Bhante Gunaratana giving a dharma talk in the Bhavana Society meditation hall. He is currently traveling on sabbatical until April 2010. Photo by Douglas Imbrogno
THERE WAS SOME DISCUSSION at tonight’s Meditation Circle gathering about finding teachers and seeking out retreats where teachers may be encountered. Below is the list of upcoming retreats at the Bhavana Society Therevadan Buddhist monastery and retreat center in Hampshire County, W.Va., near Wardensville, about five hours east of Charleston.
Here is the remaining retreat schedule for 2009 at Bhavana, which includes two ‘Introduction to Meditation Retreats,’ from Aug. 13 to 16 and Nov. 5 to 8.
For more on the experience of retreats and retreat guidelines, click here. With advance notice (e-mail or call ahead by a couple weeks) you may also just go up when Bhavana is not holding retreats and get a sense of the place and buttonhole a monk or nun (well, their robes don’t actualy buttonholes) to ask about meditation and the teachings that surround the practice. Here’s a page about visiting Bhavana.
If one of these retreats interests you, you’d be advised to sign up soon as Bhavana gets visitors from across the continent and world and if you wait to the last minute, the retreat may be full. Bhavana supports itself in the traditional way, purely by donation, so there is no set cost for these retreats. But your support is what enables such monasteries to exist at all.
