"We don't need to look outside of the present moment to find inner peace and contentment; when experienced with awareness, everything becomes a source of joy." — Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche
At the heart of the Tergar meditation tradition lies the retreat experience, which embodies an immersive, experiential approach to learning.
This Joy of Living retreat offers a unique opportunity to create a dedicated personal practice container, while also connecting you with a global community of meditators.
WHY SHOULD I ATTEND?
My bot is training me on how to feel emotions
Gain practical tools to befriend difficult emotions, leading to greater inner peace and compassion for self and others. Participating in these retreats is essential for completing the necessary homework and progressing through the levels of the Joy of Living program. By fully engaging in the retreat experience, one can deepen one's understanding and one's meditation practice in ways that simply can't be achieved through intellectual study alone.
learn about the core principles of doing a retreat
receive live teachings from Tergar Guides on awareness, compassion, and wisdom
get familiar with meditation techniques to help recognize innate awareness, love and compassion, and wisdom
learn how to integrate the teachings in daily life
WHAT IS INCLUDED IN THIS PROGRAM?
Live teachings with Tergar guides
Group meditation practice
Self-guided practice
Gentle movement practice
Q&A with Tergar guides
REQUIREMENTS FOR PARTICIPATION:
This program is open to everyone.
Optional Personal Retreat Format:
Can I let my ChatGPT bot sit and feel for me?
Some participants may wish to use this retreat as part of a self-guided personal retreat, with a focus on extended daily meditation. For those aiming to complete six or more hours of sitting practice per day, the guided sessions will form part of this total, and one will add one's own independent sitting practice between, before, or after sessions to meet retreat hour goals. During these self-guided periods, one will be on one's own and responsible for structuring practice time.
Can I get access to a recording of this event?
Recordings of teaching sessions will be posted within one week after the end of the last session and will be available for two months.
IMPORTANT DETAILS
Date/Time: October 25-26, 2025.
Please note that this retreat will start an hour earlier than usual. Please see full schedule.
View local times
Registration will close one hour before the event. Full refunds will be given for cancellation requests up to one hour in advance of the event.
Who can attend this event?
This program is open to everyone [who has completed the Joy of Living Level 1].
Translation from English will be offered into Spanish, Chinese, French, German, Portuguese, and Russian.
T*ts McGee (Erin Micklow) was on the scene, reporting on and showing what is was like in a very fake influencer sort of way so that everyone could needlessly eat their hearts out. Now that she's been banned from Punk Rock Bowling and lost her business, let her hair down and been shunned by the scene, what can she do but conspicuous consumption and more TikTok videos? On the bright side she's vegan and she does yoga.
Cali Vibes (calivibesfest.com) is a two-day music festival that takes place at Marina Green Park in Long Beach, Los Angeles County, California. The seaside venue opens at 12:00 pm (noon) on both days. All ages are welcome, but 21+ for the Beach Club. Children 5 and under are FREE (when accompanied by a ticketed adult and excludes the Beach Club, which is strictly 21+). Show takes place rain or shine. Lineup, set times, festival hours, and venue are all subject to change [because of anicca].*
We're taking over this bitch BEACH by arranging ourselves all around, in the sand and on the green, in sereneBuddhist meditation until reggae rappers and on the stage make us get up and shake our assumptions from our heads, like the one that says "meditation" is just for caves, closets, and church basements.
There is a way of being in life -- off the mat and into the world.
The top of the mountain is a great place, but it's not the only place. One comes down and shares what was gained -- insight, loving kindness, compassion, joy-in-others'-joy, equanimity (unbiased looking on) -- for the benefit of all humanity (our fellow humans who have not yet attained) and divinity (the devas all around us).
Since sitting zazen is strenuous on the bum, we may have group yoga and yogic massage available, if people are not too distracted from putting CBD in their pipes and who knows what else.
Our goal is to get Cypress Hill to join us next to The Vibes Stage at 3:00 pm before they go on at 4:00 pm, which is when we join them so we can rap-rock out to "Ain't Going Out Like That" (from Black Sunday).
