Love in a Time of Unknowing
A half-day workshop retreat with Robert Beatty and Betsy Toll
Sat. June 6, 9:00 am to 1:00 pm,on Zoom
Offered by Portland Insight Meditation Community
Spring this year brought stark challenges most of us never saw coming. Covid-19 has infected hundreds of thousands of Americans and taken many, many lives, radically disrupting certain rhythms and patterns we’ve long taken for granted. Terrible acts of racist aggression and violence in recent months have horrified Black communities and shocked millions of others out of their sleep, compounding the stress of pandemic shutdowns. The depraved murder of George Floyd by police officers kindled a nation-wide explosion of grief and outrage that rattles our foundations. Systems fail and divisions sharpen, and nothing seems entirely familiar or safe.
In this bardo between what we knew and the unknown ahead, we quickly devise protective responses to defend ourselves. The poignant dilemma is that protecting ourselves from impermanence and change is impossible, and certainly can’t empower us or bring comfort. When we recognize the conundrum, we can look for perspectives and practices that give us room to breathe, widen our view, nurture resilience, and deepen our compassion for ourselves and others. These tools can help us find balance, to be resilient, creative, and kind, as we move through this unstable time.
Join Betsy Toll (Living Earth) and Robert Beatty (PIMC) at this online retreat hosted by Portland Insight Meditation Community. With dialogue, meditation, interactive practices, and reflections, we’ll find places of rest and stability as we explore how challenges of this early summer time can become rich soil where seeds of curiosity, creativity, resilience, and compassion can grow.
Register on PIMC’s secure site to receive Zoom link. By donation, all are welcome.
Who we are:
Betsy Toll stepped onto the dharma trail in 1986, while working on a project in Los Angeles with Ram Dass. Following in his footsteps, her path has been eclectic. Incorporating contemplative practice, devotion, and karma yoga, she orients toward compassion, service, and the spacious shared heart. In 1998, Betsy founded Living Earth in Portland, offering opportunities to explore what it means to be fully human and to love, and how our spiritual practices shape our participation in our communities, our society, and the living planet.
Through Ram Dass, Betsy met her net of treasured teachers including Joanna Macy, Roshi Joan Halifax, and Frank Ostaseski. She is a writer and editor in her day job,and volunteers in hospital chaplaincy. With Living Earth, she offers dharma circles (currently on Zoom), workshops, and residential retreats in the Portland area. She also supports individuals facing crisis, grief, trauma, and death, in hospital and at home.
Robert Beatty was in the first wave of American Buddhist teachers who brought theravadan Buddhism from Asia to the West in the 1970s. His mission is to help others discover the profound ways Buddhist practices can transform life, reduce suffering, and create happiness. Robert founded the Portland Insight Meditation Community, where he is the guiding teacher.
His meditation training began in India in 1972. He studied with many teachers in Burma and India and in the U.S. His primary lineage is through Ruth Denison, founder of the Dhamma Dena Retreat Center; Ruth named him a Dharma successor and authorized him to teach in 1982. Robert has a master’s degree in Environmental Studies from York University in Toronto, and a master’s in social work from Portland State University. His teaching includes a non-dual perspective. Humor, movement, poetry, and drumming are among his tools to teach meditation for everyday life. Robert’s website.