Resident teacher Susan Weir
Susan has been leading sittings and teaching insight meditation classes since 1999. |
![]() |
Winter 2019 continuing class
Fall 2018 continuing class
Fall 2018 retreat
Fall 2018 class: Understanding Suffering
Week 1 review Perceptions and Circumstances
Week 2 review We suffer more from perceptions than circumstances
Week 3 review Looking at beliefs that underlie suffering
Spring 2018 retreat on Identification: co-taught with Lou Weir
Friday night talk Lou: Introduction to Identification
Saturday afternoon Lou: reification and guided meditation
Saturday night talk Susan: who are we really? Not this, not that.
Sunday morning guided meditation Lou: letting the meditator go
Winter 2018: Continuing class
Feb 13: talk on psychological processes that go along with meditation
April 3: How living in the perceptive flow builds the sense of separate self
April 3: Homework: Working with awareness of opening and closing
Fall 2017: Understanding the Path of Insight
Fall 2017 retreat
Retreat poems - Rumi and Hafiz
Friday night talkThe personality is not our hope
Saturday night talk What's the bigger space, the farthest shore?
Spring 2017 retreat
Saturday morning graduated practice instructions: Level 1 - container consciousness
Saturday morning graduated practice instructions: Level 2 - what's pulling the strings
Saturday morning graduated practice instructions: Level 3 - watching consciousness itself
On being headless - talk The intro talk to the Douglas Harding "On Being Headless" exercises.
On being headless -exercises - Here are the three exercises done: the Douglas Harding "On Being Headless" exercises, followed by an exploration of the lack of boundaries around the self, ending up with pointing out instructions.
Saturday night talk: - manipulating the content of our experience
Paul Smit's Advaita Cowboy - YouTube video
Sunday morning talk - presence with pain as the wise response to life
Closing poem: Cast all your votes for Dancing
Spring 2017: Looking at the Suttas
Thus I have heard: a short history of the suttas and the Nikayas
March 14: Class review notes: The Kalama Sutta and the Charter of Enquiry
March 28: Class review notes: The Kalama Sutta and the Afflictions
April 11: Class review notes: The Kalama Sutta working with the Afflictions
Spring 2016 retreat
Friday night talk
Moving from doing to being, guided instructions into concentration practice on the breath.- Saturday night talk: The Heart Sutra
Winter 2016: Continuing class
Fall 2015: Continuing class
Oct 8: Talk two - Coming back into the moment
Oct 22: Talk - Concentration in practice, looking at what pulls us away from the moment
Dec.3: Talk - Practice and moving this energy from unconscious to conscious
Sept. 2015: Non- random acts of Kindness and Generosity
Spring 2015 retreat
Winter 2015 Continuing Class: becoming present with discomfort
Fall 2014 Continuing Class: practice tune up, three marks of existence
Spring 2014 retreat
Spring 2014 Retreat talk part A.
NOTE: I was part way through the talk when realizing that the recorder was not switched on. Part A was re-recorded at home a few days later to the best of memory.Spring 2014 Retreat talk part B.
Summer 2014 Continuing workshop: Right Concentration
Talk 1: What is Right Concentration
There was a rich class discussion before this talk, and the class agreement is to not record any discussion. Please keep in mind as you listen that you are hearing the tail end of a larger conversation.Talk 2: Working with the Hindrances
Talk 3: Access Concentration and the Insight Process
Winter 2014 Continuing Class: 8 Fold Path: Right view, right intention, right effort, right mindfulness
-
Class 1 talk: Approaching the Dharma teachings
-
Class 2 talk: Right View, Right Intentions
Class 3 review: Mindfulness Stage 1 and 2
Class 3 talk: Mindfulness Stage 1 and 2
Class 3-4 extra homework: Insight from Non-Mindfulness
-
Class 4 talk: Intro Right Effort
Class 5 talk: Right Effort Can only come from Within #1
-
Class 5 talk: Right Effort #2- some pointers
-
Class 6 talk: On Resistance and Getting Stuck
Fall 2013 Continuing Class
Class 1 review: what do we truly want?
Class 2 review: Looking at the skandas
Class 3 talk: Awareness and consciousness
Class 4 review: Flatland and Having no Head
Seeing Mind and Stories as a way to Nondual Awareness
Class 1: review of and focus on practice
Class 2: beginning the stories exercis
Class 3: looking at our stories
Class 4: life’s little treadmill
Class 5: seeing stories as a gift
Class 6: remaining present in hell
-
Class 8: emotional presence as awareness
-
Practice Intensives
In 2007, we developed new retreat format, a practice intensive, which explores the possibility of deep retreat experience without leaving our daily lives.
We've often pondered how we could better bring the deep mindfulness of a retreat experience more fully into our daily lives. Is it possible to cultivate the clarity and presence of sustained retreat meditation without leaving our families, homes, and work?
