Registration Open! 2022 Spring Retreat with Santikaro
This retreat will be held online, on Zoom.
Retreat Descrtiption
We are minds, hearts, and bodies going about the business of life: breathing, surviving, loving, learning, working, aging, and dying. All aspects of life are Dhamma, natural phenomena, conditioned events that interact and move on. When understood with wisdom, life is capable of great beauty and compassion. When cluttered with “extras,” life bogs down in anxiety and suffering, aggression and violence, acquisitiveness and greed. What are these extras? How do they inflict hurt and harm?
Seeing With the Eye of Dhamma, a new publication from Buddhadasa Bhikkhu, offers a contemplative journey into the subtleties of life, exploring what’s natural and Dhammic, and what’s needlessly extra. Santikaro, the editor and translator, will share these themes each day of the retreat. Along with meditation practice, we will ask vital questions of ourselves and look into the heart of practice, the end of suffering.
Beginners and experienced meditators alike are welcome.
Retreat Format
This retreat is formatted to highlight how pragmatic the Dhamma teachings are in everyday life. One could call it a “Bookend Retreat” in which other life activities are framed by Dhamma reflections. We begin and end each day with meditation, thus bringing the fragrance of Dhamma to all we do during each day.
The retreat format will involve two 90-minute sessions a day—early morning(6:30am) and evening(7:00pm)—with an additional optional guided meditation(10:30am). If your life allows, you can of course meditate and study throughout the day.
Reciprocal Support-Dana
The Buddha’s teachings, sanghas of training and practice, places of practice, and practice resources involve the hard work of many people, technical skills, financial generosity, and an overall spirit of reciprocal service. As a participant in this course, in addition to the registration payment, we ask you to support Santikaro and Kevala Retreat in ways suitable to your means and abilities. The kindness of others has made this course possible; your help insures that such activities continue. You can learn more about the practice of generosity here.
Registration Fee
There is a $50 non-refundable fee that will be donated to Kevala Retreat (Santikaro's practice center). This fee is to encourage commitment to full participation. No one will be refused because of inability to pay this fee. Please email us if you cannot afford the fee so that we can make other arrangements.
Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu's book Seeing with the Eye of the Dhamma can be ordered here.
About Santikaro
Santikaro is a teacher of Dhamma & meditation according to the middle way of the early sources. He was born and raised int he Chicago area. He lived as a Buddhist monk for 19 years training under and translating for Ajahn Buddhadasa. After retiring from the monkhood in 2004 he founded Kevala Retreat, in rural southwestern Wisconsin, with his wife, Jo Marie Thompson. He teaches throughout the USA and internationally. Read more about Kevala Retreat at www.kevalaretreat.org.
If you have any questions, please contact us at: events@insightchicago.org