One-day retreat to ease the mind

By Alex Ruoff, Delmarva Now, December 4, 2008

LEWES, MA (USA) -- The Insight Meditation Community is scheduled to host a one-day retreat and lunch with guest teacher Dr. Susan Stone, a Zen lay priest from Charlottesville, Va.

"This workshop is part of the buddhist philosophy, our Sangha," IMC co-founder Nick Edge said. "It's about being around like-minded thinkers and sharing our philosophies as well as learning about meditation."

The IMC is a group committed to using the practice of meditation to explore the Dharma, the spiritual path delineated by Gotama Buddha more than 2,500 years ago. They do not consider themselves a religious community and their group consists of both Buddhist and non-Buddhist members.

The IMC doesn't have a teacher or leader and regularly requests guest speakers such as Stone to fill the role, Edge said. This event's topic is "gifts from your practice edge," which focuses on "quieting the mind and providing insight into our mental stress and self judgment."

"We meditate to relieve our own dissatisfaction or Dukkha," Edge said. "We bring in guest speakers who are experts on assisted meditation to give us some help."

According to her biography, Stone has been formally practicing Mindfulness for 25 years. She has taught at the university level for 20 years in Missouri and the Washington, D.C. area and currently teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the University of Virginia. She founded a Mindfulness meditation group at Potosi Correctional Center in Missouri and leads Mindfulness meditation retreats and workshops in a multi-state area and is on the teaching team of the professional End-of-Life-Care program at Upaya in Santa Fe NM.

Mindfulness is defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, as "paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgementally."

The workshop is free, but donations are suggested.

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One-day retreat to ease the mind

By Alex Ruoff, Delmarva Now, December 4, 2008