In this 8 week meditation workshop series with Tergar Instructor Myoshin Kelley, we will learn how meditating on loving-kindness and compassion can open our hearts to the world around us and relax the self-centered tendencies that lead to anxiety, dissatisfaction, and suffering.

Cultivating loving-kindness and compassion helps us to see the basic goodness that all beings share. By relating to others in an open-hearted way, we bring peace to the mind and develop a sense of confidence and purpose. This, in turn, naturally brings harmony to our relationships and enables us to work with challenging situations more effectively.

In a world that often encourages independence and self-reliance, many of us are left feeling disconnected and overwhelmed.

This program invites you into a radically different way of seeing and being: a space to explore the profound truth of our interconnection. Through teachings, meditation, small group reflection, and experiential practices, we'll explore interdependence not just as an idea but as a living, breathing truth. By reconnecting to our shared humanity and our deep belonging to this planet, we awaken the compassion and wisdom already within us.

Retreat gives us the time and space to explore our experience and discover aspects of your being that are difficult to connect with in everyday life. It allows you to focus on meditation practice throughout the day, both on and off the cushion. A community retreat has the additional benefit of being supported by the practice of others.

This is the second year offering the Joy of Living Program in its entirety as a one-month retreat program. This program was developed at Mingyur Rinpoche’s request, and offers participants the opportunity to receive the Joy of Living 1, 2 and 3 teachings, and complete the homework simultaneously in a retreat context. These introduce the foundations of meditation practice, focusing on awareness, loving-kindness and compassion and wisdom. Learning the Joy of Living in this way allows for profound experiential learning, deepening of one’s personal practice, and the opportunity to see how each of these levels integrate and support one another.

In the Buddhist tradition, the cultivation of wisdom and compassion is considered the key to transforming the mind and alleviating our suffering. Cultivating wisdom involves letting go of fixed perceptions of how the world appears to be and looking at how things actually are. As freeing as this ultimately is, the path can often feel scary and challenging. Thus we need to practice in a way that is infused with compassion or a tender heart that wants to alleviate suffering. A compassion that becomes more informed by wisdom.