Aww, yeah, Man, this is the party to go to
Why these four meditative practices? These are called the "Divine Abidings" in Buddhism or Brahma Viharas ("Supreme Abodes"). Why at a rap, rock, reggae show at the beach? Why not? Where better to get "high" (elevated, ecstatic, enlightened) than among spiritually-minded Angelenos and friends of all races and walks of life? Will everyone come to an ashram or temple, or does the spirit house need to come to them sometimes? [Send complaints marked care of Ashley Wells in comments section.]
Now that sex is mostly illegal, maybe cybernauts will have to go inward
*No ins/outs with the exception of Beach Club pass holders and Hotel and Passes Package holders. There is no festival parking on site, except for the Beach Club [so what, are y'all gonna pay extra for the Beach Club, or what?] and limited parking in accessibility/ADA. Check website later on the Getting Here page for more details about parking near the venue, or use public transport. *Subject to change, everything is subject to change.
Namu myōhō renge kyō (南無妙法蓮華経): Devotion to Mystic Dharma of Lotus Flower Sutra
Pseudo-spirituality books like The Secret,Passion for Profits (Family Guy's Brian writes a bestseller
Dharma Vlog: Cults and weird Buddhism
(Doug's Dharma) Dougie discusses some experiences with a teacher who was in a couple of cults, plus an example of "weird Buddhism" that provides a bit of a life lesson.
(Soka Gakkai Official) Is "wishcraft" real? What does Nam-myoho-renge-kyo mean? [Don't worry about it. That's not important. Just chant it, and don't stop!] How can I start chanting? This short film introduces the daily practice of "Soka Gakkai Buddhists" and demonstrates how to chant [their magic mantra].
The Soka Gakkai is a global community-based Buddhist[-ish] organization that promotes peace, culture, and education centered on [faith, not asking questions, and suspending critical thinking, but you get stuff] respect for the dignity of life.
(Prophet of Nonsense) Formerly Shinto Japan is full of religious crazies. Here are the Buddhist ones.
Its members in 192 countries and territories study and put into practice the humanistic philosophy of [blind faith-based] Nichiren Buddhism.
Soka Gakkai members strive to [make money and material riches by magic and] actualize their inherent potential while contributing [tithing it to the cult and] to their local communities and responding to the shared issues facing humankind.
The conviction that individual happiness and the realization of peace are inextricably linked is central to the Soka Gakkai, as is a commitment to dialogue and nonviolence.
Western atheists (the gatekeepers in the academy) run science, so they won't listen to mystics and seers (rishis). Therefore, no scientific lab is investigating KALAPAS (Buddhist subatomic "particles," the original Greek "atoms" (a concept ancient Greece borrowed from Buddhist-influenced ancient Vedic India), the characteristics of materiality or rupa, perceived particles, rúpa-kalapa), or are they without realizing it?
Maybe they are called quarks or strings or bosons, whatever the label. Some thing (not quite a thing or dhamma) is there eluding us, though it may not be a "thing" yet.
A dhammaor "thing" in this sense of the term refers literally to the "bearer," constitution, or nature of a thing; quality; object of mind (see āyatana) "phenomenon." In all of these meanings the word dhamma is met with in Buddhist texts. The Commentary to the Digha Nikaya (Long Discourses of the Buddha), instances four applications of this term:
nijjīvatā (lifeless, soulless, egoless [without jiva], e.g., "All dhammā [all phenomena] are impersonal").
The Commentary to the Dhammasangani has hetu (root condition, cause) instead of desanā. Therefore, the analytical knowledge of dhamma [things, phenomena, or the Dhamma/Doctrine] (see patisambhidā) is explained in The Path of Purification(Vis.M. XIV.) and in the Vibhanga as hetumhi-ñāna (jñāna) or "knowledge of causes and conditions."
NOVEL INSIGHT: Source (cause and condition) of dark energy and matter
What scientist can explain this? Yet, a simple Buddhist meditator/reader made sense of it? What if dark energy is immaterial pre-matter, dark matter is subtle matter, and the rest matter?
Science is dense and not about "seeing directly." That's what Buddhism is about. Scientists are about being ignorant of their biases while attempting to objectively measure and show (prove it to) others without themselves knowing what they're seeing. No scientist believed in invisible radiation until it proved its presence by killing people then showing up on instruments built to translate what was detected into the visual medium of pixels, photons, and screens -- then radiation existed. Pure ideas become essential outlines (blueprints) that become working models.
