Retreats

We Recover Together: Using the Buddha´s Teachings to Overcome Addiction

Taught by Vimalasara
In-person, Silent, Residential Retreat
January 29 – Feb 1, 2026, Joshua Tree, CA

The Dharma is the oldest recovery program that we know of to date. The Buddha’s teachings offer us a practice for understanding how our minds are vulnerable to addiction and a path to recovery. This is a retreat for people in recovery from using substances, behaviors, and coping mechanisms to soothe themselves or protect themselves. Using the Eight Step model, an alternative recovery program to the 12 step program of Alcoholic Anonymous that uses the Buddhist teachings to overcome addiction, we will bring together the core teachings of the dharma as a path to recovery. We all have habits, and this retreat is open to anyone who is wanting to work on their habitual, compulsive or addictive behaviours.

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Honoring the Past, Revisioning the Future: Afrikan Healing & Wisdom

Taught by Vimalasara, Arisika Razak & Aleta Toure
In-person, Residential Retreat
February 5 – 8, 2026

Calling all children of the Afrikan Diaspora; calling all folx of Afrikan descent. In the USA, February’s the time to celebrate Black History month. It’s a time we remember our rich global histories, and celebrate our resilience, resistance, creativity and joy. Join us for a four day in-person healing retreat acknowledging our diverse ancestral lineages, historic and contemporary Buddha-dharma teachers, and personal and social identities.

In these challenging and difficult times, let’s remember sacred connection, and loving kindness. Let’s review the wisdom that enables us to survive and thrive in a beautiful, hostile, and holy world – and generate visions for the future in which we want to live.

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The Truth of Addiction

Thursday 12 March – Sunday 15 March
at Sunshine Ch’an Buddhist Temple Society

The Buddha’s first teaching offers a way out of suffering. He called out two futile addictions: one to pleasure, the other to self-punishment. The solution? The Middle Way. Join the Recovery Monday Team to explore the Four Noble Truths, suffering, craving, an end to clinging, and the path.

This is a retreat for people in all forms of recovery: alcohol, food, drugs, shopping, TV, internet, gambling, depression, sex and love addiction and other compulsive addictive behaviours.

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The Truth of Buddhist Recovery

March 2, 2026, March 23, 2026
MarchKevin Griffin, Vimalasara
Online

Join Kevin Griffin and Vimalasara the first four Mondays in March for a transformative series. We’ll explore core Buddhist teachings, including the Four Noble Truths, the Four Heavenly Messengers, and the Three Refuges. We will draw on these classical Buddhist teachings in our own lives to find practical wisdom and support for exploring a path to overcoming addiction and building a foundation for recovery.
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The Dharma of Recovery

With Vimalasara and Kevin Griffin
May 21 – 25, 2026

Are you walking the path of recovery, seeking a deeper sense of peace, freedom and wholeness? This retreat offers a compassionate space for anyone walking the path of recovery—whether from addiction, codependency, trauma, or the many ways suffering takes root in our lives. Grounded in the teachings of the Buddha and the principles of mindful awareness, we come together to explore freedom from craving, attachment, and the cycles of harm that keep us bound.
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Juneteenth Retreat, Meditation, Liberation, and Healing for People of African Descent

June 18–21, 2026
Dr. Vimalasara (Valerie Mason-John) and Arisika Razak, MPH
WJ Kelly Retreat Center: 510 N 2nd St, Bay St Louis, MS 39520

This special Juneteenth retreat invites people of African descent to gather in sacred community, drawing upon the deep wells of African wisdom and Buddhist contemplative practices to reconnect with freedom, healing, and joy. Held in the heart of the south, this retreat offers a rare and necessary affinity space for practitioners of African descent—especially those living in the Gulf region of Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida—to practice liberation in both body and spirit.

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Cultivating Home in Our Hearts

With Vimalasara, Lev Michael Moses and MaryAnn Gallo
November 12 – 15, 2026

A Retreat and Gathering for those who have lived life on a different road. Whether adoptee, fostered or from the group home. You who were separated from lineage and land.

You who were raised disconnected from your birth family, and/or ancestry and culture.

Through mindfulness, meditation and compassionate relational practices, we’ll explore the wounds and potential gifts of our experiences. Together we will work to cultivate self-love, compassion and a sense of belonging to ourselves, one another and to the world.

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