8-Week New Year Practice Intensive: Embody the Practice in Daily Life (See full description below)

Online Cohort: 

Wednesdays 4:00-6:00 PM, Jan 11-March 1, 2023 (Zoom link will be sent before our first meeting)

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/8-week-new-year-intensive-embody-the-practice-in-daily-life-tickets-485522048517 

In-Person Cohort (Limited to 30 participants, see COVID Protocols below) 

Mondays 1:00 pm- 3:00 pm, Jan 9- February 27, 2023

Shamballa Center Berkeley

Register Here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/8-week-in-person-new-year-intensive-embody-the-practice-in-daily-life-tickets-493977258277

Covid Guidelines for the in-person group:

We ask that people follow the COVID guidelines that we established for the Sunday Sangha.  (https://uhs.berkeley.edu/requirements/covid19).

Vaccinations, including boosters, are required, Masks are strongly recommended indoors but are not required. If you have symptoms of COVID-19, have tested positive, or think you have had an exposure please stay home and you can join the online cohort for that week.

******If you already registered but want to be in the in-person cohort please send me a separate e-mail with SWITCH ME TO IN-PERSON COHORT in the subject line********

If the fee for the intensive is an obstacle for you please email me at will@sundaysangha.net 

Embody the Practice in Daily Life:

This intensive will be held in the spirit of a non-residential retreat with a weekly online meeting and a commitment to daily formal practice, and journaling. Through awareness exercises, meditative inquiry, dialogue, and creative experimentation we will explore the specific conditions that support each of us in living with awareness. We will be moving our meditation from the cushion into all aspects of our daily lives.

As varied as our experiences seem, all experience is replete with awareness, based in awareness, arising via awareness. We could say that our experience, all of the time, is made of awareness itself. And yet you may often feel distant from this insight and awareness can somehow seem far away or like a faded memory. How can we become intimate with awareness all the time? How can we stay awake in the midst of our lives so that we can actually learn from our experience instead of staying asleep and continually repeating our conditioned patterns of thought and behavior? How can we stay in touch with that aspect of ourselves that is always silent and peaceful and transcends material conditions even amidst seemingly endless temptations and distractions that keep us going for refuge to that which is impermanent, unsatisfying, and unstable? These questions and our personal investigation of them will form the ground of our practice during these two months.

Although formal meditation practice will be an important feature of this intensive (see the daily practice commitment) the focus of our weekly meetings and our time between meetings will be on living with awareness in all aspects and domains of our lives “off the cushion”.

Some of this territory will be explored with reference to Buddhist texts and teachings, including through the lenses of Sila (ethical conduct), Samadhi (unification of mind), and Pana (wisdom) to see how we might incline our own stream of conduct and activity to align more closely with the path that the path of liberation as taught by the Buddha. All of this will be done within the context of a committed practice community so that we can support and inspire each other to live with awareness even as so many elements of the dominant culture conspire to pull us all into unawareness.

I look forward to practicing with you.

Daily Practice Commitments:

Minimum 30-minutes of formal meditation practice

Daily journal entry