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Matter (rupa): immaterial, subtle, tangible all of it "energy" in a torsion field exhibiting
Imagine a kind of matter (let's call it pre-matter) so ethereal it does not yet reflect light, but it does already begin to exert gravitational pull, magnetism, or other interactions with its environment. That would fit the description of "dark energy" and "dark matter" that scientists know must exist due to their calculations but are as yet unable to directly detect in a way that can be objectively confirmed.
(This is very general, theoretical, arrived at by philosophizing based on the reports of modern meditators and ancient mystics, not materialist-scientists in experimental labs, groping their way to objective truths).
If it (pre-matter) exists, this is how and why it (dark matter) may be behaving the way we experience: It enters this dimension, having built up density, or gaining a sufficient number of neutrinos, photons, allegrons (joyous particles that abhassara-brahmas feed on?), joe-blowons, whatever-ons (some kind of "stem cell particles" with pluripotential power), or kalapas.
It (that pre-matter) changes "lineage," as it were, from fine-material (rupa, sublime) to sensual (sensible, sensory, kama, where we experience it), but it originates in the immaterial (arupa, formless, ethereal, strictly mental state).
What is ultimate reality? Nama-rupa.
Ah, then, what is mind, what is consciousness? That is another conversation altogether. Note that the Buddha broke down all of experience to just these two ultimately impersonal things, mind (feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness) and body (kaya, rupa, the Four Elements or dhātus taken as one unit). These are the Five Aggregates clung to as self. (See the Heart Sutra for the poetic expression or the Abhidhamma for their pedantic Theravada analysis).
Who can believe there are only four "elements"? No one. That archaic system was inherited by the Buddha and filled in. What it means is not that there are only four things everything else is made of but that what we conventionally call matter may be broken down into four categories of qualities or characteristics (hardness, cohesion, support, and temperature), which become directly known to one who practices Four Elements meditation. This is not a "theory" but a practice.
Everything in Buddhism is kind of this way, very packed and needing to be unpacked to understand. For instance, the Four Noble Truths are not four "truisms" to believe. That would be ridiculous. The fourth is the Noble Eightfold Path. There are not only eight "steps" to take to enlightenment (bodhi) and nirvana (vimutti, moksha, ultimate liberation). That would be ridiculous. There are in fact 37 Requisites of Enlightenment. Again, it is a practice, not a theory. Moreover, if we ask what is ultimately true about our existence, the answer is not "nothing." It is Dependent Origination. This is not a belief but a practice. By practicing these things, one directly comes to know and see -- and one is freed from all suffering by that wisdom.
If you become a great scientist, the greatest scientist -- a Nicola Tesla, an Issac Newton, an Albie Einstein, you will not be freed, liberated from suffering, a knower of worlds, a noble one. In fact, it will probably ruin you, make you deranged and your hair kinky. However, if you practice the Buddha's Path successfully, not as the greatest practitioner just as a solid one, you will directly know-and-see AND be freed, liberated from ignorance and suffering. It's no contest which would be better to aspire to be, in the world or out. Why did Steven Hawking get so perverse as time went on? It must have been because of the ennobling qualities of scientific data.
There are, after all, these three spheres (trailokya), according to the Buddha. Consider it in reverse: Things are sensual, tangible and appearing to us. And passing away from here, they are sublimated (rarefied) to the fine-material. And passing away from there, they dissolve and become altogether immaterial (mind-made, ideations, Platonic forms, bodiless, software utterly without hardware, visualizations without tangible expression from whence they came).
This would explain not only the origin of all tangible things -- illusory, maya, in the sense of not being what a thing appears to be (permanent, able to please, or personal) born of mind, mind-made, formless, full of potential but not yet formed -- in this "reality," this simulation, this world that we can touch and feel, but also explain the fine-material (rupa) underlying it, acting as its support, scaffolding, undergirding, armature, foundational substructure, or hidden (unseen) basis.
