The Bozeman Insight Community welcomes Floyd Fantelli as a guest speaker via Zoom on Thursday July 10 from 6:30 to 8 pm.
In this personal and reflective talk, Floyd explores the question at the heart of both life and death: What does it mean? Drawing on the Buddha’s teachings on impermanence, presence, and compassionate care, he shares the intimate journey of accompanying his beloved wife through her final days.
Grounded in Buddhist practice, Floyd reflects on how mindfulness, the Five Daily Recollections (Remembrances), and the cultivation of loving awareness supported him in facing death—not as an end, but as part of a sacred continuum. This talk invites us to look closely at how our practice prepares us not only to die with grace, but to live with meaning, love, and clarity.
Join the Bozeman Insight Community for a half-day online retreat with guest speaker nico hase.
Even if you consider yourself the kind of person who remains calm in the face of crisis, sometimes things just get to us. If we’re not careful, we might find ourselves growing tangled in negative thought patterns. Without a dose of healthy awareness, a cycle of reactivity can deepen, leaving us feeling disconnected from what we truly feel in every moment.
The Buddhist path offers us a way to untangle the tangles and step into freedom. In this half-day online retreat on Saturday June 21 from 10 AM to 1 PM, visiting teacher nico hase will offer reflections and practices that help us understand where our reactivity comes from, and how to gradually release ourselves from its grip.
We invite you for a morning of meditation and inquiry as we walk the path together to greater freedom, connection, and space.
The session will begin with a 30-minute conversation and opening talk around the theme, followed by alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation with light guidance. We’ll conclude with a closing talk and time for questions and dialogue.
Speaker bio: nico hase lived in a monastery for six years before earning a PhD in counseling psychology and becoming an Insight Meditation teacher full time. He currently mentors mindfulness teachers, teaches online and in-person retreats, and speaks with students in one-on-one sessions. He and his beloved life partner devon are the authors of How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life. Find out more at www.devonandnicohase.com
Bozeman Insight Community invites you to join an evening with guest speaker, nico hase. Online, Thursday June 19, 6:30-8 PM.
Adversity is an inevitable part of life: from illness to loss to the moral injury that comes from witnessing injustice. Resilience is the ability to bounce back from adversity. It keeps us engaged, calm, and energized as we continue to serve a world on fire.
In this evening gathering with nico hase, co-author of How Not to Be a Hot Mess: A Buddhist Survival Guide for Modern Life, we will explore teachings and practices that contribute to resilience. Nico will discuss how hyper-individualism contributes to fragility, and why community is so important for overcoming our obstacles. The session will also unpack how meditation can help us balance our hearts and minds so that we can connect with others, navigate the difficulties of shared spaces, and ultimately find resilience in the engaged sangha that our world so desperately needs.
Join us for an intimate evening of stories, reflections, and meditations about how Buddhist teachings and practices contribute to our resilience in the face of life’s challenges.
While myths and legends abound surrounding the life of the historical Buddha (Pāli: Siddhattha Gotama; Skt: Siddhārtha Gautama), much of the traditional folklore began appearing only centuries after the Buddha’s lifetime. Yet the earliest Buddhist discourses (as collected in the Pāli Canon and its Chinese and Sanskrit parallels), focused as they are on the content of his teachings, contain no comprehensive biography of the Buddha.
Rather, scattered throughout these many thousands of discourses, we find numerous snippets of autobiographical narrative attributed to the Buddha himself. In these first-person accounts, often shared with his audiences for didactic purposes, the Buddha recounts a number of his own early-life experiences on his path to awakening, as a means of imparting some of the hard-won lessons and insights he gained over the course of his personal struggles and breakthroughs.
During this daylong study and practice program, we will examine a number of these ancient texts, explore their practical lessons and insights, and discuss and reflect upon their relevance and application to our own lives.
To enhance our exploration of the texts, the day will also incorporate short dharma talks and guided meditation practices, as well as periods of group discussion, peer-based dialogue, and personal reflection.
*Please note that all participants will receive a collection of the relevant texts we will be exploring. Hard copies of the material will be available to those attending in-person at the Bozeman Dharma Center, while those joining online will receive a digital PDF copy via email.
Join the Bozeman Insight Community on Saturday February 1 from 9:30 am to 12:30 pm for an online half-day retreat with visiting teacher James Frank titled, “The Way of Meditative Warriorship.”
The uncertainty of these times calls for a commitment to live the truth and love this world yearns for. During this half-day retreat, we will explore the foundations of living a heart-centered and wakeful life. By emphasizing stillness and relaxation, we will support the natural and fearless qualities of the heart that characterize meditative warriorship. This period will involve sitting, walking, and relational practices that deepen a felt sense of belonging and inspiration for the journey ahead.
James Nepenthe Frank is a meditation teacher and somatic healing practitioner. He began practice as a young child in the Plum Village Tradition with Thich Nhat Hanh and began formally sitting in the Western Insight tradition at the age of 15. While dedicating years of his life to silent retreat, he serves a commitment to live this path in everyday life. He began teaching at the invitation of his teacher, Rodney Smith. He lives in Lincoln, Vermont.
Dave Smith will be offering an online workshop on Cultivating Emotional Balance on Saturday November 23 from 9 am to noon.
