OCTOBER 2026 NEWSLETTER
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
Recently the accomplished western dharma practitioner & translator Sangye Khandro was asked if she were looking back on her 50 years of practice what she would say to a younger practitioner. Among her simple & direct words in response were: "We must sit down on the cushion & internalize the practice instructions, so that they become part of our mindstream…& that is best done in retreat."
She lamented that the practice of retreat seems to be waning in our current times. So with the aspiration to inspire others, I thought it might be of value to share a bit my own experience of retreat, where retreats have been among the most treasured experiences of my life.
Although more than 40 years ago, I vividly recall the first retreat. I'd been practicing meditation a year or two & taking classes based on the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. I learned that Rinpoche had designed a program of mindfulness awareness-based retreat weekends for westerners called Shambhala Training, (notably still being offered at the Philadelphia Shambhala Center). Despite the outer obstacles of being married to a non-practitioner & mother of a toddler with special needs, the inner longing for retreat was strong enough to work through them.
Challenging though the weekend was, as I rode the waves of physical & emotional ups & downs, the experience left me with an unwavering sense of the power & potential of longer periods of practice & contemplation based on the teachings. The stillness, silence, & spaciousness were essential to unravelling unexplored patterns of thoughts & emotions which were not serving me in life. By the end of the weekend, I felt a very unfamiliar, yet most welcome sense of fundamental well-being - honestly, perhaps my first experience of being genuinely at ease with myself & in turn able to be more genuinely present with others.
So the seed of retreat as a part of being a dharma practitioner was planted that first weekend. It took years to complete the many subsequent weekend retreats followed by a 2-week culminating retreat, where the obstacles were always there. Yet I came away from each weekend knowing there was nothing like retreat to deepen in practice & to experience the difference the time away made when I returned to my day-to-day life.
The many group & solitary retreats since that time, each carefully structured in order to create safe, strong & disciplined containers for deep practice, & under the guidance of a practitioner who has accomplished the specific practice if an advanced retreat, have only further affirmed their value. And wherever & whenever we engage in retreat, as with all of our practice, when you engage with pure motivation & genuine heart, know you will be benefiting not only yourself, but everyone with whom you come in contact.
If you are inspired to experience retreat (or re-connect to retreat), why not start with a day, or even a half day, such as is offered this Sunday, October 4th, at The Wisdom Seat 9-noon and 1-4 p.m. & every first Sunday of the month. Or you could dive into a weeklong group retreat to deepen your mindfulness-awareness practice, such as the one The Wisdom Seat is holding at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra November 28-December 6.
-Alison Driscoll
Notes from Bill
We recently concluded a weekend of teachings with our guest, Jetsunma Jamyang Yeshe Palmo, exploring aspects of hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana practice. This was our first time hosting Jetusnma, and we all came away enriched from the exeperience. A massive thank you to all the volunteers that made this possible. The friday evening public talk is available to watch on our youtube channel here.
-Bill Moriarty
Nyinthun: Full Day Online & In Person Practice, October 2026
October 4, 2026, 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM EDT
In person and online full day group sitting practice, interspersed with walking meditation.
The practice of Maitri Space Awareness with Irini Rockwell
Oct 9 - 11, 2026
The practice of Maitri Space Awareness and the teachings of the Five Wisdom Energies with Irini Rockwell. In this program, we will delve into the Five Wisdoms through Maitri Space Awareness practice created by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
The Wisdom Seat Retreat 2026
Nov 28th - Dec 6th
We invite you to join us for this in-person annual retreat at the Karma TriyanaDharmachakra monastery in the delightful upstate New York Catskill Mountains. Michael Carroll will be leading this 8-day practice intensive designed to help us deepen our mindfulness-awareness meditation and integrate it into our daily life.
The Roar of the Werma Retreat
Feb 12-21, 2027
Join Michael Carroll, Rhea Colmar, and MI Dylan Khanal for The Roar of the Werma Retreat at Karme Choling - nine days of Werma sadhana practice, Ashe' stroke practice, and dharma talks exploring the warrior's heart of sadness. Open to those who have received the Werma Sadhana Transmission.
The Power of Mind: The 7 Points of Mind Training
Select Tuesdays 6:30pm EDT
Join us for an in-depth exploration of lojong, or mind training, starting May 19, 2026. Using the text The Power of Mind by Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche as our base, we will meet Tuesday evenings to practice and discuss the text.
Wednesday Meditation
Wednesdays 6:15pm EDT
Ongoing sitting meditation practice. Zoom only. Every Wednesday, 6:15–7:30pm Eastern Time.
Katog Choling
Annual Pandey Norbu Shedra
Saturdays and Sundays, November 7-8, 14-15, and 21-22, 2026, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. and 2:30-4:30 p.m. (CST) Live Webcast
Teaching by Khentrul Rinpoche. Based on a four-stage approach to the Buddha's teachings drawn from the treatise of the omniscient Longchen Rabjam: turn your mind toward the dharma, turn the dharma into the path, dispel confusion through the path, and transform confused appearances into the wisdom of timeless awareness. This text covers the entire scope of the path, from the sutras through the tantras, offering an overview of all stages of practice.
Dorje Denma Ling
Contemplative Arts: The Magnificent Display of Awake Mind
September 20, 2026 - October 24, 2027, 3:00 pm ET one Sunday/month Online
The series showcases professional artists who devoted themselves to the pursuit of mastery in the contemplative arts, both as the core of their artistic expression and as part of their spiritual path. The series will survey Japanese disciplines such as Ikebana (flowers), Kyudo (archery), Bugaku (dance), and calligraphy, as well as contemporary western arts such as theatre, dance, music, poetry, film, design, and photography.
