John Makransky Weekend Retreat: Being harmonized with the unconditional love and wisdom of our Buddha nature
Available via Zoom
Session Date: Saturday, January 11 and 12, 2025
Session times:
Saturday 10am-1pm ET, 2:30pm-5:30
Sunday 10am-1pm ET, 2:00pm-3:30
Fee: $160
Tiered pricing and BIPOC Discount Available
From a Tibetan Buddhist perspective, our buddha nature is the basic space of our being that is undivided from vast capacities of awareness, warmth, love, compassion and wisdom. These capacities are always available below our surface consciousness, but often hidden by our conditioned habits of thought and reaction. In this retreat, we will learn three modes of practice derived from Tibetan Buddhism that empower each other as they harmonize us with those innate capacities. The receptive mode generates a field of care that helps us find immediate access to unconditional qualities of love and wisdom from the depth of our awareness (our buddha nature).
In the deepening mode, we let those 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. This contemplative process also empowers our ability to discern the empty, constructed nature of our experiences, freeing the mind for further access to its innate awakening capacities.
In this weekend retreat, we will adapt this pattern of practice from Tibetan Buddhism, with some assistance from modern psychology, to make it accessible both for Buddhist practitioners and for people of all faiths who have previous contemplative experience and seek an accessible way to cultivate unconditional love and wisdom. Guided meditations, Q&A and discussion. Prerequisites: At least two previous years of regular contemplative practice (meditation or prayer). And before the retreat, please read John’s book, Awakening through Love (Wisdom, 2007), or as much of it as possible.
******
Bio: John Makransky, PhD, has been a professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College, senior advisor for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre of Buddhist Studies in Nepal, a fellow of the Mind and Life Institute, past president of the Society of Buddhist-Christian Studies, and developer of the Sustainable Compassion Training model for accessing innate capacities of compassion and awareness. John’s scholarly writings have focused on connections between practices of devotion, compassion and non-dual wisdom in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting Buddhist practices to meet contemporary minds, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning. In 2000, John was ordained as a Lama, a meditation teacher of innate compassion and wisdom, within the Nyingma Dzogchen tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. As a meditation teacher, John is known for guiding participants in their discovery of underlying powers of unconditional love and wisdom. For the past 24 years, John has taught meditations of innate compassion and wisdom, adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, for modern Buddhists, those in other spiritual traditions, and for people in caring roles and professions.
**For those who cannot attend live or would like to review, each session will be recorded and accessible for the following week.
------