How to see the Four Elements
PRACTICAL EVIDENCE: When we look (with purified, intensified mind) at matter, it breaks down under analysis to smaller and smaller components. Imagine seeing a British house in the distance. It looks like a block. When approached and examined closely, it is many smaller blocks (bricks), piled in heaps of well-arranged (functionally integrated) walls and foundation. What was thought to be one thing is in fact not at all what it seemed. Looking at each block more closely, it breaks down further to molecules and atoms and subatomic particles [then, presumably to wavicles and strings or vibrating energy fields of (gravitational) attraction that, when further condensed, appear to us as matter in various states: temperature, gas, liquid, solid (qualities known as the Four Elements), and sometimes the empty space between these]. How can we know or prove it? Through the meditation described below.*
A thing is a compound of constituents, so if we're looking for indivisible things, we are not likely to find them anytime soon, not with that mindset. We'll miss the forest for the trees.
Someone once said, "Humans can't see atoms; they're too small."
"Oh, really," said we then asked: "What do you think you're looking at when you see something?"
(It's ALL atoms, strung together, arranged just so, reflecting photons and letting neutrinos pass through with little to no interaction. This (dense material dead) hand, for example, is made of atoms. Can you see it? So what are you seeing?
"Oh, yeah. Atoms! OMG! I didn't realize it."
Yes, we may not be able to see individual atoms, but we see them all around in the collective, just like one citta is hard to perceive, but the stream of consciousness (mind moments) is easier to discern.
But there is more to a living hand, as revealed by Kirlian photography, aura viewers (like the one Edgar Cayce left instructions for), and the sensitive material in the eye some humans regain, which dogs and other animals may have been using all along to see ghosts, subtle beings, and invisible entities all along. Let's look at the state of the science of subatomic/particle physics with Jade at Up and Atom:
Clear the mind of assumptions and wrong view
Stilling the mind in samadhi (meditative absorption known as jhana), one begins to perceive a "sign," animitta, usually of light or shadow or some color. It happens naturally with consistent practice. At first it is the "learning sign," but with proper meditative guidance, it can become the "learning sign" and bring one to deeper, subtler levels of absorption. There are eight levels, the first four are form (increasingly rarefied and sublime), and the second four are formless (immaterial). This single-mindedness, often misleadingly rendered "concentration," temporarily purifies the mind so that it can penetrate things as they really are and come to know-and-see things as they really are. This is "meditation," mental cultivation, approaching awakening, letting go, and liberation. The clouded mind will never be able to see things free of distortions and perversions of view.
It took 20 years, but we finally found it
My cuteness or alleged sexiness has no bearing on donations, attention, or popularity of Up and Atom (YouTube), which is solely a function of the depth and frequency of my scientific posts.
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(Up and Atom) March 14, 2025: Hi, I'm Jade! Subscribe to Up and Atom for physics, math, and computer science videos (upandatom). If you'd like to consider supporting Up and Atom, head over to my Patreon page :) upandatom.
Special thanks to Chuankun Zhang, Tian Ooi, Jacob S. Higgins, and Jack F. Doyle from Prof. Jun Ye's lab at JILA/NIST/University of Colorado, as well as Prof. Victor Flambaum from UNSW's Department of Theoretical Physics, for their valuable assistance and consultation on this video.
This is speculative, theoretical, not science. What's the proof? "Seeing is believing," so here's how to see it?
Burma preserves practical Theravada Abhidhamma (the Doctrine/Dhamma in Ultimate Terms, a collection of Buddhist text).The tradition (as promulgated by Pa Auk Sayadaw and his certifiably successful students) spreads to other countries like America, Malaysia, Europe, Sri Lanka, China, and Indonesia, and the result is direct seeing of the ultimate truth of matter: "ultimate materiality" (abhi-rupa) or matter (solids, liquids, gases, and light or flux, the Four Great Elements, mahadhatu, which are not four "things" but four general characteristics of matter made completely real and sensible as a theory by Four Elements Meditation even if we scoff.
*Buddhist physics: Analysis of the causes of rūpa kalāpa
(Dhammavihari Buddhist Studies) Even though one is able to observe the 28 essential substances, it is not enough to realize nirvana. The person [meditator] must still be able to analyze the causes of the arising of the mind-and-matter [nama-rupa, cittas-and-kalapas].
