Academic Links

• The Association for Mindfulness in Education is a collaborative association of organizations and individuals working together to provide support for mindfulness training as a component of K-12 education.
  
• The Brown University Contemplative Studies Initiative is supported with a Contemplative Program Development Fellowship under the direction of Hal Roth, Contemplative Practice Fellow and Professor of Religious Studies.
• Education as Transformation is an international organization that works with colleges, universities, K-12 schools and related institutions exploring the impact of religious diversity on education, strategies for addressing this diversity, and the role of spirituality in educational institutions.
• Indiana State U. Center for the Study of Health, Religion, and Spirituality
  Directed by Jean L. Kristeller, Contemplative Practice Fellow and Professor of Psychology.
• Mindfulness in Education Network posts news, announcements and events relevant to educators who want to bring a contemplative awareness to their work.
• Minding Your Life helps educators and schools wishing to incorporate mindfulness practices to enhance learning and promote more centered, less stressful life.
• Mind & Life Institute works to promote the creation of a contemplative, compassionate, and rigorous experimental and experiential science of the mind which could guide and inform medicine, neuroscience, psychology, education and human development.
• Spirituality in Higher Education: A National Study of College Students’ Search for Meaning and Purpose is a multi-year research project at UCLA that assesses and tracks the spiritual growth of students during their undergraduate college years. They also publish an interesting newsletter.
• Teaching to Connect the Heart and Mind
  An interdisciplinary symposium and virtual conversation from the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship at Georgetown University.
• U. of Arkansas Mindfulness-Based Campus-Community Health Program
  Directed by Dan Holland, Contemplative Practice Fellow and Associate Professor of Psychology.
• U. of Michigan Program in Creativity and Consciousness Studies
  Directed by Ed Sarath, Contemplative Practice Fellow and Professor of Music.

 

Social Justice Links

• Avodah: The Jewish Service Corps integrates work for social change, Jewish learning and community building. It provides an opportunity for young Jews to live out and and deepen their commitments to Jewish life and social change through a year of work with low-income communities in Chicago, New York, and Washington, DC.
• Beloved Community Center fosters and models a spirit of community based on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of a "Beloved Community."
• Buddhist Peace Fellowships programs, publications, and practice groups link Buddhist teachings of wisdom and compassion with progressive social change.
• The Contemplative Net Project
  A research project conducted at the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society from 2001 to 2004. The goal of the research was to examine how contemplative practices are being used by organizations in secular settings, with a special emphasis on social justice organizations. The Contemplative Net research team interviewed 80 individuals and conducted 3 in-depth on-site case studies.
• Earth Activist Training offers classes that help you transform the land, community, and political and economic system for the better.
• the Foundation for Active Compassion works to empower people with profound, accessible spiritual practices that support their individual and collective work to become better people and to make a better world.
• Lama John Makransky has led retreats and workshops for our Social Justice Program. A professor of Buddhism and comparative theology at Boston College, he is also a 2009 Contemplative Practice Fellowship recipient. Lama John is dedicated to serving social justice and social service workers and is the guiding teacher of the Foundation for Active Compassion.
• Joanna Macy's website offers a selection of wonderful practices for activists.
• Jobs with Justice engages workers and allies in campaigns to win justice in workplaces and in cmmunities where working families live.
• Prison Dharma Network is a nonsectarian, contemplative support organization for prisoners and prison dharma volunteers.
• Mosaic seeks to create cross-cultural alliances, mentoring relationships, and social connections built upon personal trust and commitment to bridging unhealthy divisions in communities.
• Rex Foundation aims to help secure a healthy environment, promote individuality in the arts, provide support to critical and necessary social services, assist others less fortunate than ourselves, protect the rights of indigenous people and ensure their cultural survival, build a stronger community, and educate children and adults everywhere.
• stone circles supports leadership in the field of spiritual activism, provides training, retreats and workshops; offers resource material, and convenes gatherings for learning, relationship-building, and celebration.
• The SpiritHouse Project is a national organization that uses research, action, the arts, education, spiritual reflection, and analysis to bring diverse peoples together to build a just and non-violent movement that propels us toward a beloved community.
• Spirit in Action is a non-profit organization dedicated to building a successful movement for social change in the US.
• Spirit in Motion is a project of the Movement Strategy Center, and supports the integration of spirit and health on an individual, organizational, and community level, to crate a stronger, more sustainable movement for social justice.
• Tools for Change is a multi-cultural organization that promotes healing, leadership development, and sustainable democracy.
• Turning to One Another complements Meg Wheatley's book Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future, and provides you with simple processes for hosting conversations, and information about many other conversation initiatives around the world.
• The Veterans of Hope Project is a multifaceted educational initiative on religion, culture and participatory democracy.
• Women's Theological Center is devoted to the development of spiritual leadership.

