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”
Tag Archives: Insight Meditation Society
July 2017 full moon – Gratitude
Just last week, I finished a one-month retreat at the Insight Meditation Society’s Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts, led by Sayadaw U Vivekananda. What a relief it was, to temporarily put down some of the burdens I didn’t even know I was carrying, and to have such a powerful opportunity to “disentangle the tangle” (asContinueContinue reading “July 2017 full moon – Gratitude”
June 2016 full moon – Inspiration and taking refuge in sangha/community
Graduates of the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock four-year teacher training programme, 10 June 2016 – photo by Ben Marshall In my last international newsletter back in April, I wrote about inspiration, an aspect of spiritual practice that surprisingly, doesn’t seem to be talked about very often. As I discovered back then, “… theContinueContinue reading “June 2016 full moon – Inspiration and taking refuge in sangha/community”
November 2015 full moon – gratitude
A few slightly random reflections on Gratitude “These two people are hard to find in the world. Which two? The one who is first to do a kindness, and the one who is grateful and thankful for a kindness done.” AN 2.118 As the three-month retreat at IMS comes to a close, there’s a definiteContinueContinue reading “November 2015 full moon – gratitude”
Meditating together in May
Each month on or about the full moon, I’ve been trying to write a post about some aspect of dharma practice that’s relevant to what’s happening in my own life. This next full moon though, I plan to be on retreat at the Insight Meditation Society’s Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts, for the whole monthContinueContinue reading “Meditating together in May”