Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha

Our next 1/2 day retreat will be held on Sunday, August 22 and will run from 3:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. This retreat will have periods of meditation along with a Dhamma talk on No-Self . There will be an opportunity for discussion as well as a question and answer period.

If you cannot attend the whole retreat, you are welcome to come for the last hour which will be the regular sitting time of 6:00 pm.

The retreat will be held at Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha located in Evansville, Indiana at Bradford Park, 600 N. Weinbach Avenue, Suite 960.

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An invitation to our Half Day Retreat this Sunday, June 27.
The topic is:

The Five Aggregates
Material Form
Feelings
Perception
Mental Formations
Consciousness

We begin at 3:00 pm and finish at 7:00 pm. If you cannot attend the whole retreat, you are welcome to come for the last hour which would be the regular sitting time of 6:00 pm. There will be periods of sitting and walking meditation and dhamma talks.

Plus opportunity for questions and answers.

Consider giving a dana gift as part of this day.

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An invitation and reminder to our Half Day Retreat this month Sunday, May 23.
The topic is the Jhanas.

We begin at 3:00 pm and finish at 7:00 pm. If you cannot attend the whole retreat,  you are welcome to come for the last hour which would be the regular sitting time of 6:00 pm. There will be periods of sitting and walking meditation and dhamma talks.

Plus opportunity for questions and answers.

Consider giving a dana gift as part of this day.

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Pictures from retreat at LaSalle Manor in Plano, Il.

Leigh Brasington, Mary and Santikaro. Teachers for Jhana, dependent co-arising and mindfulness with breathing retreat. Mary, Mike & Caron attended 4/1/10- 4/11/10.

Place where Mary took her precepts, LaSalle Manor in Plano, IL

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An invitation and reminder to our Half Day Retreat which falls this month on Sunday, April 25.  
The topic is Mindfulness and Concentration.  We begin at 3:00 pm and finish at 7:00 pm.  
If you cannot attend the whole retreat you are welcome to come for the last hour which would be the regular sitting time of 6:00 pm.   There will be periods of sitting and walking meditation and dhamma talks.   Plus opportunity for questions and answers.  

 Consider giving a dana gift as part of this day.

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Half-Day Retreats

On Sunday March 28,  the Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha will host it’s first Half-Day Retreat from  3:00 to 7:00 pm. Along with sitting and walking meditation, the topic for this month will be:

The Brahma Viharas or the Heavenly Abodes
Loving-Kindness-Metta
Sympathetic Joy-Mudita
Compassion-Karuna
Equanimity-Upekkha

If you cannot stay for the entire retreat, join us for our regular sitting and Dharma talk at 6:00.

The retreat is intended to provide participants with an opportunity to enrich their practice with extended meditation and intermediate level of study. The retreat is open to all Sangha participants as well as to the general public who have either completed the beginner class and/or have attended at least a half-day retreat.

The retreat will be held at Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha located in Evansville, Indiana at Bradford Park, 600 N. Weinbach Avenue, Suite 960.

We practice Dana by offering the teaching without a price tag. You can practice Dana by making a donation of money, time and/or volunteering. Your donation allows us to continue to offer the teachings. Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha thrives by the generosity of all who value the Buddha’s teachings.

For more information , call 812-434-6643 or E-mail mindfulheart@gmail.com

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Joseph Goldstein Retreat in July
Joseph Goldstein, one of the founders of the Insight Meditation Society, is coming to the midwest to lead a retreat!! We are fortunate. The retreat will be located in St. Louis which means we can drive from here easily. We are letting our sangha know now even though registration will not begin until February 1, 2010. Get your vacation scheduled and your money saved!! We hope many of us will go and we will car pool.

Joseph will be joined by two other teachers, Annie Nugent and Will Kabat-Zinn. The dates are July 6-13, 2010 at Mercy Center, St. Louis, Missouri. There is a sliding scale from $580 to $870 and need-based scholarships are available from Mid-America Dharma and from MHBS. The topic is Liberation through Non-clinging.

For more information, go to these links:
Joseph Goldstein
Insight Meditation Center
Annie Nugent
Will Kabat-Zinn
Mercy Center, St. Louis
Mid-America Dharma

