Patience and Letting Go Half-Day Virtual Retreat with Winnie Nazarko

Patience and Letting Go

Half-Day Virtual Retreat with Winnie Nazarko

Saturday, September 9
10:00 am – 1:00 pm

We often approach meditation practice with the intention of “getting something” or “getting rid of something.” But these agendas can actually get in the way of simply connecting to the experience of the moment, just as it is.

Knowing how things are – right now – with wisdom, is the door to peace and happiness. This retreat will speak to the power to letting go, allowing, and receiving things with goodwill and patience. In other words, we will explore the power of yin.

Retreat format:  Dharma talk, instruction, guided meditation, sitting practice, and opportunities for Q & A

Winnie Nazarko, currently a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Society, realized after her first meditation retreat with Stephen and Ondrea Levine in 1981 that she had touched something deeply truthful, although she couldn’t quite describe it. It did, however, seem to do with transparency of being, equanimity, and lack of fear.

Her intensive dharma search and practice brought her into connection with many outstanding teachers, including Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Steve Armstrong and Kamala Masters, and Jack Kornfield, from whom she came to appreciate the very individual ways the Dharma is expressed through the prism of specific personalities and life experience.

Winnie’s own orientation to practice is rooted in a background in human services work with issues of violence and hunger and the desire to relieve human suffering. In 1998, she was asked to teach by Joseph Goldstein. She does so to help people open their full potential, in the interest of their own happiness and well- being and for the benefit of others who their lives affect.

Winnie’s teaching, rooted in the Eight Fold Path, has particular emphasis on aligning motivation with the student’s highest and wisest aspiration. Letting go (renunciation) and self-compassion are taught as essential in approaching and supporting practice. Meditation instructions draw from a variety of approaches, including the Mahasi style and its use of noting, and U Tejaniya’s emphasis on developing awareness of attitude of mind, and instruction which works with the actual experiences students are having, rather than insisting one method of practice works in all cases.