At Home Retreat – Grief, Joy, and Awakening

This is a time when we’re all experiencing an unprecedented opportunity to gain insight into what the Taoist tradition calls “the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows.” Buddhist teachings offer us wise methods and perspectives for navigating our day-to-day challenges.The primary focus of this retreat will be the practice of sitting and walking meditation. There will be dharma talks, meditation instruction, and small group discussions. In addition, we’ll do some interactive exercises and guided meditations that are designed to deepen our understanding of the powerful experiences of grief and joy that are inherent in the process of spiritual awakening.

David Chernikoff, LCSW, M.Div., is a meditation teacher, spiritual counselor, and life coach who taught meditation and psychology at Naropa University for many years. In the early 1980s, he worked at Ram Dass’s Hanuman Foundation Dying Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico and then became the director of Mesilla Valley Hospice in Las Cruces, New Mexico. He later spent three years in Nepal studying with Tibetan Buddhist teachers and working with a public health program. After returning to the U.S. he became the education and training director of the Spiritual Eldering Institute, a conscious aging organization based in Boulder, Colorado. In that role, he taught conscious aging programs throughout the U.S., in Canada, and in Ireland. Trained as a Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, David is currently one of the guiding teachers of the Insight Meditation Community of Colorado and has a private practice in Boulder. For more information about his work, including recorded dharma talks, please see his website, http://www.davidchernikoff.com.

Preliminary Retreat Schedule