Empowering Those who Care for Others: Innate Compassion Training
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Title
Empowering Those who Care for Others: Innate Compassion Training
Where
Ligmincha Institute at Serenity Ridge
Click here to view a flyer
Saturday, October 31 | 9:00 a.m. - 8:30 p.m., including breaks for meals
Sunday, November 1 | 9:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m., followed by lunch
In this retreat, Dr. Makransky will introduce Innate Compassion Training (ICT), a set of contemplative practices designed to help people realize a power of unconditional care from within that is deeply healing and sustaining, that makes them more fully present to themselves and others, and that protects them from burnout and compassion fatigue. The integration of ICT meditation into one’s work with others aims to help bring out an increasing power of warmth, calm, discernment, resilience and motivation for service. Innate Compassion Training highlights our need to experience ourselves as objects of care and compassion in order to extend care and compassion widely to others, our need to be seen in our unconditional worth in order to see the same in others, and our need to become present to our own feelings with kindness in order to become healing presence to others. ICT practice and theory has been adapted from Tibetan contemplative traditions into a thoroughly secular form that has been taught to thousands of people of all backgrounds and faiths who serve in many caring roles and professions. This pattern of training, recently adopted by Mind and Life Institute for its “Call to Care” initiative for teachers and students is currently being correlated with findings in developmental psychology and contemplative neuroscience.
The retreat will consist of progressive guided meditations, explanations of their functions, and discussions that focus on retreatants’ contemplative experience and questions.
Registration fee (includes all meals):
$50 for students | $75 for U.Va. employees | $125 for community members
Overnight accommodations are available for an additional fee. No fees will be refunded for cancellations.
Deadline for online registration is Friday, October 16, 2015, at 12:00 noon.
Bio:
John Makransky is a well-known Buddhist scholar and gifted Western meditation teacher. John established and is the guiding meditation teacher of the Foundation for Active Compassion, and is the author of the popular book, Awakening through Love. Academically, John is professor of Buddhism and Comparative Theology at Boston College and senior academic advisor and lecturer for Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s Centre for Buddhist Studies in Nepal. His research has focused on doctrines and practices of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, on adapting meditation practices for contemporary applications, and on theoretical issues in interfaith learning. Since 1978, John has studied and practiced Tibetan Buddhism under the guidance of his Tibetan teachers, and in 2000 was ordained a Buddhist lama in the lineage of Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche. Since then, John has made meditations of innate compassion and wisdom from Tibet newly accessible to people of all backgrounds and faiths by teaching these meditation methods to people in many caring roles and professions, including healthcare givers, teachers, mental health professionals, social workers, hospice volunteers, and social change agents.
This retreat is co-sponsored by the Compassionate Care Initiative.
For more information, please contact Hannah Walker at hrw5x@virginia.edu.