Seven Rays of Healing with Medicine Buddha
(Online Retreat / In Person At Clear Sky / Germany Residential)
**Covid-19 Update: This retreat now has three retreat options – live at Clear Sky, live in Germany, or as an online retreatant
This retreat is an opportunity, for any meditator, of any level, to go deeper to the essence of healing. Through the Seven Rays of Healing (from the Western Mysteries traditions) and sense based meditations, discover how to experience deeper foundations of vitality and health.
This retreat is a collaboration between the dedicated teams at Planet Dharma, Dharma Europe, and Clear Sky.
Organiziers Dharma Europe invited our founding teachers Doug and Catherine Sensei to teach, and due to travel restrictions the retreat became an online offering, streaming live from Clear Sky.
You can also attend in person at Clear Sky or do a residential retreat in Germany, please see below for more information.
** See our FAQ section below for more details about our covid policy and requirements for attending online.
Seven Rays of Healing with Medicine Buddha
How can we heal? How can we feel healthy and whole?
Every wisdom tradition around the world holds that true healing comes through an understanding of the nature of reality. Part of this entails learning to discern between—and dance together with—both absolute reality and relative reality.
The true challenge of a human life is to be able to live, work, love, and dance in both relative and absolute reality at the same time. One or the other takes the foreground or background as appropriate. The system of the Seven Rays of Healing helps us understand the true nature of relative reality, while bridging to absolute reality. Then we are ready to experience absolute reality, primarily through the methodology of meditation.
What Are The Seven Rays of Healing?
The Seven Rays of Healing use the chakra system of ancient India combined with aspects of Theosophical philosophy. This system helps us understand the different ways we manifest in the world. Moreover, it helps us learn how to reorient our approach and engagement with the parts of our lives represented by the seven rays, to embody greater love, compassion and understanding. In other words, it helps us learn to realize our spiritual essence.
Using meditation, creative, and somatic exercises, we’ll bring relative and absolute realities together within one’s own being, to manifest the heart and mind of spiritual realization.
Medicine Buddha Empowerment
On the last day of the retreat, there will also be a special Medicine Buddha empowerment given. According to Mahayana teachings, the Medicine Buddha cures all diseases, including those of ignorance. Its function is to free living beings from the three mental poisons, hatred, greed and confusion.
This is your opportunity to meet and study with Dharma Teachers and Spiritual Mentors, Qapel and Sensei.
This retreat will be held in the heart of Germany, in Schannenbach, 60km from Frankfurt and Heidelburg, as well at our magnificent Clear Sky Retreat Centre, Canada and Online.
Attend the Retreat Online (from home), or in Person in Canada or in Germany
1) Online Attendance
Basic requirements to do the retreat online from home:
- Block out the 8 days and be focused on the retreat for this entire period, using this time and participating in the retreat as if you were at Clear Sky in person. This includes a rigorous, full, daily meditation schedule.
- Participate in all of the daily classes and group practices via online streaming.
- Set up a quiet space or location where you can focus on the Meditation Retreat, and not need to engage in conversation or work with others.
- Put away your phone, digital devices and other distractions.
- If there are enough people in the same time zone as you, you could also make a cohort to meet to do a group practice throughout the retreat.
2) Residential Retreat in the UK
Attending in person at Maitreya House
- The retreat in Germany will be held at a lovely place called “Haus Sonnentau” which means “House Sundew”
- There will be appropriate Covid 19 protocols followed on this retreat.
- The retreat is hosted by Dharma Europe.
- The teachers and Dharma Europe operate on the basis of the ancient tradition of dāna or generosity. Please learn more about this profound practice before you register.
To register for the in person retreat in Germany please email Andrea Netscher at andreaomtare@me.com.
3) In Person at Clear Sky
If you are local to Clear Sky in BC, Canada you may also choose to be onsite in person, where the teachers are. We invite you to book a personal retreat cabin for the duration of the retreat.
If you are interested to join this retreat in person at Clear Sky Centre, Click here to contact Michelle or call 1-250-505-6366
Meet the Teachers
Achariya Doug Duncan Sensei & Catherine Pawasarat Sensei are Dharma and meditation teachers who founded Clear Sky Meditation Centre, BC, Canada.
Achariya Doug Duncan received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 1978, and is a lineage holder in that teaching. Known for his direct, humourous and compassionate engagement with students, Doug embraces various traditions, contemporary psychology, and science, to mentor all beings to a more awakened state.
Catherine Pawasarat Sensei has trained daily with Achariya Doug Duncan since 1998 in an intensive spiritual apprenticeship that is rare in the modern West. She received lay ordination from Namgyal Rinpoche in 2003. In addition to Buddhist philosophy and its applications to daily life, Catherine also draws on generative living and the arts. With Doug she is co-founder of Clear Sky Retreat Center in the BC Rockies.
What can I expect?
