APPLICATIONS OPEN JULY 31, 2010

Guiding Teachers: Sally Clough Armstrong and Phillip Moffitt

Additional Core Faculty: Andrea Fella, Tempel Smith, Anushka Fernandopulle and Pascal Auclair

The DPP is an innovative program designed for serious practitioners of Insight Meditation to expand their understanding of the dharma and intensify their practice. DPP offers a comprehensive curriculum on the Buddha’s teachings over 2 years, designed as an intensive lay practice period. In addition to 5 seven-day training retreats (usually scheduled in the spring and fall), participants commit to maintaining both meditative and daily life practice, working with monthly homework that includes readings, reflections and meditation instructions, maintaining contact with their interview teacher and regular meetings with study/practice partners. Students who have participated in the past three programs have found that it has had a profound impact on their meditation practice, providing a focus and inspiration for deepening their understanding of Buddhism and bringing the dharma alive in new and often unexpected ways.
 
Requirements for the program are 5 years of practice and 50 nights of residential retreat practice in the Insight Meditation (Vipassana) tradition. Become a part of a community that will challenge, broaden and vitalize your understanding and embodiment of central Buddhist teachings. Look for more information and an application form on this page soon. 

The retreats include periods of meditation practice with the teachings offered seminar-style--interactive, participatory and creative. The retreats are not held in silence: the teaching sessions and many meal times are not silent. This allows a strong sense of community to develop amongst the program participants. Because of these interactive periods, we will also include teachings and practices on mindful speaking and listening, to support working skillfully with all the issues that arise in our communication with others.

Our intention is that DPP4 will create a community of practitioners from diverse backgrounds and cultures--a mix of genders, ethnicities, classes, sexual orientations, ages, and abilities--who will support each other’s dharma practice. Before joining this program, please reflect on your interest and capacity to meet and interact with people who might have different histories, stories and views than your own, and on your willingness to engage with and make discoveries about others.

Five 7-day residential retreats:
Our intention is to challenge, broaden and vitalize your understanding and embodiment of central Buddhist teachings through in-depth study, reflection and practice. The retreats include periods of meditation practice but the teachings are seminar-style, interactive, participatory and creative.

Topics will include:

• Four Noble Truths
• Eightfold Path
• Understanding Dependent Origination and Karma
• Worldly Dharmas: sex, money, work and relationships
• Being Guided by Buddhist Cosmology and World View
• Four Foundations of Mindfulness (all the parts you never knew)
• Compassion and the Bodhisattva Path
• Embodied Speech and Enlightened Activity
• Five Aggregates and the teachings of Not-Self
• Brahma Viharas: The Fullness of the Awakened Heart
• Working with Emotions, Fetters and Entanglements
• Learning from the Suttas, and making them come alive
• Freedom, Liberation and Nibbana

Study Curriculum:
Year-round, ongoing study of suttas, texts and contemporary Dharma writings with monthly study assignments for each topic.

Dharma Buddies:
Scheduled dharma discussion and reflection with a study buddy.

Interviews:
Regular half-hour interviews with a mentoring teacher, focusing on sitting practice, DPP homework, personal dharma development and integration. Interviews will be offered monthly or every other month, in person or by phone at the teacher's discretion, and will be held on a dana basis.

Classes:
Between retreats, periodic (monthly or every other month) classes will be offered. DPP groups may form in areas such as San Francisco, Marin County, the East Bay, Redwood City, Los Angeles, Seattle and Vancouver, BC where teachers are available. If you do not live in an area near a DPP teacher, we will likely be offering a class that you can participate in via conference calls.

These classes will combine Dharma and text study with personal investigation into living and fulfilling our Dharma practice. There may be a small fee for some classes if rent needs to be paid for the class meeting space, otherwise classes are held on a dana basis.

Sponsoring Teacher:
Applicants need a sponsoring teacher. A sponsoring teacher is someone who currently teaches at the Insight Meditation Society, Spirit Rock or Gaia House and knows you and your meditation practice, and is supportive of your application to DPP. To sponsor you, all they have to do is to allow you to list their name on your application form. We may contact to them to provide a reference for your application. This teacher may also be willing to be your mentoring teacher. A mentoring teacher provides 6-12 interviews a year during the course of the DPP program. If you do not have a mentoring teacher, one will be assigned to you.

Costs:
The Program fee includes five retreats and is based on a sliding scale. Time payment arrangements and limited scholarship support are available to help with payment of fees. Actual fees will be posted in this space soon.

Retreats:
Retreat 1 (at Yucca Valley): May 14 - 21, 2011
Retreat 2 (at Spirit Rock): November 9 - 16, 2011
Retreat 3: TBD
Retreat 4: TBD
Retreat 5: TBD

All interviews and teachings will be offered on a dana basis.