In this last lecture Sayalay Uttarā explains how to analyze the causes of arising of rūpakalāpa (clusters of matter). There are four causes for the arising of matter (rūpa), namely,
AHH! I'm beginning to see but using the mind's eye, the dibba cakkhuafter purifying the mind.
. There are nine clusters of matter produced by karma; eight by consciousness; four by temperature, and two by food essence. These 23 clusters of matter must be analyzed by a yogī [Buddhist meditator, cultivator, Dharma-practitioner] to gain the understanding that matter arises through [causes and] conditions and that there is no single entity [no self, ego, God, soul] that controls it.
Of the 28 essential [forms of] matter [ultimate materiality], there are four that arise without a cause [which might explain how everything comes to be, just arising spontaneously of their own nature, not created, not Big Banged, never being brought to an end and therefore not necessitating a beginning or prime mover, not self, not anything but suchness (tathata), just the way things are in and of themselves, like science's definition of "energy"]. [Practice!] Enjoy!
This video is a Dhamma [Pali canon-based Dharma] lecture that is part of the DBS Temporary Pabbajā (monastic ordination, going forth) series of events in 2018. The pabbajjā activity guided by Sayalay Uttarā lasted for 10 days at Chan Forest Mega Mendung [Theravadan Indonesia]. In addition to practicing meditation, the participants also received a Dhamma shower from Sayalay Uttarā through six lectures. DBS also provided a DVD of the Pariyatti Sāsana [text dispensation, intellectual instruction]. Class lecture by Ashin Kheminda.
For more information about this class, please contact: DHAMMAVIHARI BUDDHIST STUDIES (DBS) SECRETARIAT. Email: yayasandhammavihari@gmail.com. Phone: 0857 82 800 200, 0812 86 30 3000, and 021 22556430. Website: dhammavihari.or.id. Facebook: Dhammavihari Buddhist Studies.
Walaupun seseorang sudah mampu mengamati 28 materi yang hakiki namun hal tersebut belum cukup untuk merealisasi Nibbāna. Orang tersebut masih harus mampu menganalisis sebab kemunculan dari batin dan materi. Di ceramah yang terakhir ini Sayalay Uttarā menjelaskan tentang cara Menganalisis Sebab Kemunculan dari Rūpakalāpa (klaster materi). Ada empat sebab kemunculan dari materi (rūpa) yaitu kamma, kesadaran (citta), temperature (utu) dan sari makanan (āhāra). Materi yang lahir dari keempat sebab tersebut dinamakan kammajā rūpakalāpa, cittāja rūpakalāpa, utujārūpakalāpa dan āhārajā rūpakalāpa. Ada 9 klaster materi yang dihasilkan oleh kamma; 8 oleh kesadaran; 4 oleh temperatur dan 2 oleh sari makanan. Dua puluh tiga klaster materi ini harus bisa dianalisis oleh seorang yogī untuk mendapatkan pemahaman bahwa materi muncul dengan kondisi dan tidak ada satu wujud yang mengendalikannya. Dari 28 materi yang hakiki, ada empat materi yang muncul tanpa sebab. Selamat menikmati! Video ini merupakan ceramah Dhamma yang menjadi bagian dari rangkaian acara Pabbajā Sementara DBS tahun 2018. Kegiatan pabbajjā yang dibimbing oleh Sayalay Uttarā ini berlangsung selama 10 hari di Chan Forest Mega Mendung. Selain berlatih meditasi, para peserta juga mendapatkan siraman Dhamma dari Sayalay Uttarā melalui kegiatan ceramah yang dilakukan sebanyak 6 kali. DBS juga menyediakan DVD ceramah Kelas Pariyatti Sāsana oleh Ashin Kheminda. Untuk informasi lebih lanjut tentang kelas ini, silakan menghubungi: SEKRETARIAT DHAMMAVIHARI BUDDHIST STUDIES (DBS) Email: yayasandhammavihari@gmail.com. Telpon: 0857 82 800 200, 0812 86 30 3000, dan 021 22556430 Website: dhammavihari.or.id. Facebook: Dhammavihari Buddhist Studies.
Sayalay Uttarā, Dhammavihari Buddhist Studies, Feb. 13, 2019; Jade (Up and Atom); Dhr. Seven (speculation), edited by Amber Larson, Pat Macpherson, Wisdom Quarterly
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