1-week Insight Meditation Retreat

May 13 - May 20, 2026

This is a 7-night Insight meditation retreat organized by Insight Retreat Center (IRC).

Applications are now open. Click here to apply online through IRC.

Questions? Contact the Registrar, Niharika, at niharika@insightretreatcenter.org.

Diana Clark, Kim Allen, David Lorey & Ying Chen

  • A silent Insight meditation retreat with a daily schedule of alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation, instruction, dharma talks, work meditation, and practice discussions with teachers. Suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners.

  • Diana Clark, PhD, is a dedicated meditation teacher based in the San Francisco Bay Area, teaching primarily at the Insight Meditation Center and Insight Retreat Center. Her extensive meditation experience includes years of silent retreats at Spirit Rock, IMS, and the Insight Retreat Center, where she received training from esteemed teachers Gil Fronsdal and Andrea Fella. Inspired by the Buddha's teachings on peace and freedom, Diana's teaching approach aims to combine the profound and the practical, with a sincere commitment to cultivating an environment that nurtures both wisdom and compassion. Diana holds a PhD in biochemistry, and much like her scientific training facilitated her comprehension of the human body, her Buddhist practice deepens her insights into the workings of our precious minds and hearts. For more info you can visit dianaclarkdharma.org

    Kim Allen began meditating in 2003, seeking both a path out of suffering and the deeper truths of life. She trains mainly under the guidance of Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center, and has also practiced in Sri Lanka and, more recently, with a few Mahāyāna teachers. Kim was drawn early on to long retreat practice and has sat cumulative three years of retreat. Engagement with the Pāli Canon, and also texts from other Buddhist traditions, informs her practice and life. A teacher and author, Kim aims to bring classical Dharma to a modern context and to encourage lay practitioners in fully living a life of Dharma. Kim also serves on the board of the Sati Center. Her education includes a PhD in physics and a master’s degree in environmental sustainability, and her website is http://www.uncontrived.org.

    David Lorey began meditating as a teenager in the 1970s, in college began an intensive training in transcendental meditation, and then came to practice in the Buddhadharma in the early 2000s. Integrating tranquility and insight practice forms the core of his current path; in addition, he explores the early teachings embedded in the textual tradition of the Pali canon for insights into practicing and living in accord with the Dharma. In sharing the Dharma, David is committed to helping others discover their own unique ways of using meditation and Dharma study to find relief from stress and release from suffering. Gil Fronsdal is David’s guiding teacher; IMC is his home sangha. David holds a PhD in history.

    Ying Chen is a first generation Chinese immigrant. She took refuge to become a buddhist with Venerable Ji Ru in 1995 and was exposed to Chinese Mahayana Buddhism first. She has been practicing in Insight Meditation Center since 2005, and Dharma Ground since 2020. She currently facilitates the Insight Meditation Center support group for people living with health challenges and co-leads Asian Dharma Circle. As a wife, mother, and a lay practitioner, Ying is inspired by the possibilities of freedom and wellbeing in everyday life. She teaches in IMC/IRC and Dharma Ground.

  • Please reach out to the retreat organizer for information specific to your retreat. Click here to review important information about attending a retreat at Big Springs. Thank you!

6-day Insight Meditation Retreat

May 23 - May 28, 2026

This is a 5-night Insight meditation retreat organized by Insight Retreat Center (IRC).

RETREAT FULL. Click here to apply online through IRC and be put on the waiting list.

Questions? Contact the Registrar, Barbara, at barbara@insightretreatcenter.org.

Matthew Brensilver & Dana DePalma

  • Dharma practice is about working with the fundamental forces that shape our experience and lives. Among these forces, the impulses to judge, compare, and fix run deep.

    We all know the abiding urge to judge the moment, compare it against some idealized alternative, and devise plans to fix the conditions of this moment. We know the impulse to judge ourselves, compare ourselves to others and determine our relative value. Although these habits of mind are meant to address our pain, they compound it and compromise our freedom.

    During our retreat, we’ll explore the costs of measurement and the alternatives to it. In awareness, we become completely at ease with imperfection and relax the habits of measurement we ordinarily use to substantiate ourselves and our story. Stillness invites us to drop all the familiar reference points of liking and disliking, better than and worse than. As silence deepens, the ‘measureless’ heart qualities – lovingkindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity – infuse the places of measurement with relaxation, allowing deep care to manifest.

    The retreat will be composed of guided and silent meditation practice, and dharma reflections and meetings with the teachers. All are welcome.

  • Matthew Brensilver, MSW, PhD teaches retreats at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and other Buddhist centers. He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Matthew worked as a clinical social worker, serving severely and persistently mentally ill adults and adolescents. He subsequently earned a PhD from the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at USC where he was a Provost’s Fellow. His dissertation examined the mechanisms of risk and resilience in maltreated adolescents in a large, longitudinal study in South Los Angeles. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. 

    Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy. He serves on the Board of Directors at Spirit Rock. Matthew is the co-author of two books about meditation during adolescence and continues to be interested in the unfolding dialogue between Buddhism and science. 

    Website:  https://www.matthewbrensilver.org/

    Dana DePalma, MA teaches regularly online through Dharma Ground, where she serves as the Founding Guiding Teacher, and also at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where she serves as a Stewarding Teacher. Her approach emphasizes samādhi, ease, and the natural arising of understanding. Dana holds a Masters Degree in Counseling Psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies and has a relational teaching style. She is a Bay Area native, married, mom to an awesome teen, and grateful beyond words to be living a life focused on the Dharma.

  • Please reach out to the retreat organizer for information specific to your retreat. Click here to review important information about attending a retreat at Big Springs. Thank you!

Access to Zen Kindness Retreat

June 13 - June 20, 2026

This is a 7-night retreat organized by Access to Zen (A2Z) Sangha.

