In-person Retreat
Dates: March 17-21 2027
Location: Potash Hill
2582 South Road, Marlboro, VT 05344
Registration Coming Soon
Deep Training in Sustainable Compassion and Wisdom
This retreat will be co-taught with John Makransky.
From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, our buddha nature is the basic space of our being undivided from vast capacities of awareness, warmth, love, compassion and wisdom. These innate capacities are always available below our surface consciousness, but often hidden by our habits of thought and reaction. In this retreat, we will learn three modes of practice drawn from Tibetan Buddhism that harmonize us with those innate capacities. The receptive mode generates a field of care that helps us find direct access to unconditional qualities of love and wisdom from the depth of our awareness (our buddha nature), making us into a profoundly healing environment for all parts of ourselves and others. In the deepening mode, we let those loving qualities help the mind settle into their source—the non-conceptual openness, simplicity, clarity, and compassionate warmth of our buddha nature. In the inclusive mode we come from that depth of being to recognize others in their depth, and to include them in those unconditional qualities of openness and compassion. Those three modes of practice provide a foundation for meditations of compassion that convert our own painful experiences into compassion for others and that extend compassion in increasingly all-inclusive and unconditional ways (beyond “compassion fatigue”). This contemplative process also empowers deepening wisdom–the ability to discern the empty, constructed nature of all our reactions that impede compassion for others.
In this retreat, we adapt this pattern of practice from Tibetan Buddhism, with assistance from relevant areas of modern psychology, to make it accessible both for Buddhist practitioners and for people of all faiths and backgrounds who have previous contemplative experience and seek an accessible way to cultivate unconditional love and wisdom.
Teacher dana
Please note that the retreat fees do not include payment for the teaching. Jess will not be paid for her teachings through the registration fees. Instead, in the long Buddhist tradition and practice of dana (Pali word for generosity), she will be offering the teachings freely.
Retreat participants will be invited into the practice of dana and given the opportunity to offer Jess a gift after the retreat ends.
Arrival: March 17, 2027, 3:00 – 5:00 pm
Departure: March 21 2027, 2:00 pm
Linens are available to rent from Potash Hill for $15 and can be added within the registration.
(We aim to provide scholarships for this retreat, but it is not guaranteed at this time. )
Registration Coming Soon