Diana Clark, PhD, offers Dharma teachings grounded in many years of meditation practice, retreat experience, and study, as well as a deep trust in the Buddha’s path of peace and freedom. Her teaching invites people to discover greater ease, clarity, and freedom in the midst of ordinary life. Diana was trained as a retreat teacher by Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. Her background also includes serving as a professor of Theravāda Buddhism at the Institute of Buddhist Studies and working as a cancer researcher. She has a PhD in biochemistry. These varied forms of practice, teaching, and inquiry inform an approach to the Dharma that is careful, experiential, and engaged with everyday life. More than a thousand of Diana’s talks and guided meditations are available at AudioDharma.org. Her website is DianaClarkDharma.org.
My work since 2006 through UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center (uclahealth.org/marc) emphasizes making mindfulness teachings accessible to all, regardless of background, yet without losing depth practice. In recent years I have been teaching on Natural Awareness— the effortless, objectless, and spacious side of awareness practices. Socially engaged Buddhism is a thread woven through many of my talks-- how can we end suffering both internally and externally? Having worked with teens and young adults for many years, some of the talks are geared to young people. Finally as a mom of a tween, I'm deeply inspired by the transformative power of daily life and family practice.
1. Choose one meditation practice and stick with it. If you want to progress in meditation stay with one technique.
2. Meditate every day. Practice now. Don't think you will do more later.
3. Any situation is workable. Each of us has enormous power. It can be used to help ourselves and help others.
4. Practice patience. Patience is one of the most important virtues for developing mindfulness and concentration.
5. Free your mind. Your mind is all stories.
6. Cool the fire of emotions. Anger is a fire.
7. Have fun along the way. I am quite happy. If you come to meditate you will also be happy.
8. Simplify. Live simply. A very simple life is good for every thing. Too much luxury is a hindrance to practice.
9. Cultivate the spirit of blessing. If you bless those around you this will inspire you to be attentive in every moment.
10. It's a circular journey. Meditation integrates the whole person
Donald Rothberg, PhD, has practiced Insight Meditation since 1976, and has also received training in Tibetan Dzogchen and Mahamudra practice and the Hakomi approach to body-based psychotherapy. Formerly on the faculties of the University of Kentucky, Kenyon College, and Saybrook Graduate School, he currently writes and teaches classes, groups and retreats on meditation, daily life practice, spirituality and psychology, and socially engaged Buddhism. An organizer, teacher, and former board member for the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Donald has helped to guide three six-month to two-year training programs in socially engaged spirituality through Buddhist Peace Fellowship (the BASE Program), Saybrook (the Socially Engaged Spirituality Program), and Spirit Rock (the Path of Engagement Program). He is the author of
The Engaged Spiritual Life: A Buddhist Approach to Transforming Ourselves and the World
and the co-editor of Ken Wilber in
Dialogue: Conversations with Leading Transpersonal Thinkers.
Doug is founder and guiding teacher of Empty Sky Vipasssa Sangha and a long time practioner of vipassana and zen. His teaching is strongly influenced by Vimala Thakar and J. Krishnamurti as he explores such questions as "After all these years of practice, why are we not free?" and "What happens that we do not immediately live the understanding we work so hard to gain, continuing to cling to the false when seeing clearly what is true?" He brings a strong committment and interest to the integration of formal practice and intimacy in relationship in the context of daily living.
Éowyn Ahlstrom grew up a stone’s throw from the then-emerging Insight Meditation Society. She left the area for college and spent about a decade traveling the world, searching for a way to live. Along the way, she first discovered meditation through the yoga tradition. To her happy surprise, the way of life she had been seeking turned out to be very close to home—at IMS, with the liberating practices of vipassana and metta meditation, and the profound wisdom of the early Buddhist teachings. Over the past two decades, she has attended many IMS retreats, both at the Retreat Center and the Forest Refuge, and has often led mindful movement sessions during retreats as well.
Éowyn has served as both a staff member and volunteer at IMS, and was honored to be authorized as a retreat teacher by the IMS guiding teachers after a mentoring process with Kamala Masters, Greg Scharf, and Bhikkhu Analayo. Her broader work has included developing programs and training MBSR teachers at Brown University; teaching community mindfulness, meditation, and yoga programs at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion at the Cambridge Health Alliance; and teaching for many other organizations in the region, including IMS’ next door neighbor, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. She loves both teaching and consulting with organizations to offer pragmatic guidance and support for integrating contemplative awareness into the complexities of 21st-century life.
Éowyn is also a poet and the author of Mindscapes: Practice Poems. In addition to her master’s degree in health and wellness, she has qualifications as a massage therapist, yoga teacher (E-RYT 500), Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) teacher, and Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) teacher. For more about her work and practice, please visit her website, Middle Path Healing Arts.
Eric Kolvig, Ph.D., taught meditation for 30 years in the vipassana tradition. He led meditation retreats and gave public talks around the United States and abroad. Eric has a particular interest in “grassroots dharma,” building spiritual community in democratic, non-authoritarian ways. He co-founded wilderness retreats and also Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) retreats in the vipassana tradition. Now retired, Eric lives in Flagstaff.
