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FEATURED ARTICLE:
Between Desire & Emptiness - A Reflection from Sharon Salzberg 
Finding Freedom through Insight Meditation...
June 27 - July 3, 2015
Teacher
Brian Lesage

Columbine Inn
Taos Ski Valley, NM

Please contact TMH office re: available spaces...
Insight meditation is a simple & direct practice based on moment-to- moment awareness. Learning to be aware of our experience from a place of stillness & equanimity allows us to see more clearly, and as insight deepens, compassion & wisdom can arise.
Retreat is designed for beginners & experienced practitioners alike.
Brian Lesage has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1988 and has taught meditation since 2000. He has studied in the Zen, Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism. Brian also has a private practice in Somatic Experiencing, a naturalistic approach to healing trauma.

Sliding Scale Fees:
$444 (low)   $644 (actual cost)  $844 (benefactor)
Partial Scholarships Available - Application Necessary
Manifesting Spiritual Aspiration by
 Deepening Practice...
Teachers: 
Gina Sharpe
 & Larry Yang
Columbine Inn
Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico

Co-sponsored by NY Insight & East Bay Meditation Center (CA)


This retreat for Communities of Color will be the first such retreat of 10 days' duration, for those who have been undertaking study and practice for at least four years.  Accompanying the instructions for retreat practice will be deep exploration of what constitutes authentic personal expression of the traditional teachings and what bridges the contexts of practice between the Buddha's time and our present day cultures.  We will examine the relationship of the personal and the collective in reflection and practice.  We will also explore how to live in the relative world with transcendent understanding and how to apply transcendent values to living immanently in the relative world.  We deepen practice to live with integrity, kindness, attention and true service in our vulnerable world.
Ample scholarship support for students 
 wishing to attend this retreat. Still a few spaces available.  APPLY SOON.
Gina Sharpe was born in Jamaica and immigrated to New York Gina Sharpe at the age of 11. After retiring from the practice of law, she co-founded New York Insight Meditation Center where she serves as Guiding Teacher.  She has taught at Retreat Centers and other venues around the United States including a maximum security prison for women.  She has been teaching the Dharma since 1995 and is particularly inspired by the potential and application of Dharma to transform and illuminate interpersonal and multi-cultural relations.
Larry Yang teaches meditation retreats nationally and has a special interest in creating access to the Dharma for  diverse multicultural communities. Larry has practiced extensively in Burma and Thailand, with a six month period of ordination as a Buddhist monk under the guidance of Ajahn Tong.  Larry is on the Teacher's Council and the Board of Spirit Rock Meditation Center, is one of the core teachers of East Bay Meditation Center (Oakland), and is the Guiding Teacher and on the Board of the Insight Community of the Desert (Palm Springs). He is part of the coordinating team developing future community dharma teachers in Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leadership Program. In addition, Larry is trained as a psychotherapist and a consultant in cultural competency-giving workshops and presentations in diversity and multicultural issues.
Sliding Scale Fees:  
 $744  (low)     $994  (actual cost)     $1244  (benefactor)
Partial Scholarships Available - Application Necessary
More 2015 Retreats...                           (just click on retreat to go to website page)
Does Buddhism provide any special insight into the ecological crisis? Do its teachings imply a different way of understanding the biosphere, and our relationship to it, which can really help us at this critical time in history, when we are doing so much Dhammadinna smilingto destroy it?

This retreTenzin Jesse frontat will combine the practice and study of metta, or loving friendliness meditation. The Buddha taught metta meditation to quell fear  and anger, to promote harmonious  relationships, and to purify the mind in concentration. The benefits of this practice touch every aspect of our lives.

Buddhism: Between Desire and Emptiness

A Reflection from Sharon Salzberg 

The path of the Buddha is called the middle path because, as well as avoiding extremes of behavior, it avoids two extreme views. One view holds that somewhere in this world of appearance  and presentation, this glittering world of sense pleasure, of fleeting phenomena, there is something, somewhere that we can find that will not change, that we can always count on to be stable. Somewhere there is something that is substantial, that is solid, that can be relied upon always. When we hold that view, we look for that one thing constantly. At times we think that finally we have it. Then we hold on tightly. Eventually we confront change or we experience loss, and we suffer.

I was in Toronto not too long ago and at one point passed a giant billboard that had a picture of a car and one phrase: "Lust conquers all." I never got to go by it again to investigate further. But despite the prevalence of that kind of message, on visible and invisible billboards everywhere, counting on the fervor of our lust to conquer the exigencies of change, the flow of time, or the avoidance of death, is clearly folly.

 

Yet if that view permeates our belief systems and our motivations, we will continually act from that place and be disappointed again and again. This doesn't mean that we can't enjoy anything, but the clinging and grasping and fruitless attachment can well go, and we would be happier people, living more in accord with how things actually are.

 

The other extreme view holds that our lives are chaos. Here, everything is empty so it doesn't matter what we do, what we care about, what we think about. It's all kind of blank or void. It's from that point of view that people will say: "Well, if effort to improve my life or make this a better world is an empty phenomenon, what difference does it make if I put forth effort or not? Why bother?" It is then that a Zen master would usually take a stick and hit somebody over the head. "If everything is empty, why did that hurt?"

 

From the Buddhist point of view, it is true that emptiness is a characteristic of all of life - if we look  carefully at any experience we will find transparency, insubstantiality, with no solid, unchanging core to our experience. But that does not mean that nothing matters. Things don't just happen in this world of arising and passing away. We don't live in some kind of crazy, accidental universe. Things happen according to certain laws, laws of nature. Laws such as the law of karma, which teaches us that as a certain seed gets planted, so will that fruit be. If we plant an apple seed, we can beg and plead and implore to have a mango, but we aren't going to get it. There is a way to get a mango, because we live in a lawful universe, and that is to plant a mango seed.

 

It is very important that we be able to hold both these truths at the same time - the ultimate emptiness of our experience, its constant changing nature, and, at the same time, to understand that it is lawful. It's not crazy, and it's not haphazard, and we can, and must direct our lives according to these laws.

 

When the Dalai Lama was here some years ago, he was asked by somebody giving a talk about these two aspects of the teachings, understanding emptiness and the ultimate nature of all experience, and then understanding the law of karma in the relative world, the world of relationship. He was asked if he had to make a choice between these two approaches and could only teach one, which one would he teach? He said he would teach the law of karma because, in each and every moment, if we understand that law, we have the possibility of really transforming our lives.

 

The middle way is a view of life that avoids the extreme of misguided grasping born of believing there is something we can find, or buy, or cling to that will not change. And it avoids the despair and nihilism born from the mistaken belief that nothing matters, that all is meaningless. It avoids these extremes by offering us a vision that is empowered by its alliance with the truth of how things are: that everything arises, but also passes; that what we do matters, though we won't find anything that does not change; that totems against impermanence won't keep us safe, but we can, in accordance with laws of nature such as karma, create a life filled with wisdom and love.

   

Teacher Sharon Salzberg is a co-founder of Insight Meditation Society and author of numerous books, including Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness. Sharon is on the Advisory Board of The Mountain Hermitage. This article originally appeared May 2010 in Huffington Post.
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Limited scholarship support available for all of our retreats. Application Necessary.
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