Your Life Is Your Practice: Insight Meditation Retreat

Registration for this retreat is closed

Closed
Registration is closed for this retreat.
August 16 - August 23, 2013 (Friday to Friday)


This retreat is full with a short waitlist. To be added to the list, submit a registration and deposit.

All scholarship funds have been awarded.


Insight meditation (vipassana in Pali, the language of the original Buddhist teachings) is the simple and direct practice of moment-to-moment mindfulness. Through careful and sustained observation, we experience for ourselves the ever-changing flow of the mind/body process. This awareness leads us to accept more fully the pleasure and pain, fear and joy, sadness and happiness that life inevitably brings. As insight deepens, we develop greater equanimity and peace in the face of change, and wisdom and compassion increasingly become the guiding principles of our lives.

The Buddha first taught vipassana over 2,500 years ago. The various methods of this practice have been well preserved in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism. IMS retreats are all rooted in this ancient and well-mapped path to awakening, and draw on the full spectrum of this tradition's lineages.

This silent retreat is suitable for both beginning and experienced meditators. An optional daily period of yoga will be offered by Éowyn Ahlstrom.

A Message from IMS's Guiding Teachers

Inevitably, there'll be some noise as IMS's project to renovate the Catskills is underway. (Its completion is currently scheduled for late August 2013.) The work, however, will take place primarily indoors during regular construction hours, usually Monday - Friday, 7:00am-4:00pm.

In the Retreat Center meditation hall, the impact of any renovation noise is further reduced by an air circulation and conditioning system that allows fresh air to move around without opening the windows.

The teachers at IMS decided to continue offering retreats throughout this building period, knowing that conditions for practice are rarely perfect. We trust that these particular conditions can be met with the equanimity and grace with which we meet a range of conditions in our lives.

All of us at IMS look forward to supporting you on retreat.

Teachers