Grief, Joy, and Awakening: An Insight Meditation Retreat

Instructor(s): David Chernikoff

Program Description:

Grief, Joy, and Awakening: The Heart of the Path

Experiences of grief and joy play an essential role in the process of spiritual awakening. In this program, we’ll deepen our understanding of grief and joy on the conceptual levels while we also expand our affect tolerance on the level of direct “felt experience.” There will be dharma talks, experiential exercises, heart-felt discussions, and a significant amount of meditation practice in Noble Silence. In a caring, supportive learning community, we will open ourselves to the “ten thousand joys and the ten thousand sorrows” as we discover the wisdom of what Sharon Salzberg has called “a heart as wide as the world.”

Noble Silence:

Noble silence will be observed following each evening session through breakfast the following morning. Additional silent practice periods will be scheduled throughout the program.

Experience Level:

Suitable for beginning and experienced practitioners.

About the Instructor(s):
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  David Chernikoff

  David Chernikoff is a meditation teacher, spiritual counselor, and life coach who taught psychology and meditation at Naropa University for many years. A student of meditation since 1971, David completed the inaugural Community Dharma Leader Training at Spirit Rock Meditation Center and began teaching Insight Meditation in 1988. His teaching has been influenced by senior teachers from the Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock, Zen teacher Yvonne Rand, and spiritual guides from other contemplative traditions, most notably Ram Dass, Father Thomas Keating, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. 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, N.M. He later spent three years in Nepal doing public health development work for the Seva Foundation and studying with Tibetan Buddhist teachers. After returning to the U.S., he became the education and training director for the Spiritual Eldering Institute, now called Sage-ing International. In that role, he taught conscious aging programs throughout the U.S., in Canada, and in Ireland. David is currently one of the guiding teachers of the Insight Meditation Community of Colorado and teaches retreats and workshops throughout the U.S. He is the author of Life, Part Two: Seven Keys to Awakening with Purpose and Joy as You Age. (www.davidchernikoff.com)