Course Details
Dāna
This course is offered by Qapel & Sensei based on the ancient principle of generosity, or Dāna. You may have come across this is the form of “pay from the heart”. Dāna is a Sanskrit term meaning “generosity”. With dāna, we give as a mutual exchange of generosity. It’s their joy to offer this course, and we trust you’ll match their time, energy, and passion by giving an amount of money that feels good and healthy.
Daily Schedule
- Daily Class & Teachings: 5pm in Germany, 9am MST
- Meditation (Q&A) : 10.00pm in Germany, 2.00pm MST
Fees
- Online Retreatant Admin Fee: CA$200 (approx € 135)
- Germany Residential Fee: €695 (includes Food, Accommodation & technical support).
- Clear Sky Residential Fees (Incl. Food & Accomodation – please contact Clear Sky via the registration button below.
Teachers receive no income from these administration fees. They offer their teaching on the basis of generosity, or Dāna, which you will have an opportunity to give when you register.
About Clear Sky
Located in the BC rocky mountains, we offer over 300-acres to deepen your practice and reconnect with nature. Founded by Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat, we are home to students from around the globe who are dedicated to co-creating a supportive and innovative space for awakening in our modern world.
To help you get acquainted with us, some community members made this short video during our 2019 Buddhas in Action retreat. To learn more about us and our incredible community, click here!
FAQs
Dana: This course is offered by Doug and Catherine Sensei through the ancient principle of generosity, or Dāna. Learn more about Dāna here.
Pricing:
- Online Retreatant Admin Fee: CA$200 (approx € 135)
- Germany Residential Fee: €695 (includes Food, Accommodation & technical support).
- Clear Sky Residential Fees (Incl. Food & Accomodation – please contact Clear Sky via the registration button below.
Teachers receive no income from these administration fees. They offer their teaching on the basis of generosity, or Dāna, which you will have an opportunity to give when you register.
How Much to Give? A short exercise:
- Take a few quiet breaths and center yourself.
- Spend another few moments contacting as best you can a sense of health, strength and abundance (noticing without judgement if this is hard to contact)
- Offer an aspiration (using the below, or your own words).
May this practice of dāna open up a space inside me to learn and receive.
May this gift support the teachers and teachings for the benefit of many other people.
May this gift directly support my own awakening through a strong dāna practice.
This gift, myself the giver, and the teachers are all impermanent – with this in mind I give lightly and generously, for the benefit of all beings! - Now check with your heart and mind what amount feels both consistent with your situation, and expressive of your aspiration. Remember, you are free to offer whatever amount of dāna feels good for you right now.
- Now simply, with a joyful abundant heart aspiring for awakening, and awareness of the preciousness and impermanence of life, enter the amount you choose to offer.
About the administrative fee
In a traditional model of in-person teachings, a retreat center or urban meditation center invites teachers to visit. In these cases the centers have infrastructure and organization costs to cover, which might be covered by an admin fee. For the teaching itself, dāna to the teachers is offered in a bowl. This honors both the sustainability of the teachers, and of the supporting center.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online.
The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood. Learn more about the practice of dāna here.
The admin fee goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, it can be surprising the costs of setting up a good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online.
Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- high speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- online class systems (Zoom)
- registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
We welcome any questions. Please feel free to contact michelle@clearskycenter.org
If you are taking this retreat online, we require that you devote your full attention to the retreat for the entire two weeks.
Online Retreat Requirements:
- Block out the full period of retreat and be focused on the retreat for this entire time, participating in the retreat as if you were at Clear Sky in person. This includes a rigorous, full, daily meditation schedule.
- Participate in all of the daily classes and group practices via online streaming.
- Set up a quiet space or location where you can focus on the Meditation Retreat, and not need to engage in conversation or work with others.
- Put away your phone, digital devices and other distractions.
- If there are enough people in the same time zone as you, you could also make a cohort to meet to do a group practice throughout the retreat.
Please note, we are taking measures to keep us all healthy during this retreat, including:
- You must have experienced no symptoms associated with COVID-19 in the past 14 days and will be required to take an online assessment prior to your stay.
- You have not travelled outside of Canada in the past 14 days.
- Physical distancing (2m) amongst all visiting retreatants will be observed during this retreat.
- Please bring your own face mask(s) that you will feel comfortable wearing. When physical distancing is not possible during this retreat, you will be asked to wear a mask.
- Sanitation and hand washing procedures will be explained when you come and must be followed.
Learn more about our COVID-19 Policy here.
Airport pickups can be booked when you register for the retreat. On the rare chance that this retreat is cancelled, we highly recommend purchasing travel insurance.
In order to give enough time to rest from travel before the retreat starts, we recommend that domestic travellers arrive one day early, and long distance international travellers arrive two days early.
After the retreat we also suggest staying for at least another day for integration.
Travel Restrictions, COVID-19 Policy: Please contact us – Email michelle@clearskycenter.org or (250) 429-3929 for details/options for local participation.