10th Annual Cascadia Insight Dialogue Retreat

with Gregory Kramer, Tuere Sala, Mary, and Nicola Redfern

May 8 - 15, 2020

The 10th Annual Cascadia Insight Dialogue Retreat from May 8 - May 15, 2020, at Samish Island Camp, Bow, WA will be canceled. This difficult decision is based on wanting to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of all retreatants, teachers, and Samish staff.

The Cascadia Coordinators will be exploring possibilities of an on-line event possibly during the scheduled retreat period, May 8-15, or later in the year. Some of the teachers have already offered to be present for a virtual opportunity so that we may practice together and celebrate what we have built over 10 years.

The dates for next year’s retreat are yet to be established, but it will be between May 6th to the 15th of 2021 in case you want to mark your calendars.

Refuge in the Fire

The fires of the world have been very hot. There is injustice, climate crisis, and the degradation of dignity and truth. Now it’s getting even more heated. And the pace is accelerating.

How do we find refuge in the Dhamma while remaining fully in relationship with the world and its pain?

What are our sources of joy, inspiration, and resilience in our world at this point?

Insight Dialogue is a practice of contact with the world. It brings us into relationship with ourselves and our bodies, with other people, with nature, and with powerful teachings. True relatedness invites us to an intimacy with things as they are. And how things are is alarming and clearly out of our control. Exactly this is our field of practice. Meeting this with compassion and diligence, over and over, is the deep purpose of meditation, Dhamma, and spiritual friendship. It is also the source (or strength or foundation) of our capacity to engage in the world.

Through an attentive weaving of meditative dialogue, silent meditation, and time in nature, we will deepen the essential meditative qualities that support inquiry into this shared human experience. Meditating together with the support of the six lnsight Dialogue guidelines, we might discover what it’s like to genuinely touch grief and fear without turning away. Perhaps we will emerge from numbness, dissociation, and isolation, moving toward a wakeful wholeness and belonging, ready to fully participate in the liberation of all beings.


Joseph Goldstein: Insight Dialogue: The Interpersonal Path to Freedom by Gregory Kramer “...breaks new ground in applying the Buddha’s teachings to our lives, relationships, and meditative understandings [...and is] of tremendous benefit to all those seeking freedom in their daily lives.”