There is still time to join us for a retreat this weekend in Florida, just south of Tampa, Feb 21–23. It’s on the theme of self-compassion and it’s called “How to Stop Beating Yourself Up.”
Self-compassion is at the heart of my teaching these days.
The retreat fees include food and accommodation, and they’re on a sliding scale.
Most us us have the habit of being unkind to ourselves. We talk unkindly to ourselves and often we sacrifice our own well-being in order to “get things done.”
Florida Retreat Center
Florida Retreat Center
On this weekend retreat, Bodhipaksa will introduce a step-by-step guide to self-compassion, so that we can learn to be less hard on ourselves.
To allow people of varying income levels to attend, we have three suggested contributions: $250 for those with lower disposable incomes, $350 as the “standard” contribution, and $450 for those with more disposable income available. The price of the retreat includes food, which will be vegetarian/vegan.
The retreat will start at 7:00 PM on Friday and end at 12:30 PM on Sunday.
There are a couple of spaces still available.
You can read more, or sign up, here: https://www.wildmind.org/florida
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Self-compassion is very important, and lots of people in the Western world (although I’ve heard it doesn’t occur much in traditionally Buddhist countries) have a great deal of self-hatred. The only thing I’ve noticed though is that some teachers of self-compassion remove the need for improving ourselves and extending compassion to others. That’s something I think we have to be careful of.
One teacher of self-compassion I’ve heard said “we accept we are not perfect, because wouldn’t life be really boring if we were all perfect?”. This is a problematic belief, because being not perfect includes becoming drunk, angry and violent. We certainly don’t want to accept a violent temper because it makes life more exciting!
Sangharakshita gave a talk with the title “Don’t Accept Yourself”. While self-hatred is one extreme that too many people fall into, he points out that self-indulgence and accepting the unskillful is too common these days. Sometimes we have to judge ourselves and others so we can get better.