A Seven-Day Meditation Retreat
with Brian Lesage and Diana Clark
Offered by the Santa Fe Vipassana Sangha and the Albuquerque Insight Meditation Center
September 12 – 19, 2025
Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey in Pecos, NM
Join us to practice the timeless teachings of the Buddha as a pathway to discover inner peace, freedom, and the kind heart. On this retreat we will be cultivating the beautiful quality of Metta (loving-kindness). It is an opportunity to deepen your practice, allowing you to experience the profound calm and joy that can arise from nurturing Metta and Samadhi.
This retreat is for practitioners who have done at least two week-long residential retreats in the Insight Meditation tradition. The retreat will be
held in silence and will include practice discussions, daily instructions, and Dharma talks.
Our Lady of Guadalupe Abbey is about 30 miles east of Santa Fe along the Pecos River, and is surrounded by juniper forest native to the area. The Center is isolated and large enough to provide for the quiet and seclusion needed to support the practice.
The Retreat will begin at 4:00 pm on Friday, September 12, and complete around noon on Friday, September 19, 2025.
Accommodations: Accommodations are simple rooms with private bathrooms. Vegetarian meals will be provided from dinner on Friday evening through breakfast on Friday morning. A full meal will be served at lunch, with light breakfast and evening meals. We can accommodate some special dietary needs, but not all. Please check with the contact person below if you have special needs of any sort.
Please bring your preferred sitting equipment: zabuton, zafu, bench, and/or backjack. Chairs are available.
Dana: Since the time of the Buddha, the teachings have been given freely, as they are considered to be priceless. This 2,600-year-old tradition continues to be sustained with the practice of dana, which allows yogis to offer support to their teachers, who receive no other financial compensation. There will be an opportunity to offer dana at the end of the retreat, so please bring either checks or cash for your offering.
Fee: The fee for the retreat is a sliding scale of $900 to $1,250. The estimated cost to our sangha for the retreat is $1,005. Please pay as much as you can so that we can offer this retreat to all regardless of their financial situation. Payment plans and scholarships are available so that anyone interested will be able to attend. If you need scholarship or deferred payment information, please send your queries to Sarah Grant, sarahcrawfordgrant@gmail.com and Francesca Morfesis, francesca@voiceofanother.com.
Covid 19 Protocol: In order to care for each other and the Monastery staff we will be consulting the guidance offered by the NM Department of Health, the CDC, and an infectious disease physician familiar with silent retreats of this sort. The staff at the Monastery is vaccinated, and we will require retreatants accepted into this retreat to be vaccinated.
Registration: To register for this retreat, please fill out the questionnaire using the link below. A lottery for the retreat will take place sometime in mid-May. Please pay attention to your email during the month of May! If you are picked in the lottery for the retreat, you will need to pay the non-refundable deposit of $150 within two weeks in order to secure your place in the retreat. If you register after the lottery, your name will be placed on the waiting list. We will do our best to communicate to you about where you are on the list.
Questions? Please email Sarah Grant: sarahcrawfordgrant@gmail.com and Francesca Morfesis: francesca@voiceofanothercom. Please allow up to 7 business days for a response. Thank you and we look forward to practicing together.
Brian Lesage has practiced Buddhist meditation since 1988 and has taught meditation since 2000. He has studied in the Zen, Theravada, and Tibetan schools of Buddhism. He was ordained in the Rinzai Zen tradition in 1996. His training in Vipassana Meditation includes extended retreats in Myanmar (Burma), Nepal, and India as well as numerous retreats in the U.S. He leads retreats and teaches meditation courses nationwide. Brian also has a private practice in Somatic Experiencing, which is a naturalistic approach to healing trauma. For more information, go to https://liberatingawareness.com.
Diana Clark, PhD., is a dedicated dharma 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.