Path Programs
To provide opportunities for deep engagement in a collaborative and supportive environment, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies offers multi-month Path Programs that integrate the study and practice of the dharma with a consistent cohort of practitioners. The intention is to create a space expansive enough for teachers and participants to engage in far-reaching explorations of classical and contemporary Buddhism — cultivating wisdom, deepening practice, and building a community grounded in Buddhadharma. See the links below for further information on the individual programs and how to apply or register for a Path. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about these programs at contact@buddhistinquiry.org.
Upcoming Programs
Embodied Change-Making and Sacred Justice On Behalf of Life
Kaira Jewel Lingo, Deborah Eden Tull, and Konda Mason
March 24 - July 3, 2024
Join us in the inner work of cultivating greater equanimity and compassion while learning skills for relational intelligence, embodied listening, collaboration, resiliency, and conscious response so that our work for external change can be most effective. This program includes space for us to dream and vision how we might co-create a kinder, more equitable world.
Drawing on the Unconditional Love and Wisdom of Our Buddha Nature
John Makransky
May 24, 2024 - March 12, 2025
Join us in cultivating a buddha nature of awareness, warmth, love, compassion, and wisdom, from which to recognize others in their deep nature and hold them in warmth and compassion. Drawing from Tibetan Buddhism and modern psychology, we will generate an increasing power of compassion that can inform our lives and ways of being with others.
Embodied Truths: Breath, Body, and Intention in Buddhist Practice
Dhammadīpā
July 12, 2024 - May 29, 2025
Join us in exploring the various frameworks for practice in the body — skillful ways of using breath and body — including the establishments of mindfulness, the aggregates, the sense fields, and the breath. We will also discover how these teachings extend to contemporary concerns and aspirations, such as eco dhamma, identity dhamma, and mindful dying.
The Wild Edge of Love: Buddhist Rituals of Reconnection to Nature
Lama Liz Monson
September 13, 2024 - August 31, 2025
Join us in exploring rituals of renewal and reconnection that have been practiced for hundreds of years in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. We will discover the joy and empowerment of creating rituals that honor our emotional being in its bereavement and fear while also celebrating the dance of life and nature constantly unfurling within us through art, writing, movement, and expression.
A Year of Refuge: An Immersion in the Triple Gem
Chris Crotty
November 1, 2024 - August 13, 2025
Join us in exploring the Triple Gem — buddha, dharma, sangha — to cultivate insight that leads to our own wisdom becoming the ultimate sanctuary, sheltering us from suffering while empowering us with a greater capacity for skillful living. We will use our practice to study a wide range of Buddhist teachings to better understand their relevance to their own personal lives.
Past Programs
Dawn Scott, Rhonda Magee, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, and Bhikkhu Anālayo
August 18, 2023 - July 14, 2024
The Early Buddhist Meditation Path is an in-depth study of meditation as it emerges in the early Buddhist discourses, extant in Pāli and compared with their parallels in Chinese and other languages. These are the sources that bring us as close as possible to the teachings of the historical Buddha. The program takes place over eleven months, from late August 2023 to July 2024.
Applications are now closed.
Buddhism and Psychotherapy: A Healing Partnership
A BCBS Path Program with Pilar Jennings
December 15, 2022 - December 17, 2023
Pilar Jennings offers this year long program exploring the intersection between Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy. The program consists of three residential courses and monthly zoom meetings, and is open to all. 10 CEs per residential course have been applied for.
Applications are now closed.
Mindfulness, Soulfulness, and Socially Engaged Practice
A BCBS Path Program with Rhonda V. Magee
May 2023 - May 2024
In this year-long program, Rhonda V. Magee will explore mindfulness, soulfulness, and social engagement in the face of such challenges as climate distress, immigration and demographic changes, economic inequality, the increasing implications of extractive technology, and the increasing visibility of White supremacy-based ideology and politics. This program consists of two residential retreats, and monthly zoom gatherings.
Applications are now closed.
Cultivating Concentration and the Absorption States of Jhāna
A BCBS Path Program with Shaila Catherine
September 13, 2022 - July 1, 2023
This ten-month program will begin with an initial five-night retreat (September 13 – 18, 2022) and conclude with a nine-night retreat (June 22 – July 1, 2023). Between the two residential retreats we will gather together monthly for online discussions via Zoom. In these meetings, Shaila Catherine will support participants through this ten-month commitment to develop the skills and conditions that deepen concentration in both meditation and daily activities.
Applications are now closed.
An IMS/BCBS Intensive Study and Practice Program
March 2022 – July 2023
with
Dawn Scott, Jill Shepherd, William Edelglass, Nicola Redfern, Roxanne Dault and Vance Pryor
Exploring the Heart of Freedom is a sixteen-month program designed to cultivate our understanding of the core teachings of the Buddha, deepen our meditation practice, and help us to embody the dharma in spiritual friendship and community.
Jointly offered by the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies (BCBS), the program consists of five residential retreats in Barre, MA, which will include meditation practice, dharma study, and relational practices such as small group inquiry and contemplative sharing.
Applications are now closed.
Lama Liz Monson
November 05, 2021 - Oct 19, 2022
Lama Liz Monson will be teaching a Path, “Writing Liberation: The Buddhist Practice of Spiritual Autobiography,” in which participants will explore writing spiritual autobiographies as a liberative practice, metabolizing life events as transformative experiences along the Buddhist path. Between the weeklong retreats, participants will meet online twice a month to discuss assigned readings and writing exercises.
