Jill Shepherd

Jill began practicing insight meditation in Thailand in 1999, and since that time has lived and worked at several meditation centres and monasteries in the US, Australia, England, and Thailand.

She spent seven = years on staff at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Barre, Massachusetts, where she participated in several long retreats and Buddhist study programes, as well as offering weekly meditation classes at a nearby men’s prison. She is a graduate of the IMS / Spirit Rock teacher training program in the US under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Gil Fronsdal.

She divides her time between the US, Australia and New Zealand, teaching vipassana and brahma vihara retreats and offering ongoing study and practice groups focused on bringing the dharma into daily life.

Insight Dialogue Retreat – The Two Wings to Awakening: Wisdom and Compassion.

This a six-night retreat weaving together silent and relational insight meditation practice.

This retreat offers a rare opportunity to bring together two complementary practices: silent insight (vipassanā) meditation and Insight Dialogue, a relational meditation practice that involves mindful speaking and listening together in pairs or small groups.

We will combine both these powerful approaches to explore and strengthen the two wings of awakening: wisdom and compassion. Wisdom or insight helps us to understand the causes of unsatisfactoriness, stress, distress, and suffering, and compassion, together with its sister qualities of kindness, appreciative joy, and equanimity, offers the nourishment and support to experience increasingly deep freedom of heart and mind.