A Daylong Retreat with Jason Siff, “Unlearning Meditation: What to Do When the Instructions Get in the Way”,is a new book on meditation by Jason Siff, a respected Theravadin meditation teacher, who lives in Southern California. During this day-long workshop, Jason will present material from his book and address the various questions regarding meditation practice that his book raises. This will include:
–The tension between following the instructions and letting one’s mind go where it will: How much mind-wandering is permissible? What if I get hijacked by thoughts and feelings? How can my mind settle down if it is allowed to be wild and unfocused?
–The role of calm states of mind in one’s meditation practice: Is the point of meditation to become calm and centered? Can calm states have another use? What is helpful about calm states? Can some of these states be developed further?
–Broadening the definition of awareness: Is recollection a form of awareness? Is awareness an optimal state of mindfulness or does it fluctuate depending on one’s state of mind? How can we become aware of more aspects of our present-moment experience?
There will also be periods of meditation sitting (30 to 40 minutes) and people will have an opportunity to talk with Jason about their meditation practice and pose questions. Copies of Jason’s book will be available for purchase.
Cost: $50 suggested, plus the offering of dana to the teacher. Scholarships and Work Study are available. No one is ever turned away. Please contact service@againstthestream – 323.665.4300
Jason Siff was a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, where he began studying Pali and teaching meditation. After he left the Buddhist monastic order and returned to Los Angeles in 1990, he studied counseling psychology and worked as an intern for four years, at the end of which he decided to devote his life to meditation teaching instead of practicing psychotherapy. He co-founded the Skillful Meditation Project around that time, and began teaching meditation as his primary occupation, further developing his own approach to awareness meditation practice, which is called Recollective Awareness. Since then he has been invited to teach by several lay Buddhist Sanghas in America, Canada and Australia. He has also taught at Esalen Institute and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. His books include King Bimbisara’s Chronicler, a work of fiction set in the Buddha’s time and published by Sarvodaya Vishwa Lekha in Sri Lanka in 2001. He has published articles in magazines and journals, including an article on the meditative process, published in Insight Journal in Spring, 2005.
More information is available at Jason’s website: www.skillfulmeditation.org.
http://www.againstthestream.org/programs/day-long-programs/jason-siff-daylong
