Sign Up for an upcoming retreat at Charis Mandala Sanctuary!
These retreats will be taught by Charis teachers
Rory McEntee, Alejandra Warden, and Netanel Miles-Yépez
July 3-12
10-day Charis Retreat: Stages of the Path
All Practitioners Welcome
In this retreat, our Charis teachers will introduce the practice of Charis Meditation, including its vertical and horizontal dimensions, and look at some of the psychological dynamics surrounding it. Charis Meditation is an interspiritual silent meditation practice, based on Centering Prayer as taught by Fr. Thomas Keating, and is the basis for our Charis Circles, interspiritual communities of practice. In addition, our Charis teachers will explore various teachings on “Stages of the Path” from different religious traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Sufism, and the Sacred Feminine.
In this more advanced retreat, our Charis teachers will explore various orientations to the path from different contemplative traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, and Sufism. How does a Christian orientation to the spiritual path differ from a Buddhist one? In what ways do they overlap? And what might these similarities and differences imply? How might we harness them to better understand our own processes of transformation? We ask that practitioners have a minimum of a few years of daily meditation practice to join this retreat.
“The Snowmass Conferences, Interspiritual Dialogue,
and Thomas Keating’s Vision for the Future of Religion”
In April, Charis co-founder Rory McEntee will give a talk for Edinburgh International Centre for Spirituality and Peace (EICSP). Rory will describe the “Snowmass Conferences,” for which he was the administrator, and discuss how the experience of interspiritual dialogue that happened there affected and informed Fr. Keating’s vision for the future of religion.
Unity Consciousness for a World in Bits and Pieces
There’s still time to register!
Netanel Miles-Yépez is speaking at a day-long symposium to explore and celebrate the spiritual legacy of Fr. Thomas Keating: Trappist monk, enlightened spiritual master, founder of the Centering Prayer movement, and a pillar of contemplative interspiritual dialogue. The symposium will weave together teaching, practice, panel discussions, and provocative immersion sessions as we dive deeply into Fr. Thomas’s prophetic vision of Oneness as both an inner state of consciousness and an outer pathway of planetary healing.
Charis Circles are small, interspiritual practice communities which may be established anywhere in the world by trained facilitators. Featuring a communal practice of Charis Meditation, Charis Circles provide a broadly accessible way to experience interspiritual community. Charis Circles are held either in-person or online, and serve to feed a deep hunger for spiritual community and practice.
Interested in experiencing or joining an ongoing Charis Circle?
Is religion coming to an end? No, says religion scholar and interspiritual pioneer Netanel Miles-Yépez, it is an old and outworn idea of religion as “an-end-in-itself” that is coming to an end. “Religion,” he says, “will go on; it is how we relate to it that will change, and must change, if we are to reclaim its genuine usefulness to us.” In The End of Religion and Other Writings, Netanel Miles-Yépez has gathered a collection of his essays and interviews on the nature and purpose of religion, the depths and hope of interreligious dialogue, as well as his writings on Neo-Hasidism and Jewish Renewal from 1999-2019. In these highly original essays, we see the work of a brilliantly creative thinker in the early stage of his career, boldly asserting new frames of understanding for many of the issues spiritual seekers struggle with today.
Dr. Judith Simmer-Brown is Professor Emeritx of Religious Studies at Naropa University, where she has been on the faculty since 1978. She has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for almost 50 years and is a direct student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She serves on the steering committee of the American Academy of Religion’s Contemplative Studies Group, and has published widely on Tibetan Buddhism, women in Buddhism, interreligious dialogue, and contemplative studies.
In this episode, we explore the ins-and-outs of interreligious dialogue, the historic Buddhist-Christian Dialogues at the Naropa Institute, the retreats held before and after those dialogues, the dialogue of theology and devotion, public and private dialogue, ‘interreligious’ and ‘interspiritual’ dialogue, the development of the first course in Interreligious Dialogue at Naropa and its skills-based approach, the cultivation of good dialogues and dialoguers, as well as personal cultivation of one’s spiritual life.
Elk: A symbol of nobility, self-development, love, and endurance. The elk often moves in herds of the same gender (females with females and males with males) — reminding us to look out for those who are like ourselves. Uniting during mating season, the elk utilizes their keen senses to embody the warrior spirit to protect their mates as well. They reminds us there is always support around us.