Retreat Centers with a Social Justice Emphasis

• Agape Community
  A lay Catholic residential community with a vision of ministry in peace education and non-violence and an ecumenical and interfaith embrace.
• Center for Whole Communities
  The Center nurtures reflective and creative practices that open the door for more authentic colaborations, deeper dialogues, and new ways of being leaders.
• Everyday Zen
  Committed to sharing the Zen attitude, spirit, and practice with the world in a variety of settings, including social justice activism. Sittings and retreats are held in various locations.
• Garrison Institute
  Founded in 2002 to apply the transformative wisdom of the world's contemplative traditions to systemic challenges facing the human and natural environment.
• Maezumi Institute/Zen Peacemakers/House of One People
  A major study and practice center offering contemplative training paths, study programs, and hands-on internships. Zen Peacemakers are dedicated to actualizing the interconnectedness of life.
• Pendle Hill
  Pendle Hill is a Quaker center for spirtual growth, study, practice, and service. They offer many programs open to people of all faiths.
• Vallecitos Mountain Refuge
  A wilderness ranch and contemplative retreat center for the nonprofit and public interest community. They have a schedule of retreats for activists.

Leadership Training

• The Center for Courage & Renewal
  An educational non-profit that strengthens individuals, professions, and communities.
• Hollyhock Leadership Institute
  Provides training and strategic support to people working for environmental and social change.
• Rockwood Leadership Program
  A non-profit organization that promotes social change through leadership training and consulting to progressive non-profits.
• Sacred Union Leadership Training
  Judith and Robert Gass lead workshops and training for leaders committed to making a difference in their communities, businesses, education, politics, the arts or social change.
• Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership
  The Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership began in 1998 as a dialogue between members of the Shambhala meditation community and pioneering leaders in the fields of organizational learning and living systems theory. Out of this collaboration emerged a new model of leadership training, which engages and integrates a full spectrum of leadership capacities. This model has been at the core of the Authentic Leadership Summer Institute, which has convened annually since 2001, bringing together innovative thinkers, researchers, and practitioners from across leadership fields. 

 

Law Links

• The Center for Law and Renewal
  A non-profit whose mission is to equip law professionals with foundational principles, tools and practical skills that advance the renewal of professionalism, the spirit of justice, and the exercise of ethical leadership in the legal profession and community life.
• Contemplative Lawyers: Some Mindfulness Resources is a collection of links to articles and talks maintained (& frequently updated) by Stephanie West Allen.
• Cutting Edge Law is an online resource for anyone interested in the growing community of those who seek alternate approaches to the traditional adversarial legal system.
• The Institute for Mindfulness Studies brings the contemplative practice of mindfulness to practitioners of law by offering instruction in techniques specifically designed for attorneys. IMS's mission is to improve the quality of life and practice for attorneys and law students and to contribute to the re-establishment of society's recognition of the challenging and admirable role played by attorneys.
• The International Alliance of Holistic Lawyers
  A non-profit organization to dedicated to finding more joy, satisfaction and meaning in life. IAHL members are exploring different ways of practicing law, learning how to deal with the stress of the legal profession, and are passionate about helping the legal profession become more open and responsive to its clients and the world at large.
• Mediate.com Spirituality Section
  Explores how our own spirituality, different spiritual philosophies and many spiritual practices support and enhance who we are as mediators.
• Project for Integrating Spirituality, Law, and Politics
  Seeks to develop and articulate a new vision of law’s relationship to social transformation and bring together leaders and activists in such spiritual/political/humanistic legal movements as Restorative Justice, Understanding-based Mediation, Collaborative Law, and Humanizing Legal Education under a common theoretical and practical vision that can unify their respective efforts.
• Sacramento Insight Meditation / Information on Retreats for Attorneys
  The SIM mission is to serve as a learning, training, and community center for the development, integration, and skillful use of meditation practices and awareness in all aspects of individual, family, educational, institutional, work, and community life.

