2022 Conference Retreat
Retreat details
If you're looking to maximise your International Conference on Mindfulness experience, don't miss our One-Day Retreat led by Dr. Eva Natanya.
Venue: Monash Caulfield, Building H, Room 116
Date: 19 November 2022
Time: 9:00am – 4:30pm
Tickets: $175 in-person or $100 online.
Student rates: $150 in-person or $85 online. (Limited in-person tickets available).
About Dr. Eva Natanya
Dr. Eva Natanya has served in many capacities as a practitioner, scholar, translator, and teacher of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, Christian theology, and comparative religion.
Following a nine-year career as a professional ballet dancer with both the New York City Ballet and the Royal Ballet of England, she earned an MA in Christian Systematic Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, and a PhD in Religious Studies from the University of Virginia. Her dissertation examined the complex interactions of Madhyamaka, Yogācāra, and Abhidharma teachings as they underlie the Vajrayāna philosophy of Jé Tsongkhapa.
In a Christian context, she co-authored Living Resurrected Lives: What It Means and Why It Matters with Veronica Mary Rolf.
She has spent more than three years in solitary meditation retreat, and now serves as hermitage director and resident teacher at the Center for Contemplative Research at Miyo Samten Ling in Crestone, Colorado.
About the Retreat
Stillness as a Path to Contemplative Discoveries
Is meditative stillness* an end in itself? Or can it serve as a doorway to fundamental discoveries about the nature of reality and vast personal transformation?
This one-day retreat, led by Dr. Eva Natanya, will focus on the theme of stillness itself, in its many dimensions within several contemplative contexts.
Stillness is a rich and evocative term, which can translate as shamatha within the Buddhist tradition and which can also translate as hesychasm within the Orthodox Christian tradition.
In both cases, it means far more than simply “an absence of motion” but rather refers to an integrated array of mental, emotional, ethical, and spiritual qualities that arise through the dedicated practice of “stillness” in prayer and meditation.
Within the hesychast tradition, this sacred stillness can also refer to the heights of contemplative illumination and the process by which the Christian practitioner is ultimately transformed, or divinized, by the divine energies.
Within the Buddhist traditions of Dzokchen and Mahamudra, the stillness of shamatha is but a preparatory stage for the culminating practices of meditation that break through the limitations of the human mind to illuminate the ultimate nature of consciousness and of all phenomena.
Stillness is thus a unifying theme, grounded in deep and far-reaching compassion, that can also be extended to what so many contemporary people are seeking in meditation, whether in religious or non-religious contexts of practice.
In alternating periods of guided meditation and closely related lectures, participants will receive instruction in principles of meditation that may be applied to their own daily practice, even as they may be challenged to peer beyond the scope of their current worldview.
Schedule:
9:00 – 10:30am Lecture and guided meditation
10:30 – 10:45am Tea break
10:45 – 12:00pm Lecture and meditation
1:30 – 3:00pm Lecture and guided meditation
3:00 – 3:15pm Tea break
3:15 – 4:30pm Lecture and meditation
*Note that the retreat theme of “stillness” as used here is multidimensional and reflects an integrated array of mental, emotional, ethical, and spiritual qualities that arise through the dedicated practice of “stillness” in meditation and is not linked to Stillness Meditation Therapy (SMT®) developed by Ainslie Meares.