Intensive Meditation Retreat with Shaila Catherine from USA
Retreat Title: Strategies for Overcoming Distracting Thoughts
Mental restlessness is an insidious and pervasive hindrance that all practitioners struggle to overcome. We can refine our skills for working with the modes of thinking that distract us from being mindful: critical thoughts, planning, worrying, lustful thoughts, judging, memories, internal commentaries, to name a few.
The teachings on this retreat will present a sequence of strategies for dealing with obstructive mental patterns; these progressive instructions are found in two discourses in the Middle Length Discourses, (suttas 19 and 20). Practitioners will be encouraged to develop a mindfulness-based meditation practice, while exploring these strategies for overcoming distractions.
Please read the following two discourses prior to the retreat. You may wish to bring a print out to the retreat for your personal reference.
https://suttacentral.net/en/mn19 | https://suttacentral.net/en/mn20
About the teacher:
Shaila Catherine is the founder of Bodhi Courses, an online Dhamma classroom (http://www.bodhicourses.org), and Insight Meditation South Bay, a Buddhist meditation center in Silicon Valley in California (http://www.imsb.org).
She has been practicing meditation since 1980, accumulating more than eight years of silent retreat experience, and has taught internationally since 1996.
Shaila studied with masters in India, Thailand, and Nepal, and also with the founders of western meditation centers such as Joseph Goldstein and Christopher Titmuss.
She completed a one-year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhāna, and authored "Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity."
Shaila practiced intensively under the direction of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw from 2006-2015, absorbing a precise and rigorous approach to samādhi and vipassanā that continues to inform her teaching.
She authored "Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhāna and Vipassanā" to help make this traditional training in samādhi and vipassanā accessible to western practitioners.
Start: Sunday June 3rd, 2018
Arrival until 5 pm, dinner optional, Introduction 7 pm
End: Friday June 8th, 2018
Retreat Closing around 09.00 pm
NEW: continuation and natural conclusion of the week' retreat
Saturday June 9th, 2018
Begin: 9.30 am | End: 05.00 pm
Retreat Fee: appropriate to your economic situation from Euro 75,- to Euro 38,-.per day***
Accomodation and food to be booked separately; our Retreat offer: sleep 6 times, pay 5 times
Request for free participation a monastic, please write to: hue.nghiem@buddhasweg.eu
Booking Code: 2018 KS 3.5
For booking please direct your mail to: seminar@buddhasweg.eu or info@buddhasweg.eu
Participants should have some previous meditation experience. This requirement may be satisfied either by having attended at least one previous meditation retreat, or by having an established daily meditation practice for at least six months.
Retreat language is English with German translation.
Please bring appropriate clothing and if you like your own meditation cussion!
*** This sliding scale will allow more people to attend the retraet while covering the most basic costs by the lowest rate. The higher amount helps to support the teacher, her work, translators and is divided between them.
The generosity of those who can pay a higher amount supports those who need to select a lower rate to attend.
By choosing the mid to high range of the sliding scale your generosity supports those with limited income to attend and it supports teacher and the monastic place to enable the dharma to be spread.