.0.than.html.
Saturday, January 30, 8:30am to 5pm
Practicing mindfulness on retreat is one of the foundations for maturing insight meditation. The simplicity, silence and support of retreats contribute to letting go of many of the distractions that get in the way of clear seeing. Retreats also are a wonderful environment for developing a continuity of awareness for an extended period. This particular daylong retreat is meant for people who already understand the basic practice of mindfulness; no instruction will be given. The schedule consists of alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation. At the end of the day Gil gives a Dharma talk. Brief interviews to talk about the practice will be available with Gil. Previous experience is recommended.
Interviews available. Bring Lunch.
Third Friday of the Month Evenings, 7pm to 9pm
On the Monastic Evenings one or more Theravadan nuns will be offering traditional Buddhist chanting, silent or guided meditation, and sharing the Dhamma from the heart. This may take the form of a Dhamma reflection, Dhamma dialogue, taking refuge, or questions and answers. The Saranaloka Foundation was established in 2004 to support nuns from Chithurst and Amaravati monasteries in England to come to the United States to teach. With the blessing of the Forest Sangha, the nuns’ community is now setting up a permanent monastery here in the United States. They currently live at the Aloka Vihara in San Francisco. www.saranaloka.org.
Saturday, December 5, 9am to 4:30pm
For Young Adults, Ages 20-35
Come join us for a day of practice and experiential investigation into our shadows—dark and light, individual and collective—and how “shadow work” can be a major part of our spiritual practice! Carl Jung spoke of the shadow of the individual as “the ‘negative’ side of the personality, the sum of all those unpleasant qualities we like to hide.” Yet, he thought, the shadow also carries energies and insights necessary for wholeness. Through shadow work, we can reduce the shadow’s destructive potential by bringing darkness to the light, and light to the darkness. In a similar way, the Buddha would often invite Mara, a personification of greed, hatred, and delusion, in for tea, like an old friend.
We will also explore the collective or cultural shadow, which often drives groups and organizations (including religious and spiritual ones!), cultures, and societies. It manifests in a number of ways, for example, in the residues from not fully resolved or acknowledged past historical suffering (such as slavery) or in collective ways of forming “enemies” or targeting certain groups for negative treatment.
The day will include meditation, talks, conversation, and experiential exercises, all with an emphasis on supporting each other as a community as we deepen our practice and understanding.
Donald Rothberg, a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976 and has also received training in Dzogchen and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, he is the guiding teacher for the two-year Spirit Rock program, “Path of Engagement” and the author of The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World.
Kate Janke started her meditation practice in 2004 at IMC, followed by a transformative period of practice in Thailand. She is now one of the co-founders of the Saturday Night Sangha sitting group in the East Bay and the creator of the Young Adult Dharma Council. Kate is also a Mindfulness Teacher with the Mindful Schools Project and a participant in the Dedicated Practitioners Program (DPP) at Spirit Rock.
Dear friend of IMC,
Twenty-five years ago a few people began to meet in Menlo Park on Monday evenings to practice mindfulness meditation and listen to Buddhist teachings together. They planted the seed that grew to become IMC. Not only do we have an active center, we also have a “virtual community” of thousands who listen to our talks online through Audiodharma, iTunes and other websites. This is remarkable given that all our programs, publications, and online Dharma talks are offered freely. Our growth is clearly the result of the generosity of the many people who have benefited from what our community offers. Those of you who practice with us, who volunteer, and who financially donate to IMC all contribute to the field of generosity and goodwill which sustains us. Our programs are open to anyone to participate as they can and as they want.
In this annual fundraising letter, I first and foremost want to express my great gratitude to all the people who practice with and support IMC. For me, our community is a wonderful expression of the liberation, compassion and love that the Buddha pointed to. I never could have imagined I would be teaching in such an inspiring community based on the most meaningful values found in Buddhism. Many, many thanks!
IMC is fortunate to have a well cared for building, an expanding range of programs, an extensive online offering of talks, and enough support to offer residential retreats every year. The donations we receive from this end-of-the-year fundraising letter are significant means by which we finance our online offerings, our center and our growth, including how many residential retreats we can offer.
I invite you to donate to IMC. If you do, we will use your donations skillfully and will measure our success by the amount of well being we’re able to bring to the world. We hope to support increasingly more people in their practice to ease suffering and find freedom.
You can find more information on how to donate by visiting:
http://www.insightmeditationcenter.org/annualfund/
With gratitude and best wishes,
Gil Fronsdal
Tuesdays, January 12, 19 and 26, 2010, 7:30 to 9pm
A 3-week series
Pain can color every aspect of our lives, but our relationship with pain can be retrained. We will explore different methods of working with the physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects of physical pain both in meditation practice and in daily life. The core principles of mindfulness training can be adapted to a practical process that can be effectively used for both intense and chronic pain. Contact Ines at inesfreed@gmail.com.
Ines Freedman first became interested in meditation through her yoga practice in 1970. She has been practicing Buddhist meditation since 1985, with Gil Fronsdal being her primary teacher since 1995. She is a graduate of the Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leader Program and a past Managing Director of Insight Meditation Center. She directs and teaches the Audiodharma Online Meditation Course, and serves on the IMC Chaplaincy council. She is a retired chiropractor.
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