Emotions lead us to our greatest joys and most painful sorrows. They also provide the inspiration for what is most meaningful in our lives. When they become destructive, we are lost in the grips of anger, fear, sadness, and overwhelm. As we develop emotional awareness, we find that we are able to become honest about the difficulties in our lives. We can take responsibility for our destructive emotional episodes, diminishing guilt and regret. We learn the power of gratitude and compassion and promote positive change in our lives and in this world.
The Cultivating Emotional Balance training was sparked during a meeting between behavioral scientists, a neuroscientist, a monk, a philosopher, and the Dalai Lama as a new approach to understanding our emotional lives. Combining contemporary scientific research with contemplative practices drawn from Buddhism, this practice provides participants with tools for working with emotion and shows how mindfulness practices can be constructively integrated with emotional intelligence.
During this training, participants will:
Understand how emotions work and how they can work for and not against us;
Tempel Smith Residential Retreat Registration is Open! This is the last week our local community has priority access to the Bozeman Insight Community’s residential retreat at the BBar ranch Oct 17 – 21 with Tempel Smith. Tempel’s students and out-of-state residents will be invited to register after August 1st. We hope you can join us in this beautiful setting for a rich, transformative experience. See details and link to registration here.
We’re thrilled to welcome guest teacher, Anushka Fernandopulle, a guiding teacher at Spirit Rock and IMS, who’s featured on many apps and mindfulness pods. During her stay in Bozeman, Anushka is offering many opportunities for practice:
Over two Wednesday classes evenings, Anushka will share teachings and meditations that develop the two wings of dharma practice: Wisdom and Compassion. This first one will explore the essentials of Wisdom or Insight practice that reveals to us the nature of our experience and ‘purifies’ the heart-mind. Appropriate for all levels of meditation experience.
Come to one or both as your schedule allows, prior registration requested. Zoom option. PLEASE REGISTER HERE
Guest at Bozeman Insight, Thursday May 16: Q&A with the Insight sangha to hear stories, highs and lows from Anushka’s journey in the dharma. These informal, conversational evenings are entertaining and inspiring and help us get to know the teacher. Everyone welcome to drop in, room or zoom.
Mindfulness for LGBTQI+ Community, Friday, May 17: This evening is for queer meditators or wanna-learn meditators of all stripes and rainbow colors. Anushka will offer an evening of Mindfulness instruction, practice and Q&A just for LGBTQI+ people. Come meet other mindful folks and let’s see if there’s interest in launching a Queer sangha at the Dharma Center. Offered freely.
Anushka will teach the art of savoring nature’s beauty with mindfulness. There will be a long lunch break for hiking and being out on the Triple Tree trails.
This day is appropriate for those new to meditation or practitioners with experience. Please pre-register through the Dharma Center’s website. Zoom option will not be available. Registration is now open here.
Anushka describes her background:
I have trained in Buddhist meditation for over 30 years, primarily Vipassana or Insight Meditation (the source of secular Mindfulness). After studying Buddhism at Harvard, I spent four years in full-time meditation training in the US, India and Sri Lanka. I was invited to teach Dharma in 1998 and later went through a four year meditation teacher training program with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg and other leading Western Buddhist meditation teachers. I joined the Teacher’s Council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in 2011. My work has been featured in publications like Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, Turning Wheel,Inquiring Mind, as well as on my blog on the Huffington Post about dharma and politics.
Join the Bozeman and Butte Insight Communities in welcoming Insight Teacher Jill Shepherd (via Butte’s Zoom Room-see below) for a morning of meditation, instruction, and conversation on Sunday, May 5 from 10-11:30 AM.
Jill Shepherd began practicing insight meditation in Thailand in 1999, and since that time has lived and worked at several meditation centers and monasteries in the US, Australia, England, and Thailand.
She recently spent seven years on staff at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, where she participated in several long retreats and Buddhist study programs, as well as offering weekly meditation classes at a nearby men’s prison.
She is a graduate of the IMS / Spirit Rock teacher training program in the US, under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Gil Fronsdal.
Currently, she divides her time mostly between the USA, Australia and New Zealand, teaching vipassana and brahma vihara retreats and offering ongoing study and practice groups focused on bringing the dharma into daily life. She also leads courses and non-residential workshops exploring the relational practice of Insight Dialogue, as developed by Gregory Kramer and colleagues.
Enjoy a morning of meditation with Ying Chen on Sunday, April 28 at 10 AM. Ying Chen was born in China and immigrated to US as a young adult. She took refuge with Venerable Ji Ru in 1995. After coming to the US, she first practiced Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. Since 2001, she’s been drawn to the Theravada tradition and has been practicing primarily under the guidance of Gil Fronsdal at his center in California. Ying is a graduate of the Sati Center Chaplaincy program and Local Dharma Leader program from Insight Meditation Center (IMC). She currently facilitates the IMC support group for people living with illness and co-leads IMC’s Asian Dharma Circle with Lilu Chen.
This morning of meditation with Ying Chen is brought to you by the Bozeman and Butte Insight Communities. This event is freely offered. You do not need to pre-register. Donations to support the teacher are gratefully accepted. Instructions for how to do so will be detailed on Sunday.
You can sample Ying Chen’s guided meditations and dharma talks on IMC’s archives here.
Please note that this event will occur over Zoom but NOT the BDC’s normal Zoom number. Please use the Butte Zoom Meeting # 567 641 174 (or click on the button below) and enter password: 628468
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
