Often we find that we're meditating with a corrective mindset—the feeling that somehow what we're doing or experiencing is wrong. But this path isn't about correcting. Correcting is samsara, because in truth, there are no obstacles. Obstacles are the fodder through which we wake up. How are you developing a deeper way of being? That's what we're doing here, we're developing a reliable, illuminating capacity to be with our experience. The real power of mindful awareness lives within our innate capacity to be with all that arises in such a way that we can awaken through it, within it.
Erin Treat
Residential Retreat Teacher
Erin Treat has been practicing Buddhist meditation for nearly 30 years. She is the guiding teacher of Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center in northern New Mexico and served as Guiding Teacher of the Durango Dharma Center. Erin teaches the practical and the profound, from a heart grounded in respect for mystery and the many faces of awakening.
Her approach to sharing the dharma is influenced by her ongoing experience as a student of the Diamond Approach by A.H. Almaas and by Thanissara and Kittisaro's Dharmapala Training, designed to bring forth an embodied bodhisattva ideal within the lineage of Theravada Buddhism. Erin enjoys working with small groups of committed students over time and regularly offers classes, retreats, and mentoring to students from around the country.
Erin Treat's Upcoming Programs
Retreat | On-Land
September 20 - September 26, 2026 | Sunday - Saturday | 6 nights
Our Sacred Roots: A Meditation Retreat for Women
For those who identify as women. Spaces Still Available! For thousands of years, women have contributed to and deepened Buddhist practices of liberation across cultures and continents. Women’s voices, experience, and stories, however, have been largely neglected in Buddhist history. By retrieving the sacred roots of our feminine lineage, we imbue spiritual life with wisdom, tenderness, courage, and resilience. During this retreat we will reconnect to and embody women’s unique expression of spiritual life from the time of the Buddha through the present-day across the cultural spectrum.
Retreat | On-Land
November 6 - November 13, 2026 | Friday - Friday | 7 nights
Liberation through Mindfulness and Insight
Spaces Still Available! This silent meditation retreat is rooted in the early Buddhist tradition, drawing on a living lineage of liberating practice from the time of the Buddha. Through kind, sustained attention to body and mind, we cultivate mindfulness and insight through direct experience rather than theory. Within the supportive structure of silence, clarity and ease can naturally arise. Suitable for newcomers and experienced meditators, the retreat includes guided and self-supported meditation, with limited speaking for Q&A and practice meetings.
Retreat | On-Land
December 11 - December 17, 2026 | Friday - Thursday | 6 nights
Opening to Insight and Love
Spaces Still Available! It is easy for us to forget the heart’s capacity for wisdom and love. The term sati—mindfulness—means to remember. To re-member is to make whole. Meditation retreat invites us to remember our fundamental wholeness so we can respond to the cries of the world. Cultivating a clear mind and tender a heart, we can act with skill and kindness. Within the silent container of retreat, we investigate our experience with relaxed, focused attention, let go of habitual patterns of reactivity and fear, and rediscover the preciousness of human life and poignancy of our shared humanity. As our felt sense of separation heals and we remember our essential goodness, we can engage with life from a place of embodied compassion, freedom and peace.
Dharma Library
Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Erin Treat through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses.