Newsletter: Sati Center — Long

Registration Opens Soon
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

Online via Zoom
The Rev. Alice Cabotaje, Board Certified Chaplain and ACPE Certified Educator, will delve into the intersection of spiritual formation and embodiment, exploring the intricate paths of nurturing the soul and embodying one’s practice into spiritual care.
About the Instructor:
The Rev. Alice Cabotaje is the Director of Spiritual Care at Stanford Health Care. Alice is a Certified Educator from the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) and a Board Certified Chaplain through the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC).
Prior to Stanford Health Care, Alice was Director of Spiritual Care and Education at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Before Mass. General, she was at the University of California San Francisco Medical Center where she served as a Chaplain and underwent supervisory education to become an ACPE Certified Educator of Clinical Pastoral Education.
She is an Ordained Minister with the Metropolitan Community Church and an authorized Zen Teacher and Dharma Heir in the Rinzai Zen School Empty Cloud lineage.  She has a Master of Divinity from the Pacific School of Religion, Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, California, and a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of the Philippines.
Prior to her move into health care leadership and Chaplaincy, she was a Financial Journalist for 20 years and covered the economies and capital markets of Asia, North and South Americas.

Online via Zoom
Register
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

The Buddha’s teachings come alive in conversation. His teachings were created in the moment, in his encounters with the diverse people and ideas of his time. Summaries of his teachings focus on *what* he said, but for this course we will focus on *how* he said it. Engaging in a meaningful conversation is not just being able to state correct facts, but to listen with empathy for people’s needs and values. This four week course selects memorable moments from the early Buddhist texts and reflects on them as encounters in a personal and social context.
About the Instructor:
Bhante Sujato is a senior teaching monk in Australia and the region. He is currently focussing on leading the team for SuttaCentral, a website for early Buddhist texts, translations, and parallels. He is also passionate about climate work and other contemporary issues. Many of his works can be found online at https://lokanta.github.io.

Online via Zoom
Register
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

The Buddha’s teachings come alive in conversation. His teachings were created in the moment, in his encounters with the diverse people and ideas of his time. Summaries of his teachings focus on *what* he said, but for this course we will focus on *how* he said it. Engaging in a meaningful conversation is not just being able to state correct facts, but to listen with empathy for people’s needs and values. This four week course selects memorable moments from the early Buddhist texts and reflects on them as encounters in a personal and social context.
About the Instructor:
Bhante Sujato is a senior teaching monk in Australia and the region. He is currently focussing on leading the team for SuttaCentral, a website for early Buddhist texts, translations, and parallels. He is also passionate about climate work and other contemporary issues. Many of his works can be found online at https://lokanta.github.io.

Register
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

In Person at Insight Meditation Center and Online via Zoom
Though the Buddha repeatedly emphasized a sense of well-being, or pāmojja, as an essential aspect of the path to awakening, many of us find our sitting practice anything but. The narrow techniques often taught in meditation circles conceive of practice as a dry exercise that fails to interest and calm the active minds of modern practitioners. By exploring different routes to well-being (paths to pāmojja), especially those emphasizing meditation on breath, loving-kindness, letting go, and objects of faith, the retreat aims to help participants rediscover happiness in their practice.
About the Instructor:
Ajahn Kovilo is an Ohio-born monk who, having been introduced to meditation through the Goenka tradition, first entered the monastery in 2006. After receiving full ordination from Ajahn Pasanno and Ajahn Amaro at Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in California in 2010, Ajahn Kovilo spent the next decade training at monasteries in the Ajahn Chah tradition in America and Thailand. In 2020, after a year practicing at a Pa Auk Sayadaw monastery, Ajahn Kovilo enrolled at the Dharma Realm Buddhist University in Ukiah, California where he is currently studying Pali and Sanskrit among other courses. Until the end of his formal studies, Ajahn Kovilo will be participating in the growing Clear Mountain Monastery community remotely and during Winter and Summer breaks. After finishing his studies, Ajahn Kovilo will join the community in person on a more regular basis.
Registration Opens Soon

Online via Zoom

Register
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

In this talk David will discuss his two years working full time as a Staff Wellbeing Chaplain in an Acute Hospital Trust in Southwest London, UK. He will explore;
Tensions between the structural and superficial potential of staff wellbeing services in large public institutions like the British National Healthcare Service (NHS).
Working as Buddhist chaplain in a generic chaplaincy role, one which has recently been rebranded to remove the association with chaplaincy: Staff Pastoral Wellbeing Practitioner
Instances of collaboration and crossover with clinical mental health provision, the disambiguation of counselling and chaplaincy, and the modelling of Buddhist chaplaincy on Christian chaplaincy
About the Instructor:
David Morris lives in London, UK, where he works full time as a chaplain in healthcare, with responsibility for staff wellbeing at an acute hospital. He has a BA and MA in the Study of Religions from SOAS (the School of Oriental and African Studies) and a PGC in Chaplaincy Studies from Newman University. David’s first chaplaincy job was in Higher Education, working for six years at the University of Westminster as deputy lead chaplain. He has been on a Buddhist journey since his teens, mainly with Shambhala for the last decade. He spent 9 months on retreat at Gampo Abbey in 2018/19, taking temporary ordination in the Kagyu lineage, and looks to Pema Chödrön as a teacher alongside Anam Thubten. David is a Trustee of the London Shambhala Meditation Centre where he also volunteers and teaches. He writes, records and performs songs under his own name and with bands, and spends a lot of time fantasising about living somewhere more rural and rugged, like Cornwall, where he grew up.