Some years ago, a student mentioned she was doing a 12 step program called “90 meetings in 90 days”, where she committed to an AA meeting every day for 90 days. It was inspiring. I asked her how she was managing all those meetings with her full time job. She replied that as odd as it sounded, as she oriented everything in her life around making that daily meeting, she felt like she had more time than before. I turned to my husband, also a meditation teacher, and said, “What about 90 sittings in 90 days? Could we get a group together to make a commitment to sit every day for 90 days?” He smiled and said, “Let’s start with a week.” Thus the practice intensive began.
Traditionally held the first full week of January, the core of the intensive is a group sitting every morning at 6:30 at the meditation center. For a group to make this effort creates an energy container participants report feeling held in as they move through the day. We hear repeatedly how the presence of the group is felt by participants throughout the week, a feeling of shared support across the hours and miles of the day that is palpable and mystical.
At the end of the sitting, instructions are given for a specific mindful, dharma based exercise to do for that day. Often these involve carrying a small notebook around and writing down observations, or carrying a small timer that goes off at regular intervals, where the meditator stops what they are engaged in and follows the day’s exercise.
A different theme is chosen each year. These have ranged from finding the contented heart, looking at difficult arisings, cultivating without attachment, practicing presence. Each day’s exercise builds on the previous day, the focus is to bring the dharma into direct experience. After the sitting, a few minutes are given to explaining the day’s exercise. It is also printed out in a handout form at the door, and sent out daily in email form - as we now have people participating who are not local.
Another aspect of intensive is the practice partner. Each person chooses a partner, often someone they do not know well. Daily, the partners have a short phone interaction to support each other in practice. Sharing the exercise of the day, both speak from direct experience, and listen from the heart without cross talk. As this is for mindfulness support, not conversation, we have found it helpful to develop cards we hand out the first night detailing exact guidelines to keep the interaction focused and on track.
On Sunday night before the first early sitting begins, there is a two hour organizational meeting. We introduce ourselves, the flow of the week, and a short talk on the dharma theme we will be exploring. Besides the early morning sitting, people agree to sit in the evening on their own. Practice partners are chosen, phone numbers exchanged, and partner guideline cards are passed out. We model the daily partner interchange, then have partners practice the daily interchange with each other.
Suggestions are made to watch our speech, keep talking to a minimum during the day, and to eat mindfully. Then we enter into noble silence, from that point on entering and leaving the practice center in silence.
As the week progresses, something powerful is set into motion. Perhaps it relates to Goethe’s quote that when we make a firm commitment to something, heaven and earth will move on our behalf. The days take a different rhythm, work and parenting become a focus for mindfulness and inner quiet takes hold. The retreat experience comes home.
The intensive ends Saturday morning. A short sit, then silence is broken. Small group conversation allows for insights and appreciations to be shared. A final dharma talk ties together the exercises for the week and helps fit the week’s experiences into deeper understanding of the dharma. The feedback tells us we’re on to something good – that it is possible to have deep insight and dharma realization using life itself as a vehicle for our practice. We hear about the intensive all year. Amazingly, even as it is inconvenient and challenging, most come back year after year. For myself, it has become my favorite retreat.
Practice Intensive 2018: Cultivating well-being
Sunday overview talk: Well being: the state of non-suffering
Monday exercise: seeing well being internally
Tuesday exercise: transmitting well being to others
Wednesday exercise: when well-being seems absent
-
-
Practice Intensive 2015: Moving from suffering to cessation
Sunday overview theme talk: Seeing the second and third Noble Truths for ourselves
Monday exercise: making friends with wanting
Tuesday exercise: seeing suffering
Wednesday exercise: unpleasantness in life
Thursday exercise: the role of awareness
Friday exercise: closing the escape hatch
Practice Intensive 2014: the Brahma Viharas
-
Monday exercise: loving kindness
-
Wednesday exercise: what the heart wants
Thursday exercise: sympathetic joy
-
Practice Intensive 2013: Feelings and their pull
Overview: Pleasant, UNpleasant and Neutral - a key to practice
Monday exercise: noticing pleasant and unpleasant
Tuesday exercise: habitual reactive patterns
Wednesday exercise: mind creating narrative
Thursday exercise: looking at identification
Friday exercise: equanimity and seeing things as they are
Practice Intensive 2012: Developing Presence
-
Monday exercise: checking in with yourself
Tuesday exercise: touching in quickly
Wednesday exercise: barriers to presence
Thursday exercise: IDing with stress
Friday exercise: shifting the center of gravity
Practice Intensive 2011: Finding the contented heart
Monday exercise: looking for the good
Tuesday exercise: looking for kindness
Wednesday exercise: nourishing ourselves
Thursday exercise: non contentment
Friday exercise: finding contentment
Other events