 

Contemplative Practice & Retreat Centers

We've listed the following centers and organizations because of our positive experiences in visiting or working with them. We do not link to retreat centers that we have not had personal experience with, and we do not accept payment for listing links.

• The Abbey of Gethsemani
  Founded in 1848, the Abbey of Gethsemani is a school of the Lord’s service, a training ground of love, where Trappist/Cistercian monks lead a life of prayer, work, and sacred reading, steeped in the heart and mystery of the Church’s mission.
• Big Hill Retreat
  Offers three cabins in the hills of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Excellent location for solitary or small group retreats; less than an hour's drive from Gampo Abbey, a Buddhist monastery.
• Elat Chayyim
  A unique Jewish center for people of all ages, backgrounds and levels of observance. Elat Chayyim offers weekend and week-long retreats, professional training programs, and joyous worship services.
• The Garrison Institute
  Garrison offers residential programs and retreats that bring together spiritual leaders and practitioners, activists and social service providers, policy makers, scientists and scholars to explore the intersection of contemplative and spiritual experience with engaged action in the world.
• Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
  A Buddhist practice center in the Japanese Soto Zen tradition. Located in Marin County, CA, it is part of the San Francisco Zen Center, along with Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and the City Center.
• Hollyhock Retreat Centre
  Located in a spectacular west coast wilderness setting, Hollyhock is a centre of learning and connection that exists to inspire, nourish and support people who are making the world a better place.
  
• Inside Passages
  Combines wilderness journey, meditation practice, and engaged conversation with travel through the outer wilderness of the Alaska coast by kayak.
• Insight Meditation Society
  A Buddhist meditation center founded in 1975. IMS operates two retreat facilities set on 200 secluded wooded acres in the quiet country of central Massachusetts.
• The Institute for Jewish Spirituality
  Seeks to develop, nurture and disseminate through mainstream Jewish institutions the vitally needed stream of contemplative Judaism that serves to enrich the inner lives of Jews, revitalize the Jewish wisdom tradition, open Jewish institutions to new forms of liturgical and ritual expression, and ultimately to link the search for inner wholeness with social and environmental activism.
• The Interdependence Project
  A grassroots, community-oriented dharma project dedicated to applying the insight of meditation and the truth of interdependence to life in a 21st-century urban environment.
• In the Footsteps of the Buddha
  Pilgrimages to Buddhist sites in India. Shantum Seth is a Buddhist practitioner and an ordained teacher (Dharmacharya) in the Zen (Dhyana) tradition of the Vietnamese Master, Thich Nhat Hanh.  Shantum teaches in India and abroad and has been leading pilgrimages 'In the Footsteps of the Buddha' since 1988.
• Kripalu
  A retreat center for yoga and health located in the Berkshires, MA, founded by Yogi Amrit Desai. Kripalu offers many retreats and workshops, and specializes in teacher training.
• New Skete Monastery
  The Communities of New Skete believe that by nature, the monastic vocation is contemplative and apostolic, challenging both the Church and the world at large to fuller life. Practicing in the Orthodox Church, they work to express the mystery and dynamism of the monastic vocation in a manner appropriate to our culture today.
• Nishmat Hayyim
  A resource for Jewish contemplative practices in the Boston area and throughout New England. Through weekly meditation classes, contemplative Shabbats and retreats, Nishmat Hayyim offers systematic meditation training within a Jewish context.
• Omega
  A center for holistic studies offering workshops, retreats, professional trainings, and conferences on its 195-acre campus in the countryside of Rhinebeck, New York.
• Shambhala Mountain Center
  A mountain valley retreat located on 600 acres in northern Colorado. Since 1971 the Center has offered hundreds of programs on Buddhist meditation, yoga and other contemplative disciplines. Tamed by thirty five years of use as a contemplative retreat, Shambhala Mountain Center is a place where one of the basic truths of Buddhism—that people can be profoundly open to the wisdom of the present moment—is always readily available.
  