Westchester Meditation Center
WMC Annual Winter Retreat
February 19-26, 2027 Garrison Institute, Garrison, NY
With Judy Lief and the WMC Senior Faculty. Many people are drawn to meditation as a means to develop more serenity and clarity, but a deeper transformation of our experience is possible. A well-established meditation practice grounds us deeply in an openness that is also clear, flexible, and resilient, better able to rise to life's challenges with the kindness of an open heart. A week-long immersive retreat is a powerful way to deepen our relationship to meditation and see its benefits. Scholarships will be available for this program.
Wisdom's Melody
Impermanence, Uncertainty and Skillful Means (with Uncertainty)
By Bryan Welch
I went to buy some chickens from a farmer this morning. We needed replacements because a fox moved on to our property this summer and over the course of a few months abducted, and ate, the 25 hens we had, plus half of a group of 25 pullets we raised as replacements.
We keep four big dogs that are bred and trained to protect livestock. Without them, we couldn't raise sheep, or keep our free-range hens in the yard. Coyotes, bobcats, raccoons, possums and foxes are our neighbors. Everyone likes to eat chicken. The dogs generally keep them away from our animals. The dogs are trained not to eat chickens. But somehow the fox has outsmarted the dogs this year. So I'm buying chickens.
Why, you might reasonably ask, would I be adding chickens to a flock whose primary purpose for the past three months has been to feed a family of foxes?
I don't know.
I often don't know. In fact, as I think about it I might say that I never know anything for certain.
My wife Carolyn and I raise cattle, sheep and chickens on our little ranch in Kansas. Farming is a cornerstone of our Buddhist practice. Every day it presents lessons in impermanence, suffering, and transcendence. Every day it offers me opportunities to practice compassion, and demonstrates the many ways in which my compassion is often misplaced, or unskillful. More than anything working with nature in this way reminds me, constantly, of how much I don't know, and can't know.
From a distance, people tell us our lifestyle looks peaceful. If we experience peace here, it is the peace of acceptance.
We love living our lives with animals, steeped in nature. We are surprised and delighted every day. Carolyn and I have wanted to live with animals, deep in nature, since we were children. So we were lucky to come to this life.
Still, it's a life full of sadness. Our ewes generally have twin lambs each winter. The cows have calves. The babies sparkle with life. Before a year passes two-thirds of the sheep must be sold, mostly to feed people (us and others). The same goes for about one-third of the cow herd. Otherwise, the grass would be gone in a few months, the land would be overgrazed and animals would starve.
That is not our design. It is the design of this world.
A few years ago a well-meaning acquaintance suggested that we could make our land a sanctuary for animals rescued from slaughter. We could take in old cows and unwanted horses to live out their lives on our grass and die of old age. We have thought about that. But it does not seem clear, to us, that it would be practicing a higher form of compassion. The people we feed might otherwise be fed through the ruthless and extractive machinery of industrial agriculture, which generates immense suffering across its fields, its feedlots and the machinery of its slaughterhouses. Are we creating more suffering in the world by raising and slaughtering animals, or less? The math of compassion is complicated.
We love our animals, and we kill them. We do our best every day to provide them with fulfilling lives that suit their various natures.
As I was leaving the farm where I bought the chickens, I noticed a litter of darling kittens frolicking on the floor of the barn. I asked the farmer if they were weaned and he said they were, and asked if I wanted to take one with me. I did.
Once she's big enough to take care of herself, she'll move out of our house where we've been loving and playing with her, and into the barn where she'll live with a couple of other cats. Without cats, we are overrun by rodents. Our cats kill and eat a lot of mice and prairie voles. Sometimes they kill birds, too, which is sad. And it's really sad when the livestock-guardian dogs kill and eat a nest full of baby rabbits. But the dogs and the cats, the coyotes, the sheep, the bobcats, the rabbits, the mice and the birds are living lives that fit them.
And they all fit into the sad, beautiful, harsh system that governs our world.
If we bought vegan food at the store, would there be less suffering?
I don't know.
I know we try to maintain a place where we and the animals can lead fulfilling lives that suit us. We make daily judgment calls, trying to minimize suffering. And we're never entirely sure how successfully we do that.
And so we are witnesses to suffering, while we are messengers of joy. We are stewards of grass. We are students of impermanence and practitioners of acceptance. We are ranchers, and we are Buddhists.
---
Bryan Welch's latest book, The Gift of a Broken Heart, was published in the spring of 2026 by New Harbinger Publications. He is the former CEO of Mindful Communications, Mother Earth News, the Utne Reader and Silk Grass Farms, a farming, food processing and conservation enterprise in Belize. Bryan and his wife Carolyn raise organic, grass-fed cattle and sheep on their farm near Lawrence, Kansas, with the help of their grandsons. Find more from Bryan on his Substack: substack.com/@thegiftofabrokenheart.
---
Wisdom's Melody is open to submissions from the Wisdom Seat community. Essays, reflections, and creative writing of 800 words or less are welcome. Contact Bill at billmoriarty@thewisdomseat.org to submit.
"Even though I searched in all sorts of ways for you,
O noble lady, I failed to find certainty in your true existence.
So, wearied by conceptual elaborations, this youthful mind
seeks respite in the quiet forest of what is inexpressible."
—A Hymn to Vajrayogini
Tsarchen Losel Gyatso
Comments