Classes, Workshops & Retreats
Live & Online
All are invited to attend our evening zoom programs or morning meditations. A suggested monthly donation, as you are able, is $25 – $65.00.Or you may drop in (and hit $0 contribution) if you just want to check it out or are financially challenged. Otherwise, please remember to renew monthly. We depend on your contributions. Thanks.
Please register separately for our ongoing qigong Zoom classes and for all live workshop events. Thanks again.
A Daily Qigong Companion
Zoom
Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday mornings from 8:30 – 9:00.
We focus on slow, careful, and simple movement and standing practices that support mind/body coherence, relaxation, flexibility, wide open awake mind, and surrender into the flow of energy around and within us. $85 monthly entitles you to as many of the 16 monthly classes as you are able to attend.
Strengthening the Heart of Compassion: An Introduction to Tonglen Meditation
Saturday, August 1, 9:30 – 4:30
with Paul Weiss at the Morgan Bay Zendo, Surry, Maine
We are all of us disposed, by nature, to love. Yet we know that there is something in us that may contract or flinch away from experience; that may push away from intimacy; that replaces presence and compassion with avoidance, judgment or control; and that separates from others and even from ourselves.
The ancient Tibetan practice of tonglen (which means giving and receiving) is part of the great compassion tradition of Buddhism. It is nothing less than a technical guide and support system for the exercise of unconditional love with regards to others and to ourselves.
– It systematically helps us to untie the knots and pass through the barriers that keep us from exercising our full human capacity to love and to embrace our experience.
– It teaches us how to transcend our distancing and our separation, welcome what we thought we couldn't handle, and bless ourselves and others with our capacity for loving presence.
– Ultimately, it is a way of being; a sense of intimacy and compassion that supports all of our living.
Tonglen is the essence of our Bodhisattva practice in Buddhism. In this retreat, we will spend a day integrating it into our meditation practice, and exploring all its dimensions and applications for our emotional and relational life, and for our aspiration to compassion for all beings.
Registration is required below, but there is no fee. You may make a donation to the Morgan Bay Zendo
Following are examples of our recently completed programs, no longer for registration. .
Look for new programing later this summer.
0 The Book of Balance and Harmony –– a Taoist study
Zoom
Thursday evenings at 7:00, starting February 12
Taoism has its own simple, naturalistic, and profound way of talking about life and dharma practice. Over the centuries, Taoist culture spun off its own myths, cults, preoccupations, alchemical obfuscations, etc. A later movement within Taoism, the "complete reality school," sought to cut through the diversions, and re-clarify the essential teachings. And they shine like gold, indeed!
The Book of Balance and Harmony, at its very beginning, sets out several pages of basic principles, or “statements” regarding form and energy, essence and vitality, being and non-being. On Thursday evening, we will study these statements slowly, one by one, opening a window on their practical application and universal meaning.
“...All beings are basically one form and one energy. Form and energy
are basically one spirit. Spirit is basically utter openness....Let action
proceed from calm, and be filled by maintaining openness.... When
openness is complete, and calmness profound, observe the process of
' nature and know its cycles.”
The ‘Inner Geometry’ of Meditation
Zoom
Saturday Mornings 8:00 - 9:00 AM, beginning February 7
“Inner geometry” refers to basic principles that can offer subtle orientation and support to our meditation practice – that give it ground, orientation, and direction. The inner geometry that's been there right along.
It is the 'inner geometry” that offers a relational context (or subtle 'mandala) in which we can practice the subtle 'mantras' of our understanding and focus; and the subtle 'mudras' of our availability and attitudes. The crystalline postures of our receptivity. The openness and uprightness of our availability. The circles of our coherence and of our compassion. The flow of internal energy. But ultimately: just another chance to meditate together.
(All are invited to our Zoom evening programs or morning meditations. A suggested monthly donation, if you are able, is $25 – $65.00.)
Essence, Energy, Manifestation – Exploring the Subtle Body
with Paul Weiss at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge (of the Natural Dharma Fellowship) ( ( Springfield, NH
MY 14–17, 2026
Join visiting teacher Paul Weiss to explore how our body, energy, and awareness are expressions of our rainbow-like nature: vivid, ever-present, and never graspable. Through subtle body meditation, interoceptive awareness, and gentle qigong, this retreat offers a direct way to relax projection and rediscover the freedom already present within our experience. Drawing from Taoist and Buddhist traditions, we will practice subtle body meditations and gentle standing and moving qigong to become more at home in the manifest, energetic, and essential nature of body and mind. By learning to feel into the body rather than project onto our experience, we can cultivate a more intimate, spacious, and joyful relationship with awareness, emotions, and perception itself.
Please join us to:
*Explore subtle body meditations from Taoist and Buddhist traditions
*Practice gentle qigong to awaken energetic sensitivity
*Learn the difference between emotions and emotional states, and how to work with their
energetic nature
*Develop interoceptive awareness as a gateway to deep listening
This retreat is not a deep dive into esoteric yoga. Instead, we will wade out gently into the water, and
onto the broad beach, where appearance, energy, emptiness, and joy are one. And we may discover that
the most esoteric teaching is the natural expression of what we already are.
True Heart, True Mind –
Thursday evening through Monday morning
in Seal Harbor, Maine
October 30-November 3, 2025
Our transformative flagship retreat, also called 'The Enlightenment Intensive, This very focused and revelatory integration of zen contemplation and deep communication on the question “Who Am I?” has been changing lives for decades. Read more about True Heart, True Mind in its own 'drop-down' under “Programs” for a complete description. Then speak to us personally, if you are interested. Full cost for the 3 and ½ day residential retreat with meals: $645.
(Some scholarship help is available.)
Blue Hill, Maine
Embodying Zen
At the Morgan Bay Zendo, Surry, Maine.
Saturday, November 8, 9:30–4:30
We will examine at great length the intimate relationship between the posture of the sitting body and the cultivation of those states of being that both support and embody the expression of our 'Buddha nature.' We will see how the sitting body is itself a virtual meditation manual, embodying both mudra and mantra; and how it can directly coach us in cultivating and internalizing the integrated expression of our practice. For both the more experienced and less experienced meditators.