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Dr. John Peacock and Bernat Font
Booking via link below. A €300 deposit is required and the completion of application form. Balance to be paid by 1st June 2023. Application Forms: For an application form please email info@mindfulness.ie
Dates: August 5th - 12th 2023
Venue: De La Salle Pastoral Centre, Castletown, County Laois
Cost: We are keeping the fee as low as we can as we do not seek to make any profit from our retreats. It is important to us that we keep the retreats we offer as affordable as possible so that they can be inclusive. This year we have to increase our fees in line with the rising cost of accommodation and food. We offer the option to pay by installments. Please get in touch with us on info@mindfulness.ie if this is something you wish to avail of.
Standard shared single: €675; standard single occupancy: €790; single en-suite: €890.
Donations:
To allow us to be able to continue to be sustainable and inclusive in the current climate we would very much welcome donations
so that we can continue to offer places at reduced rates.
Suitable for:
The retreat is open to anyone with previous experience of similar types of silent retreat of 5 days or longer, but preference will be given to mindfulness teachers and teachers in training.
The Retreat:
Personal meditation practice is an essential foundation for anyone who works with mindfulness-based interventions and participation in silent teacher-led mindfulness meditation retreats is part of all Good Practice Guidelines. This retreat satisfies the MTAI criteria for a mindfulness teacher's annual retreat.
This retreat will explore aspects of the two central discourses of the Buddha which are the foundation for the so-called 'modern mindfulness movement': the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, on the 4 establishments of mindfulness, and the Karaniya Metta Sutta, the Buddha's words on Loving Kindness (or boundless friendliness). These are profound teachings that encourage us to place the path of freedom and compassion in the classroom of our lives, nurturing a heart that is receptive and unshakeable. Developing the capacity to encounter our own inner and outer experience with equanimity and curiosity creates a foundation for meeting the experiences of our students and clients, in offering mindfulness-based interventions.
Each day will offer a sustained schedule of formal meditation practice (both Insight and Metta), group meetings with the teachers, talks and instructions, all within an underlying environment of silence.
Access: We welcome people with disabilities to our retreat. The venue is fully accessible. Please contact us with your specific needs relating to disability, long-term illness or health condition.
Donations: We hope to offer rates which continue to reflect our intention that anyone who would like to attend can do so, through collective generosity. Please consider making a doantion, no matter how small.
Supporter's rate:
Pay for yourself and help support one person to join on a Bursary with any further donation you feel able to offer.
Concession rate:
For those in financial hardship who cannot afford our full priced rate (see below for more) - talk to the orgnaisers about your situation and we will do our best to accommodate you.
Cancellation policy:
Cancellations up to 1st June 2023 will incur a €50 administration fee.
Cancellations after 1st June 2023 will incur the loss of the deposit.
The organisers may waive cancellation fees in exceptional circumstances, at their discretion.
Prior to your retreat, we will send some more information about what to expect whilst at Castletown.
Dr John Peacock has been an academic and a Buddhist practitioner for forty years. Trained in India in the Tibetan Gelugpa tradition, he subsequently spent time in Sri Lanka studying Theravada. He lectured in Buddhist Studies at the University of Bristol, he was Associate Director of the Oxford Mindfulness Centre and teacher on the Master of Studies programme in MBCT (Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy) at Oxford University until recently.
John has been teaching meditation internationally for more than thirty years and is a Gaia House guiding teacher. He is a co-founder of The Bodhi College, which is dedicated to the study and practice of the early teachings of the Buddha. John has been supporting the development of mindfulness and mindfulness teaching in Ireland for the past 9 years, and has co-facilitated the Mindfulness Centre's annual 7-day retreats here in August 2015, August 2017, online in 2021, and in person again in August 2022. We are delighted to welcome him back in 2023.
Bernat Font encountered the Dharma in his early teens and has practiced and taught mindfulness and the Dharma in his native Spain, throughout Europe, in North America and in Asia. A graduate from the Gaia House Community Dharma Leadership programme, he recently graduated from Dharma Teacher Training at the Bodhi College, with Stephen Batchelor as his primary mentor. He holds an MA in Buddhist Studies and is currently engaged in studying for his Ph.D. in Buddhist Psychology. Bernat assisted Christina Feldman on our annual retreat in Castletown in August 2017 and his teaching was greatly appreciated by all those who were there. It is a pleasure to welcome him back to Ireland again.
