The Wisdom Seat Fall 2025 Retreat

The Wisdom Seat 2025 Fall Retreat brought together practitioners for eight days at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra monastery in the Catskill Mountains for a deep dive into mindfulness-awareness meditation. Led by Michael Carroll and supported by The Wisdom Seat staff, the retreat combined 6–7 hours of daily shrine room practice with breath and body relaxation, outdoor walking meditation, readings from Buddhist texts, Dharma talks, and both group and individual meditation instruction. Participants, including both overnight guests and local commuters, observed “functional silence,” limiting speech to what was necessary for daily functioning. An hour or more of “helping hands” each day turned simple tasks into extensions of practice. Rather than offering dramatic breakthroughs, the retreat quietly trained participants to return again and again to present-moment awareness and to carry that steadiness back into the demands and relationships of everyday life.