Applications are now open. Click here to visit A2Z’s website for more information and to apply. Please apply by May 30, 2026. The earlier you apply, the more likely we will be able to accommodate your rooming or other requests if you are accepted.

Questions? Contact Deb at deborah.svo@gmail.com.

Rev. Liên Shutt

  • Reconnect with ancestral Dharma teachings on kindness

    Are you tired from the despair as fascism continues to unleash across our lands and communities? 

    If so, let’s come together to settle into and cultivate our compassionate heart-minds. To have the capacity to be with and then work to alleviate or end the “cries of the world,” we do need to take time to attend to ourselves in body, heart and mind.

    Our ancestors have experienced similar circumstances before. In this 7-night (6-night silent) retreat, various forms of ancestral Dharma teachings on aspects of kindness will be offered to support us to reconnect to and reclaim our wholeness. Rev. will emphasize how to practice kindness on- and off-the-cushion. 

    NOTE: One way in which we put this into practice-action in a retreat format is reflected in the first 1.5 days of our time together: with a public lay-precepts ceremony for two Access to Zen members and then a Sangha Day.

    On the evening of Saturday, June 13, A2Z will hold a Jukai (Lay Initiation Precepts) ceremony for two A2Z members. Sunday, June 14 will be a Sangha Day and noble silence will begin at 7pm on Sunday, June 14. The retreat will end mid-morning on Saturday, June 20. The retreat format will follow a traditional Insight meditation retreat schedule supported by Soto Zen spirit.

    Schedule & Format: 

    June 13-20, 2026: Saturday - Saturday

    Saturday, 6/13: Arrival day

    Saturday, 6/13 in late pm: Jukai (Lay Initiation Precepts) ceremony & celebration dinner

    Sunday, 6/14: Sangha Day -- various events to support connecting with your fellow retreat practitioners (yogis/sanghamates), such as: hike or bird-watching, community-building exercises, zendo/meditation hall forms/space-negotiation-conduct instructions, likely chanting, talking meal times, etc. Some are optional (retreat-related ones are not).

    Sunday, 6/14 at 7pm: Noble silence begins

    • Daily Instructions, Dharma Talk and Encouraging Word from Rev.

    • Opportunity for 1-on-1 Practice Discussions/PDs with Rev. Liên.

    • Soto Zen spirit supported by an Insight schedule (45 minutes alternating between stationary & movement/walking meditations). Some forms/mindfulness-practices. No oryoki (formal Zen eating meditation).

    • Daily yogi job (about 45 minutes)

    Saturday, 6/20: Silent retreat ends mid-morning. Breakfast is the last meal served.

    We have deep gratitude to be able to offer this retreat in the midst of Nature’s beauty at Big Springs Garden Retreat Center, on the traditional territories of the Mountain Maidu, Nisenan, and Washoe People. 3% of your dana/Noble Giving will be given to these land trusts: Maidu Summit Consortium (Mountain Maidu), HUṠWEJ (Nisenan), and Wášiw-šiw Land Trust.

    Click here to visit A2Z’s website for important information about the retreat, including a health agreement, and to apply.

  • Rev. Keiryū Liên Shutt is a lineage holder in the Shunryu Suzuki tradition. Born to a Buddhist family in Vietnam, she received her meditation training in the Insight and Zen traditions in the US, Thailand, Japan and Vietnam. She was a founding member of the Buddhists of Color in 1998 and currently is the Guiding Teacher of Access to Zen, an anti-racist, inclusive sangha and non-profit in the SF Bay Area. She lives in Oakland, Huichin territory with her partner, exploring waterways and forests as often as they can.

  • Please reach out to the retreat organizer for information specific to your retreat. Click here to review important information about attending a retreat at Big Springs. Thank you!

6-day BIPOC Nature Dharma and Insight Retreat

June 23 - June 28, 2026

This is a 5-night Insight meditation retreat organized by Insight Retreat Center (IRC).

Applications are now open. Click here to apply online through IRC.

Questions? Contact the Registrar, Niharika, at niharika@insightretreatcenter.org.

Liên Shutt & Ram Appalaraju

  • This nature-based Dharma retreat, for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), offers an exploration of Buddhist teachings on interdependence and our profound oneness with the natural world. Through daily Dharma talks, we will reflect on Buddhist teachings on Dharma and how mindfulness reveals our inseparability from all life. Silent practice will include periods of sitting and walking meditation, inviting participants to attune to the rhythms, beauty, and stillness of the environment. Supported by the living landscape, a beautiful retreat center in the Sierras, we cultivate presence, compassion, and clarity, deepening our understanding of both inner and outer nature. This retreat offers a spacious container for renewal, insight, and heartfelt connection with all beings.

  • Liên Shutt (she/they) is a priest trained in the Insight and Soto Zen traditions in the United States, Japan, Thailand, and Vietnam. They are the Guiding Teacher of Access to Zen, an inclusive sangha and nonprofit in the San Francisco Bay Area. She lives in Oakland, on Huichin land, with her partner, exploring waterways and forests as often as they can. Visit AccessToZen.org to learn more.

    Ram Appalaraju (he/him) is a Chaplain and an Eco Chaplain serving marginalized communities in the Bay Area. He is also in the faculty at Sati Center for Buddhist Studies for the Eco Chaplaincy Training. Through Buddhist teachings and Vedanta, he developed a belief in the deeply interconnected and interdependent nature of existence in nature and suffering experienced by a disaggregate view. His work as an Eco and Prison chaplain has deepened the understanding of human suffering, and uses his learnings to serve communities affected by climate change.

  • Please reach out to the retreat organizer for information specific to your retreat. Click here to review important information about attending a retreat at Big Springs. Thank you!