Journey Into the Mirror: A Four-Day Meditation & Study Retreat
Lynn Friedman and I will lead a public four-day meditation and study retreat in Alameda, California and on Zoom. It will take place over the Veterans Day Weekend: Friday, November 10th through Monday, November 13th, 2023.
Journeying into the mirror is a metaphor for recognizing our true nature. When we don’t recognize our nature, we’re deceived by our own experience. We run after reflections we want and away from ones we fear. Recognizing the nature of these reflections liberates us from this endless compulsive cycle.
In this retreat we’ll explore a contemporary Mahayana Buddhist approach to finding freedom from the tyranny of materialism and delusion, and learn how to practice compassion in an illusory world.
Revealing the Ground: A Mahayana Journey for an Age of Materialism
Into the Mirror is a guidebook for a Mahayana journey that culminates in shunyata—the empty, luminous nature of reality itself. This is the profound insight that opens the door to freedom. In this three-week online class we will investigate ways to overcome materialism and ignorance using powerful methods from Mahayana Buddhism and contemporary philosophy.
In this class, we will first look into methods for cutting the karmic chain reactions that bind us in samsara. Next we will explore contemporary approaches that challenge our materialistic assumptions. From there we will investigate techniques for deconstructing mental fabrications and elaborations. Finally, we will learn how recognizing the basic ground dissolves the foundations of duality.
“This is the universal ground of everything: it is the basis of freedom and also the basis of confusion.”
-VCTR, The Sadhana of Mahamudra