garden sunlight
  • Single w/ensuite – CAD $1,394.00
  • Single w/shared bathroom – CAD $1,219.00
  • Couple w/ensuite Oceanfront – CAD $1,801.00
  • Couple w/ensuite – CAD $1,801.00
  • Couple w/shared bathroom – CAD $1,604.00
  • Twin w/ensuite oceanfront – CAD $1,107.00
  • Twin w/ensuite – CAD $1,107.00
  • Twin w/shared bathroom – CAD $910.00
  • Women only Dorm – CAD $834.00
  • Male Dorm – CAD $834.00
  • Mixed Dorm – CAD $834.00
  • Commuter – CAD $799.00
  • (All prices include CAD $694.00 base amount)

Date & Time Details:
Starts with dinner on October 24
Ends with lunch on October 31

Location: Cortes Island

Registration Note: This program is by application. Please apply here.

Tuition: $295 CAD (does not include presenter fee)

Package Price: $834 - $1,394 CAD / 7 nights. Includes tuition, room, all meals, and Hollyhock activities (depends on accommodation choice). Taxes and fees are additional. A $395 deposit is required at registration, with the balance due on your departure day.

Health & Safety: By order of the Provincial Health Office, we will be requiring all our guests to provide proof of at least one vaccination, starting September 12th 2021. Learn more here!

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Metta Vipassana: Awareness as a Path to Liberation

With Michele McDonald and Steven Smith

October 24 - 31, 2021

Experience practicing Metta (unconditional love and kindness) and Vipassana (insight) meditation on beautiful Cortes Island. 

In this 7-day silent retreat, discover the four immeasurables (unconditional love, wise compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity) through meditations that fuse these fundamental spiritual emotions with the intuitive wisdom of Vipassana. Develop compassionate awareness and a more loving heart with a unique melding of mindful movement alongside the Metta and Vipassana practices.

Please note: Tuition does not include a fee for the presenter. This is a dãna-based retreat (see below for details).

What is Dãna?

Dãna is an ancient Pali word meaning “giving” or “gift.” Dãna is at the heart of the 2,500 year old Buddhist tradition. Going back to the days of the Buddha, he and the monastic community offered the teachings freely to lay people, as a form of dãna. In turn the lay community, through their generosity, or dãna, ensured that their teachers’ basic needs for food, clothing, shelter and medicine were provided.

When the Buddha would give a public discourse, he usually began with teaching on the importance and the benefits of dãna. The act of giving itself is of immeasurable benefit to the giver; it opens up the heart, diminishes for a moment one’s self-absorption and places value on the well-being of others. The key is that the act of giving itself is the natural expression of a connected and loving heart.

The fee you pay to attend this retreat covers the basic retreat costs; none of your registration fee is payment to the teacher leading the retreats. Teachers offer the teachings with a spirit of generosity and trust that their lives and work will be supported by those who are receiving the life-giving teachings. This is a real expression of the truth of interdependence.

Application

This program is by application. Please apply here before registering.

How Do I Contribute?

You may contribute cash, cheques or by paypal at Vipassana Hawaii.

Canadian cheques payable to Michele McDonald. US cheques payable to Vipassana Hawaii

Schedule

Please check back  for a full program schedule.

Terms & Conditions

You may find our regular terms & conditions here

Health & Safety

By order of the Provincial Health Office, we will be requiring all our guests to provide proof of at least one vaccination, starting September 12th 2021. Learn more here!

 

Presenters

Michele McDonald
Michele McDonald has taught Insight meditation for fourty years and teaches extensively throughout America, in Canada, Burma, and various locations around the world. As a guiding teacher for Vipassana Hawai’i she has been a quiet pioneer. She is the first woman to have taught a formal retreat in Burma, side-by-side…
Learn more about Michele McDonald
Steven Smith
Steven V. Smith co-founded Vipassana Hawai’i in 1984 and in 1995 founded the MettaDana Project for educational and medical projects in Burma. Also in 1995 Steven helped establish the Kyaswa Valley Retreat Center in Burma, headed by Sayadaw U Lakkhana. This partnership created Vipassana Hawai’i’s Fusion Dhamma approach combining traditional and…
Learn more about Steven Smith