To be mindful of goodness brings love, and to be mindful of pain brings love. That is something like a miracle. This weird asymmetry, that to attend to goodness brings love, and to attend to suffering also brings love. The steadier and more unified the mind gets, the deeper the love can be. Sometimes the mind gathers so singularly around an object—the breath, a mettā phrase, the body, sound, sight, looking into the eyes of another person—the mind just becomes unified. And all the static, fragmentation, and division collapses. And in that mind state, it’s like a drop of love reaches everywhere.
Matthew Brensilver, PhD
Residential Retreat Teacher
Matthew Brensilver teaches at the Insight Retreat Center, Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Society. He was previously program director for Mindful Schools and for more than a decade, was a core teacher at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society. Matthew worked as a clinical social worker, serving severely and persistently mentally ill adults. He subsequently earned a PhD from the Dworak-Peck School of Social Work at USC. His dissertation examined the mechanisms of risk and resilience in maltreated adolescents in a large, longitudinal study in South Los Angeles. Before committing to teach meditation full-time, he spent years doing research on addiction pharmacotherapy at the UCLA Center for Behavioral and Addiction Medicine. Each summer, he lectures at UCLA’s Mindful Awareness Research Center on the intersections between mindfulness, science and psychotherapy. He serves on the Board of Directors at Spirit Rock and Insight Meditation Center.
Matthew Brensilver's Upcoming Programs
Training | Online
January 24 - May 16, 2026 | 5 Sessions
Buddhist Psychology Training
21 CE Credits. Deepen your meditation practice and nourish your work with clients in this training designed for clinicians, counselors, and mindfulness teachers. Through meditation, Dharma talks, small group explorations, and clinical case studies, you will develop greater confidence in applying mindfulness-based interventions with clients while enhancing your understanding of Buddhist psychology and meditation practices that illuminate our minds, foster goodness, and transform habits that compound suffering. This training brings both sides of ourselves—patient and healer—together as we practice and learn in community.
Matthew Brensilver
Short Program | On-Land
Saturday, March 14 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Aligning with Our Deepest Knowing: Wise View on the Path of Awakening
Aligning with our deepest truth brings a rush of relief. During this daylong, we’ll explore the assumptions that obscure freedom and the embodied experience of deep knowing. Together, we'll explore the various aspects of the Dharma path that help us wake up to the assumptions that shape our experience and behavior—including deep attention, spiritual friendship and surrendering to this moment. The day will include guided meditations, Dharma talks, and time for dialogue.
Short Program | Online
Saturday, March 14 | 10:00 AM - 4:00 PM
Aligning with Our Deepest Knowing: Wise View on the Path of Awakening
Aligning with our deepest truth brings a rush of relief. During this daylong, we’ll explore the assumptions that obscure freedom and the embodied experience of deep knowing. Together, we'll explore the various aspects of the Dharma path that help us wake up to the assumptions that shape our experience and behavior—including deep attention, spiritual friendship and surrendering to this moment. The day will include guided meditations, Dharma talks, and time for dialogue.
Retreat | On-Land
April 30 - May 9, 2026 | Thursday - Saturday | 9 nights
Spring Insight Retreat
Spaces Still Available! All the time before you were born plus all the time after you die is almost exactly all the time there is. Yet we find ourselves alive, with a question: how should I live? We begin by listening deeply. Throughout this retreat, we will sit together in the refuge provided by a 2,600-year legacy of wisdom and kindness. In the silence, we come to know the preciousness of life and the poignancy of the human condition.
Retreat | On-Land
June 27 - June 30, 2026 | Saturday - Tuesday | 3 nights
Wisdom and Love
Full - short waitlist. Commuter spaces available! For generations, practitioners have stepped away from the hum of daily life to slow down, listen deeply, and remember what’s always been here. To be mindful of goodness brings love; to be mindful of pain also brings love. This asymmetry is the miracle of mindfulness. As our attention stabilizes, we begin to sense the poignancy of our wish to be happy. In turn, this love informs how we engage with the world.
Retreat | On-Land
August 4 - August 8, 2026 | Tuesday - Saturday | 4 nights
Young Adult Retreat
For those Young adults ages 18-32 years. Spaces Still Available! Join a kind community to practice mindfulness and compassion. Offer yourself freedom from overstimulation and come home to the experience of being alive. In mindfulness meditation, we rest and look deeply, knowing moment-by-moment what it is like to be human. Some of us are hesitant to look because there is concern about what we’ll find. Our practice shows us that the more deeply we look, the more reason we have to love.
Dharma Library
Can't join us live online or on the land? Study and practice at your convenience with Matthew Brensilver through our new library of recordings, articles, and self-paced online courses.