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The Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha is hosting a retreat from APRIL 24 – APRIL 26, 2009. The retreat will be held at Patchwork Central, which is located at 100 Washington Avenue, Evansville, Indiana 47713. This is a weekend of personal silence from Friday evening through Sunday morning. This retreat is nonresidential, which means that there are no overnight accommodations. Ginny Morgan, senior teacher at Show Me Dharma in Colombia, Missouri, will facilitate this retreat. 
Ginny Morgan will teach on “The Gentle Gift of Letting Go.” Everyone tells us to let go of suffering, and though the Buddha’s teachings imply the way, often that way is lost amidst the effort to apprehend the basics of practice. In this retreat, we will work with the right efforts that cultivate letting go and also learn how to recognize the impediments to that wonderful and mysterious quality of being with life as it is. 
There will be periods of sitting and walking meditation along with Dharma talks by Ginny Morgan. The cost of the retreat is $65.00 and includes meals. Scholarships are available; please email the Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha for information. 
This cost does not include DANA for our teacher. Dana comes from the Pali language, which is used in the oldest Buddhist texts. There is no English equivalent to this word; however, it is generally translated as generosity. But Dana means much more. It also means giving of one’s time, energy, wisdom, money, laughter and friendship, all from an open heart. This giving is spontaneous and with a sense of gratitude. The giver has no sense of loss but feels full instead. Remember that since the Dharma is freely given, teachers give their wisdom without cost. They rely on Dana for their living expenses. Please budget what you can afford. All is gratefully accepted. 
The dates and times of the retreat are:
Friday, April 24, 2009, 6:30pm to 9:00 pm
Saturday, April 25, 2009, 7:00am to 9:00 pm
Sunday, April 26, 2009, 7:00am to 11:30 am
 
There will be meditation cushions and benches available for use. You may bring your own meditation supplies and leave them at Patchwork throughout the duration of the retreat. 
A registration form is attached. Please mail the registration form by APRIL 20, 2009, along with your check or money order for $65, to:
Mindful Heart Buddha Sangha
600 N. Weinbach Ave., Ste. 960
Evansville IN 47711
 
We hope that you make time in your busy schedule to experience meditative silence. Giving yourself this opportunity is a wonderful gift. 
MINDFUL HEART BUDDHA SANGHA 
Link to Spring Retreat Registration Form

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We arrived at the retreat center the same way I arrived at Buddhism, generally headed in the right direction, but definitely not a straight path. Located at the Oakwood Retreat Center just east of Muncie IN, we drove into the cornfields looking for the Rainbow Farm, an International Emissary Community. I kept the idea that “it is what it is” in the forefront of my mind, along with a map in my lap. Arriving around 5:30 we were in time for the evening meal but not the retreat orientation. Several of us had been to retreats before and while on the road we discussed the ideas behind a silent retreat as well as the benefits of it. 
The retreat was led by Matthew Flickstein, founder of the Forest Way in Virginia and the author of The Meditator’s Atlas: A Roadmap of the Inner World. For two days (Friday evening to Sunday at noon) we meditated, sitting and walking. We found another reason for focusing on our breath during meditation: there is no baggage attached to the breath. It is automatic, breath in and breath out. Only in extended meditation do you become aware of the subtleties involved, that equanimity allows wisdom to arise because we are not pushing or pulling but we are “being present in our own mind”. 
Matt said that mindfulness means no judgment, just awareness of what is. Maybe not acceptance, but at least a chance to see clearly and perhaps more comprehensively as the mind becomes quiet. While accepting that the world is the way it is, we should make it the best place it can be for us. This realization is much easier to maintain in a calm environment like the Rainbow Farm with trails through woods, gardens and meadows. It gave us the chance to go beyond our usual path outwardly as well as an inward journey to silence. What a luxury! 
On Sunday morning we reviewed the seven qualities of the mind:
  1. Virtue (clears up issues from the past & the present)
  2. Self reliance (ala Emerson-confidence to speak from that truth)
  3. Concentration (brings stability to the mind)
  4. Well being (living now is living outside of time: no past no future)
  5. Wisdom (live with I don’t know)
  6. Spiritual insight (eradication of identifying with the mind)
  7. Freedom, surrender (that meditation isn’t, getting used to is) 
The awareness of these qualities and using them with heart brings the dhamma to our everyday life. With this thought in mind, we found a straighter journey homeward albeit with much laughter and talk about our individual experiences at the retreat, and a promise to continue our voyage further into Buddhism. 
Metta, Jan Carter 

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I have just returned from a twenty-four hour retreat. I went to Willow Pond Retreat House in Oakland City, Indiana. It is a small “kuti” ; however, small is not really needed to describe kuti. Kuti is the Pali word for meditation hut. This house is much more that a hut. Bathroom with a shower, kitchen facilities and bed/couch. The kuti is located on the pond with the sound of a waterfall outside the door. Breakfast food is included for the daily rent of $45. I love this place. (1-812-782-3775)

This is not an advertisement for Willow Pond. It is encouragement to do retreat. It can be 24 hours or five days or fourteen days or six hours. The purpose is to have an environment that supports your meditation practice. Monastics have such an environment which is one reason they choose to become a monastic. Our minds respond to stimuli of the senses. A quiet place removes that first layer of mental noise.

Nature, like the arts, points to the spiritual. So if you are doing a retreat day at home (with the phone off) take time to walk outside. Similarly if you come Sunday for the monthly extended sitting choose to do walking meditation out-of-doors.

I have been discussing personal retreats but group retreats are important too. They provide a teacher and the strength and power of a group. We learn from each other which is why the sangha is one of the Three Jewels. At a group retreat the agenda for each day is planned. On a personal retreat you can be lead by your own mental and physical needs. Our sangha is sponsoring a group retreat this June.

—– Mary MacGregor   Evansville IN

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