• Spirit Rock Meditation Center
  A Buddhist retreat center in Woodacre, CA, which hosts a full program of ongoing classes, daylong programs, and residential retreats. Spirit Rock has been a popular location for our Law Program events.
• Spiritual Life Institute
  A Roman Catholic, ecumenical community of vowed men and women with roots in the Carmelite contemplative tradition, aspiring to create a vital environment characterized by solitude, simplicity and beauty, where community thrives, love is nurtured, prayer flourishes, and the whole person can be transformed.
• Temenos
  Temenos is a small retreat and conference center located on a small mountain in Western Massachusetts. Founded by Quakers, it has four rustic cabins for self-guided personal or small group retreats. The land features paths and hiking trails, a look-out ledge for star gazing and sunsets, a labyrinth, and a small pond for swimming and skating.
• Tibetan Meditation Center
  Located in Frederick, Maryland, TMC is a growing community of ordained monks and nuns and lay practitioners dedicated to offering programs for people of all levels of experience. TMC is affiliated with the Drikung Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism.
• Valley Mindfulness
  Located in Northampton, MA, David Spound offers wellness programs for individuals and organizations based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School
• Vipassana Hawai'i
  Vipassana Hawai'i was established in Honolulu in 1984 to support the teachings of classical Buddhism and to make them relevant to the issues of our day, offering weekly guided sittings, classes for old and new students, individual meditation instruction, and weekend, ten-day and three-week retreats.
• Zen Mountain Monastery
  Located on 230 acres of forest preserve in New York’s beautiful Catskill Mountains, Zen Mountain Monastery has been one of the West’s most respected Zen Buddhist monasteries and training centers since its inception in 1980.

Retreat Center Directories

Disclaimer: These directories are listed for your convenience. The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society is not endorsing the teachers, teachings, policies, politics, or activities of the organizations included on these web sites.

findthedivine.com
seekaretreat.com
spiritsite.com
retreatsonline.com
retreatfinder.com
GoSit.org - an independent guide to meditation and retreat centers
Beliefnet's List of Faith-Based Retreat Centers

 

Other Interesting Websites

• Finding Meaning in Medicine
  A community of like-minded health care professionals exploring the core questions of a life in medicine and rekindling in one another the commitment to service.
• The Forum for Contemplative Studies
  Dedicated to the discussion and experiential exploration of contemplative awareness and its values. In particular, it seeks to explore the confluence of depth psychotherapy with the world's contemplative traditions.
• Kosmos Journal
  Features articles on spirituality, global activism, and political, economic, and social institutions. Published twice a year.
• Sacred Slam
  Sacred Slam organizes poetic performances that explore difficult topics and challenge misconceptions, fear, and misunderstandings.
• Sounds True
  Over 600 audio courses, books, videos, and music for personal and spiritual transformation.
• What do You Think, My Friend? Writings on Buddhism
  One of the oldest sites on the web for Buddhist texts and stories. Offers, among other things, the complete Dhammapada.