If all goes to plan, I’m about to start my usual month of self-retreat in September so I’ll be out of contact for quite a while, but I wanted to let you know about a couple of new events that I’ll be teaching for Auckland Insight.The first is a one-day meditation workshop exploring the foundationsContinueContinue reading “Two new events in Aotearoa / New Zealand”
Category Archives: Four Foundations of Mindfulness
NEW: online weekend retreat
Balancing Effort and Enjoyment This weekend retreat will focus on the balance between effort and enjoyment in insight meditation, to help refresh, renew, and re-inspire your practice. For many people, enjoyment is less well developed than effort—as it was for the Buddha himself at the start of his own journey to freedom—so there will beContinueContinue reading “NEW: online weekend retreat”
NEW: planned six-week retreat in Aotearoa / New Zealand
Dates: 3 April – 22 May 2027Teachers: Jill Shepherd and Willa Thāniyā Reid, with Elizabeth Day Kalyāna: Cultivating the Beautiful in the Spiritual Life The Buddha has pointed out the way:beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle,and beautiful in the end. Supported by spiritual friendship and seclusion, this six-week retreat offers the ideal conditionsContinueContinue reading “NEW: planned six-week retreat in Aotearoa / New Zealand”
August 2016 full moon – Seven Factors of Awakening and Equanimity (again)
Seven Factors of Awakening I’ve recently enjoyed leading a couple of longer residential retreats in New Zealand and Australia, exploring the teachings from the Satipatthana Sutta on the Seven Factors of Awakening: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy or rapture, tranquillity, concentration or stability of mind, and equanimity. When cultivated together and brought into balance with eachContinueContinue reading “August 2016 full moon – Seven Factors of Awakening and Equanimity (again)”
September 2015 full moon – Maintaining Motivation (or finding antidotes to “sloth and torpor”)
The five hindrances I’ve been back in New Zealand for the month of September, and with the Auckland Insight group, we’ve been exploring the Five Hindrances, five particularly unhelpful states of mind that get in the way of clear seeing, of insight. They appear in the Satipatthana Sutta under the Fourth Foundation of Mindfulness, asContinueContinue reading “September 2015 full moon – Maintaining Motivation (or finding antidotes to “sloth and torpor”)”