Classes
Upcoming offerings to connect you to practice and community
Classes on meditation, Zen, and contemplative spirituality are offered throughout the year on Tuesday or Thursday evenings.
Monthly Mindfulness Practice Group:
Our most popular regular offering!
Offered every month on a Saturday, 9:00-11:30am (check calendar).
This is a hybrid group, both online and onsite at Aslan Institute.
Appropriate for beginners and experienced meditators alike, our monthly drop-in group features meditation, teaching, experiential, and group discussion. It's an informal gathering that explores basic mindfulness and self-awareness practices in a "lightly-Zen" (mostly secular/spiritual) sense. There's usually 6-10 of us, and it's usually a combo of more experienced folks and pretty new folks. We usually start and end with a short, silent sitting. We have a theme/teaching portion, and an exercise or two designed to help us see something we might not otherwise. Bring a journal or notebook. A relaxed a friendly atmosphere, perfect for exploration.
Suggested donation $30-40.
No registration required; all are welcome!
For the Zoom link, click here.
Plan Ahead for Fall!
NEW WINTER CLASS:
Practicing Enlightenment:
Exploring Buddhist Meditation Techniques
Six Tuesdays, January 23 – February 27, 6:00-7:30pm CT, via Zoom.
$129 (early registration, before January 15) or $149 (January 15 or after)
The Back Story:
The enduring idea at the center of the Buddhist tradition is the story of a person who found spiritual liberation in the midst of human life through sustained and profound self-observation (i.e., meditation). Over the centuries, Buddhist practitioners have developed and practiced many specific meditation techniques, all designed to help us develop and sustain the same capacity to observe the self that Buddha had, and ultimately, to wake up to who we most truly are.
The Class:
We’ll spend six weeks working with six of the central meditation teachings that the Buddhist tradition has to offer us. Each week will feature one meditation technique and its instruction, time for discussion and exploration, a teaching presentation designed to support and facilitate deeper engagement, and handouts of all related material for further individual exploration.
The Details:
Class is six Tuesdays, Jan. 23 – Feb. 27, 6:00-7:00pmCT, via Zoom. Fee is $129 (registering with a friend, or early registration before Sept. 1) or $149 (standard rate). Scholarships available upon request. A commitment to a daily meditation practice is requested. No required text; all readings will be provided. All classes and course content will be recorded, so non-sequential learning and distance attendance are both possible and encouraged. You won’t miss anything!
The Reminder:
People care about this beautiful and suffering world. They do it most powerfully and most directly by caring for their own precious inner lives. And after more than 2,500 years, walking the spiritual path is still a choice people make; a loving response to the human condition that people still choose. This will be a gentle, sincere, unique, and collective inquiry, and will help us develop creative day-to-day mindfulness practices so that we more deeply experience and appreciate our precious and fleeting lives.
Please join us and bring a friend!
Retreats
Deepen your practice with these immersions in silence.
Zazenkai mini-retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 8:30-11:30am,
via Zoom
Our regular zazenkai mini-retreats
("to come together for meditation")
are simple, three-hour immersions in group mindfulness practice.
They feature a few periods each of both sitting and walking meditation,
a short teaching talk, and a little break half-way through.
Simple, easy, friendly, quiet, and open to everyone.
$30 donation suggested.
Check the calendar for the next one and join us to discover what a big difference a few short hours of silence can make.
Half-day Retreats
Regularly on a Saturday, 9am-3pm,
in person at Aslan Institute
Our silent Half-day Meditation Retreats are six hours in length and feature sitting meditation, walking meditation, a short dharma teaching talk, and the option of meeting one-to-one with the teacher.
Appropriate for beginners and experienced contemplatives alike, these simple retreats are user-friendly, restorative, and often profound.
$40/person
Check the calendar for the next one and join us to discover what a big difference a few short hours of silence can make.