Hi everybody, this is my first post!

I'm considering a retreat at Gaia House this July with John Peacock. I can't get much detailed information about him though. I wrote Gaia House and the recommended googling his name but that didn't lead to much. Has anybody been to any retreats with him? Any thoughts?

I'm also looking into other centers and teachers mentioned in other threads, but feel free to offer any leads related to retreats from July 8th to August 4th.

Thanks so much,

Nick

I don't know him or of him, but consider asking Christopher Titmuss, a co-founder of Gaia House and long-time vipassana teacher, found here:

http://www.christophertitmuss.org/

Thanks, I'll actually get to see Christopher at the Buddhafield Festival in two weeks. I've signed up for the retreat with John Peacock anyway, based on the good things I've heard about Gaia House and what I've read about him etc. I'll report here afterwards.

I'm happy to say that the retreat with John Peacock was great. He is extremely knowledgeable and I think his attitude towards the Dharma is in line with The Dharma Underground, IMS, etc.

He's also done amazing work as an academic. He is Associate Director of the Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy Department at Oxford University, which has basically been researching the effects of applying bare-bones vipassana technique as therapy for people suffering from stress and depression. The results have been so positive that MBCT is now the preferred medical treatment for stress and depression in England.

I'm too much of a beginner to have a sense of how "accomplished" he is as a practitioner, but it seems he's been practicing for something like 40 years and he gave some stellar dharma talks. I will have a better sense of all this after I've met more teachers of course.

hi nick,

good to hear your retreat was great. to get a better sense of what it was like, i have a few questions:

1- what were the practice instructions john peacock gave?
2- how well were you able to follow them?
3- what resulted from following them?

welcome to the dho, by the way.

tarin

Glad you had a good retreat.

Just a small point, IMS and the DhO don't always see eye to eye, but this is a generalization and would depend on the individuals in question. That disclaimer aside, there is a lot of hush, hush culture there at IMS that MCTB and the DhO were reactions against rather than alignments with, and that continues 15 years later, unfortunately.

I do not hear that they are embracing open, clear, egalitarian, empowered, straightforward, down-to-earth, practical, top-to-bottom demystified dharma in the way I would like, but this is just my personal vision and idealism and certainly not necessarily something they should or need to do, I would just like it if they did. They are a business with an established hierarchy, after all.

There are lots of great things about IMS, and I have benefitted from retreats there, but if it was really doing its job, the DhO would never have existed, nor would MCTB, as they would have done something that filled those needs and more decades ago and so the DhO and MCTB would have been redundant, but they didn't, and so they are not.

Thus, speaking personally, I see that there are some commonalities of purpose, but substantial aspects of IMS still stand as an established and entrenched force against the sort of open dharma that I advocate and thus, while their facilities are great and the food is good and some of the teachers will sometimes talk about the dharma in a way that is actually real and free of the standard taboos, there is much that comes out of that place that is anything but, and this is a grand tragedy, at least as I see it, and will, like so many things, such as science, politics and the like, require the passing of those in power before some attempt at real and comprehensive reform is actually possible, not that it will necessarily happen, so we are probably going to have to wait a few decades to see what arises.

Hi Tarin, thanks for the welcome.

It's been a couple months now so I'll do my best to answer your questions...

1) The instructions progressed something like this: We started with 1.5 days of watching the breath. He gave either the tip of the nose or abdomen as examples of good places to focus. When we caught ourselves wandered we were told to go straight back to the breath with no commentary. Then for 1.5 days we scanned our attention from back of head to toes and back up. Then for 1.5 days we watched the breath, and when we found ourselves wandered we would note whether there was craving, aversion, or delusion (John suggested "confusion" might be a better translation). Then we did the same with the 5 hindrances. Then we did the same with the 7 factors of enlightenment.

2) The instructions were pretty simple so it was easy to try, but of course I'm still a beginner with concentration etc. so any meditation instructions are a bit slippery

3) I came out of the retreat feeling more empowered to meditation. I've continued to keep a practice since then. Honestly I still feel like I could use some guidance regarding basic concentration. I'm at the ADHD end of the spectrum a bit and often find it hard to concentrate even to the extent that is considered normal. So sometimes I don't know if my surprise at how little I can concentrate is the same that all people experience or particular to those with short attention spans (relative to others).

I've been traveling since then (I'm a fire-dancer by trade so I travel all over in the summer) and I look forwards to having a home again so I can have a home and a schedule!

Good to hear the further feedback. I think John did a good job but I can only compare him to Swami G, a weekend retreat with the Shambala people, and yoga meditation. I liked that he always took the time to explain where the information he was sharing was coming from, so instead of saying "this is buddhism" or "this is what the buddha taught," he would say, "this is what is taught by the such-and-such theravada schools," etc. So we were aware that we were learning of a certain branch of buddhism.

It was much more secular than my experience with Swami Goenka, that's for sure! But of course John Peacock is very much an academic and to me he seemed to have a strong commitment to empirical research.

Also he always seemed to connect the dots. In yoga classes often they'll explain the benefit of certain practices with something mystical, such as "oh well if you keep doing this eventually it will help because we store emotions in our... hips."

I'll be settling down in Toronto for 4 months and I look forward to participating in the forums more at that point. I'm glad to be here as I prefer a "peer learning" environment to following teachers, although of course teachers are useful, but not if it undermines the benefits of peer learning etc.

Until then the most I can do is keep the semblance of a regular practice!