Communication:
Because of the volume of mail that is sent out in DPP (homework, readings and other information), we use email and the internet for communication with students. To this end, we require that everyone who joins DPP has access to email and the internet, either through your own computer, through a DPP buddy, or through a family member or friend who would be willing to pass along all the messages related to DPP.

We offer this program to meet the growing needs of lay practitioners in our sangha. The program adds another dimension to our practice, deepening and maturing the Buddha-Dharma here in the West. We welcome and encourage your participation in the Dedicated Practitioners' Program. Please join us!

Embracing the Challenge: a published article about the DPP.

Testimonials from Past DPP Participants:

One of the things I've appreciated most about my practice on silent meditation retreats is the chance to just drop my habitual patterns of relating to people. Upon re-emerging into the world of social contact after a silent retreat, I have usually noticed subtle shifts in how I relate to people: over time, some of my habitual patterns have gotten weaker. With the interactive practices offered in the DPP, the shifts have been dramatic. Mindful interactive practices were for me a radical experience of authenticity in communication. Having experienced that level of authenticity and sharing in a safe environment, I find myself more willing to be authentic in daily life interactions. For me, the DPP has been as much about exploring community as about exploring the Dharma. The experience of trust and intimacy with such a large group of people has been extremely powerful.  -- Rachel 

One of the greatest benefits of the DPP program was the "Dharma Buddy" element.  For years I sat silent retreats with total strangers who now, thanks to DPP, are my closest friends. It doesn't matter who you choose to be your dharma buddy; each of us is a teacher and a student in our own unique way. I started out buddying up with an acquaintance who was in the program, and then a total stranger asked to be my buddy, so we became three. And then, during the course of the two years, I deeply connected with several other people who I adopted (or perhaps they adopted me) as dharma buddies. I speak on the phone or email those is distant cities, and we visit each other. Those who are local have formed a Kalyana Mitta (Dharma Friends) group that meets monthly. By the end of the program I had more than a half dozen close dharma buddies with whom I will undoubtedly continue sharing the dharma for years to come.  -- David

	Sally Clough Armstrong began practicing vipassana meditation in India in 1981. She spent five years in England, where she managed a retreat center and was a founding member of the Sharpham meditation community. When she moved to California in 1988, she continued her dharma service at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in a number of roles, including executive director. Sally began teaching in 1996, and is one of the guiding teachers of Spirit Rock's Dedicated Practitioner Program.
	Phillip Moffitt has practiced vipassana since 1983 and is a member of the Spirit Rock Teachers Council. He is the founder and president of the Life Balance Institute, a non-profit organization devoted to the study and practice of spiritual values in daily life. He teaches vipassana meditation at retreat centers around the United States and holds a weekly meditation class in Marin County. Phillip is the author of Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding
	Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (Rodale, April 2008) and has written for numerous magazines, including Yoga Journal, Body and Soul, and Shambhala Sun.
	Andrea Fella has been practicing Insight Meditation since 1996, and began teaching meditation classes in 2003. She is particularly drawn to intensive retreat practice, and has done a number of long retreats, both in the U.S. and Burma. During one long practice period in Burma, she ordained as a nun with Sayadaw U Janeka. Andrea teaches at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, and teaches residential retreats at centers around the country.
	Tempel Smith began practicing intensive Insight and Metta retreats in 1989 under the guidance of Michele McDonald, Steve Armstrong and Joseph Goldstein. He spent a year as a monk in Burma with Sayadaw U Pandita and Pa Auk Sayadaw, and has been teaching since 1997. He is the founder of BASE House, a collective of Buddhist activists and service providers in San Francisco. Tempel recently finished a four year teacher-training program run by
	Jack Kornfield at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California and Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts. Tempel also leads pilgrimages in Burma and India.
	Anushka Fernandopulle is a lifelong spiritual practitioner who has trained for over 20 years in the Theravada tradition in the U.S., India and Sri Lanka. Her teaching is informed by her love of creative arts, nature, service work and progressive social justice movements. Anushka also works as an executive coach, life coach, facilitator and organizational development consultant, influenced by a BA in anthropology and religion from Harvard University and an
	MBA from the Yale School of Management. She leads retreats and workshops around the country. For more information please see www.anushkaf.org.
	Pascal Auclair has been immersed in Buddhist practice and study since 1997, sitting retreats in Asia and America with revered monastics and lay teachers. For several years he has been mentored in his teaching by Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California where he is now enjoying teaching retreats. Pascal also teaches in Quebec and in other
	Canadian provinces. His depth of insight, classical training, and creative expression all combine in a wise and compassionate presence.