“Good friends, companions, and associates are the whole of the spiritual life.“
The Buddha to Ananda, Upaddha Sutta: Half the Spiritual Life, SN 45.2
You are warmly invited to our Community Circles: The Four Noble Truths and Nibbana. Our Community Circle courses are immersions in the dharma, with spiritual friends.
This is a time for us to gather as a dedicated cohort, and to engage in small groups to explore the dharma with gentle relational practices.
This year, we will immerse in the foundational teaching of the Four Noble Truths and Nibbana.
The Four Noble Truths can be easy to list cognitively, and challenging to understand in an embodied way. This year will give us a precious opportunity to slow down and know these truths deeply and naturally. If you are in the early stages of your practice, this can orient your practice from a firm foundation. If you are an experienced practitioner, this will offer the chance to really feel into this liberating practice and make it your own lived experience. Included in our exploration will be the 12 tasks of the 4 Noble Truths – tangible practices for daily life.
Nibbana, or awakening, or enlightenment, can seem far away from us. And yet, it is at the heart of our practice. We can taste moments of this liberation that can sustain us and lead onward to deeper connection with this way of being. We will become familiar with how to set the conditions for nibbana, and where to look for it in our everyday experience. The foundations of this study will be original teachings by Ajahn Buddhadasa and Ajahn Chah, as well as other beloved meditation teachers.
Community Circles will combine dharma talks, sutta study, home reflections, dharma buddies, and relational practices and exercises to deepen our practice together.
This 7-month program starts September 2023. It includes monthly meetings, monthly home reflections and readings, weekly check-ins with practice buddies, as well as commitment to your own individual practice. In addition, practice talks with Jeanne can deeply anchor your practice, and we recommend 3-5 twenty-five minute meetings with Jeanne during the program.
We will be offering two options for this program: an in-person series, for people in/near Saskatoon, and an online series.
This year, we are also introducing two daylong retreats for participants in the program. (Note these retreat will be offered in-person only. We welcome out of town participants to come to Saskatoon for the day.)
Dates and times
Monthly meeting dates are scheduled as follows. Each session runs 7-9 pm Saskatchewan time. (For online folks, click links for conversion into other time zones.)
| In person (Mondays) | Online (Mondays) |
|---|---|
| September 25 | October 2 |
| October 23 | October 30 |
| November 20 | November 27 |
| January 8 | January 15 |
| March 4 | March 11 |
| April 8 | April 15 |
| April 29 | May 6 |
| Daylongs (in-person in Saskatoon, 10 am-4 pm) |
| Saturday, December 9 |
| Saturday, March 16 |
This time of practice in community is suitable for both beginners and experienced practitioners.
Course fees
Administration fee:
The administration fee paid at the time of registration helps cover the administrative costs for SIMC.
Teacher dana/donation:
The registration fee does not include teacher support – there will be an opportunity to offer dana to Jeanne. See dana information below.
Registration
We will open registration on May 31. Please email us if you want to be notified when registration is open.
Course Teacher
Jeanne Corrigal is the guiding teacher for the Saskatoon Insight Meditation Community, and a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS teacher training program. She deeply appreciates metta and nature based practices. She has been practicing since 1999, and is a graduate of Spirit Rock’s Dedicated Practitioner and Community Dharma Leader Programs. Jeanne is certified with Indigenous Focusing Oriented Trauma Therapy (IFOT), is a certified MBSR teacher, and she has trained with Mindful Schools and Somatic Experiencing. She is Métis, and one of her first teachers in loving presence was Cree Elder Jim Settee.
Some words about the practice of dana
We often have queries about what might be an appropriate range for any financial dana offering to the teachers, that you might wish to make. Before we consider this, it is really important to know that the teaching of dana is a liberation teaching, because it is an intentional opportunity to practice generosity, which can directly erode the habit in the mind of grasping. The Buddha invites us to tune into the joy of dana, the joy of giving, before, during and after… so please, see this as a joy and liberation practice!
One of the gifts of dana is that it is optional, and if people decide to give in this way, they can give according to their means. And at the same time, asking about a range is a reasonable question… in Asia, folks often have an idea of how much is needed to support a teacher’s “requisites”, but in the west, we don’t have the same kind of guidelines, and folks in the west can be left a little bit out at sea in this area.
Offering guidance can be sensitive, as everyone’s circumstances are different. That said, in order to support the teachings, we offer these guidelines as a place to start, and those who wish to give in this way can move up or down on the scale, according to their means.
One guideline is to give the amount that brings you joy, knowing that your dana is supporting the Dharma to carry on (while being aware of not breaking the bank 🙂). One may also seek guidance by looking at the fees that are charged for similar events of workshops in our culture. Movies now cost $15 or more; yoga classes often $15/hour; in addition, workshop leaders are often compensated in recognition of the time it takes to prepare materials, the presentation, as well as their expertise.
Perhaps a helpful starting point for our sessions would be $30 – $40 per class. (This would be a range of something like $210 – $280 for the program). For one-on-one practice talks with Jeanne, a range of $35 – $50 per meeting could be a good range to consider.
Please feel free to offer less than this in order to ensure your participation, knowing that your presence and any financial contribution are valued. Please feel free to offer more, if you are able, and it brings you joy to support others and the program in this precious way. Feel free to offer monthly or once or twice during the course – whatever works for you. And, please know that we are very grateful for both the dana of your presence in the program, and your financial dana; both danas contribute to our capacity to continue teaching. You can feel that your support is supporting the Dharma. Thank you.
If you wish to offer your generosity to support Jeanne and our community, please visit our dana page to find details.