Retreats

Discover a Deeper Way of Living Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center offers a retreat for almost everyone. Our schedule carries a...
Prices
  • $250.00 to $500.00 – Pay-it-forward: Ensure Vallecitos' future as a refuge for all.
  • $125.00 to $249.00 – Sustaining
  • $75.00 to $124.00 – Base
  • $45.00 to $74.00 – Pay what you can

Limited scholarships available.

Date & Time Details: 1:00 - 5:30pm Mountain Standard Time Saturday, August 15th

Location: On-Line

Price: We offer a sliding scale structure. Prices for this retreat range from $45-$250 (not including Dana).

Dana: This is a dana based offering. (Learn more)

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Compassion and Dispassion in Times of Volatility

With Michele McDonald and Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey

August 15, 2020

Michele and Jesse have graciously offered to hold this half day retreat as a fundraiser for Vallecitos. We are deeply grateful for their commitment to the practice and to supporting Vallecitos. Participants will have the option to offer dana to Michele and Jesse at the end of the offering.

 

We live in a time of heightened personal and social intensity in regard to the vicissitudes of life: of gain/loss, pleasure/pain, praise/blame, status/disgrace – as the Buddha framed the matrix. How do we find a balance of seclusion and engagement that develops our personal awakening while not disregarding our role in the world around us? How do we discern the boundaries of care and of peace in regards to the world and to our own lives? Join Michele and Jesse for a half-day meditation retreat where we will explore some of these issues and attempt to instill a sense of confidence in our path going forward – in the many fruitful ways that are possible. All are welcome!

 

Schedule: 1-5:30 Mountain (listed below) / 12-4:30 Pacific / 3-7:30 Eastern

1:00 – 2:00 – Opening and Sit w/ instructions

2:00 – 2:30 – Walk

2:30 – 3:15 – Sit

3:15 – 4:00 – Dhamma Talk

4:00 – 4:30 – Walk

4:30 – 5:00 – Q&A

5:00 – 5:30 – Sit and close

Teachers

Michele McDonald
Michele McDonald has taught Insight meditation since 1982 and teaches extensively throughout the United States, Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. Michele has been a quiet pioneer having being the first woman to teach a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side with a senior monastic figure, Sayadaw U Lakkhana, Abbot of Kyaswa Monastery. Having worked with a wide range of Asian and Western teachers, Michele is most inspired by her practice with Dipa Ma and Sayadaw U Pandita and more recently in Burma with the Mya Taung Sayadaw. She appreciates teaching at many levels of practice and has enjoyed…
Learn more about Michele McDonald
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey
Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey’s teaching aims to inspire the skills, determination, and faith necessary to realize the deepest human freedom. He is a student of Michele McDonald and his approach is rooted in the tradition of Mahasi Sayadaw of Burma. As a teacher of Vipassana (insight) meditation within the broader context of Theravada Buddhism his teaching encourages an exploration of the relationship between ethics, insight, and action. Perpetually intrigued by the dynamics between inner and outer change, Jesse is a writer of numerous essays and author of Insurgent Heart: A Vipassana Manual for the Guerrilla Yogi. Links to his writing can be…
Learn more about Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey