Coming to Our Senses:
A Day of Momentary Adventures, Conversation, and Inquiry with Jon Kabat-Zinn
In this workshop, Jon Kabat-Zinn will guide us in various mindfulness practices for cultivating intimacy with awareness. We will explore our potential for embodying wisdom and compassion, not in some distant future but here and now. Befriending our senses and the mind, at any age, with any condition, we have the potential to heal and to know the actuality of the world we inhabit. As we know the fullness of our inner and outer experience, we inhabit both body and world with greater ease, freedom, humility and compassion. Then, even in the face of pain and fear, numbness and feeling overwhelmed, we can act in ways that embody integrity and wisdom.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D is a meditation teacher, writer, and scientist. He was the founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at UMass Medical School. He is the author of Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World through Mindfulness; Full Catastrophe Living and Wherever You Go, There You Are. He is co-author, with his wife Myla, of Everyday Blessings: The Inner Work of Mindful Parenting.

Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom
A Day of Meditation and Conversation with Charlie Halpern and Joseph Goldstein
This day will explore the relationship of social action and meditative insight. For most people interested in bringing about needed social and institutional change, there is the on-going challenge of maintaining balance, compassion and hope. Through periods of guided meditation, discourse, dialogue, and questions and answers, we will discuss ways of working for a more just, compassionate and sustainable world, while cultivating the wisdom that supports and deepens this work. This workshop is a joint benefit for CIMC, The Insight Meditation Society, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and lovingkindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and a founder of The Forrest Refuge, a center for experienced students, also in Barre. Since 1967 Joseph has studied and practiced different forms of Buddhist meditation under eminent teachers from India, Burma and Tibet. He is the author of Insight Meditation: The Practice of Freedom, The Experience of Insight; and One Dharma: the Emerging Western Buddhism. He is co-author of Seeking the Heart of Wisdom and Insight Meditation: A Correspondence Course. His new book is A Heart Full of Peace.

Charlie Halpern is founder and Board Chair of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society. (www.contemplativemind.org). He is also a public interest entrepreneur, an innovator in legal education, a pioneer in the public interest law movement, and a long-time meditator. His new book is Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom.

The Three Characteristics of Life
A workshop with Sharon Salzberg
There is a saying in the Chinese tradition: "If you want to understand the nature of water, look at the waves." If we look deeply into the waves of phenomena of the body and mind, we will see the three characteristics that are, according to the Buddha, the nature of life: change, insecurity and egolessness. Through dialogue, guided meditation and discourse, this workshop will explore these three, both experientially and theoretically. This workshop is suitable for beginning and advanced practitioners.

Sharon Salzberg has been leading meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. She teaches both insight meditation and lovingkindness and compassion meditation. She is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. Sharon’s books include The Force of Kindness, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience; Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness and A Heart as Wide as the World. She co-authored with Joseph Goldstein Insight Meditation, a Step-by-Step Course on How to Meditate (audio). She edited Voices of Insight, an anthology of writings by vipassana teachers in the west.