Register
Cost:
Dāna Program
This dana program is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Any donation you can offer to the teacher and to the Sati Center to continue making these teachings available is greatly appreciated.

The widespread idea that Buddhism is against pleasure is a misunderstanding. Even whether it is against desire is debatable, but it is certainly not against feeling good. In fact, early Buddhism is built on (and not against) our natural tendency to avoid the painful and seek the pleasant, but in a way that harnesses it for the sake of liberation—it is a form of refined hedonism. This perspective, which we have lost sight of, can balance approaches to dharma practice that are excessively ‘rationalist’ or that double down on our tendency to focus on suffering and the negative. During this workshop Bernat Font will show that many models of progress to awakening share the same underlying ‘hedonic curve’ and explore how this can affect our understanding of the early Buddhist path as well as play out in our own practice.

About the Instructor:
Bernat Font met the dharma at a very young age and has practiced in Europe, India and Myanmar, gradually putting aside his artistic career. He completed his dharma teacher training with Bodhi College in 2022, mentored by Stephen Batchelor, and has a PhD in Buddhist Studies. He founded the dharma organisation ‘Espai Sati’ in Barcelona, serves the LGBTQIA+ community, and teaches in English, Catalan and Spanish.

Registration Opens Soon
With Ying Chen, David Lorey, Diana Clark, Kim Allen
Online via Zoom
Sometimes in Dharma talks we hear teachers refer to a “sutta,” to the “Pali canon,” or to “what the Buddha said.” What are they referring to? How can we find such texts ourselves? In this three-part course we’ll explore the three baskets (tipitaka) of the Pali Canon, with particular attention to the collections containing suttas (discourses). The class includes reading and discussion, along with suggestions for ways to bring the texts and the teachings they contain into practice. Each session includes meditation and small-group interaction. This class is suitable for people new to the Pali Canon as well as those more familiar with it; no knowledge of Pali is required.

Registration Opens Soon
With Ying Chen, David Lorey, Diana Clark, Kim Allen
Online via Zoom
Sometimes in Dharma talks we hear teachers refer to a “sutta,” to the “Pali canon,” or to “what the Buddha said.” What are they referring to? How can we find such texts ourselves? In this three-part course we’ll explore the three baskets (tipitaka) of the Pali Canon, with particular attention to the collections containing suttas (discourses). The class includes reading and discussion, along with suggestions for ways to bring the texts and the teachings they contain into practice. Each session includes meditation and small-group interaction. This class is suitable for people new to the Pali Canon as well as those more familiar with it; no knowledge of Pali is required.

Registration Opens Soon
With Ying Chen, David Lorey, Diana Clark, Kim Allen
Online via Zoom
Sometimes in Dharma talks we hear teachers refer to a “sutta,” to the “Pali canon,” or to “what the Buddha said.” What are they referring to? How can we find such texts ourselves? In this three-part course we’ll explore the three baskets (tipitaka) of the Pali Canon, with particular attention to the collections containing suttas (discourses). The class includes reading and discussion, along with suggestions for ways to bring the texts and the teachings they contain into practice. Each session includes meditation and small-group interaction. This class is suitable for people new to the Pali Canon as well as those more familiar with it; no knowledge of Pali is required.

Online via Zoom

Registration Opens Soon

Like mindfulness of breathing, mettā, loving-kindness practice, has been used as a basis for cultivating meditative stability and concentration (samadhi) since the Buddha’s time. Please join us for this three-hour experiential workshop. Most of our time will be spent in lightly guided practice, interspersed with instructions. There will be an opportunity for Q&A with the teacher.

About the Instructor:
Dawn Neal has devoted several years to silent retreat since 2005. Her intensive practice in Asia includes temporarily ordaining in Burma in 2009. Shortly afterwards, she started practicing with Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella, with whom she is now in the final phase of Dharma teacher training. Dawn has an MA from the Institute of Buddhist Studies. She is a published scholar and core faculty member of the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies Chaplaincy Program. She professionally trained as an hospital chaplain, and served at Stanford Medicine before joining Insight Santa Cruz as the Guiding Teacher. Dawn teaches for IMC via Zoom on Tuesday mornings.