About this Retreat
George Wiegand is our well-known and loved volunteer at Ratna Ling. He has been a student of our Founder Tarthang Tulku and a full-time volunteer in Nyingma organizations for 40 years, as a chef, baker, kitchen manager, temple builder, book binder, and pressman.
He earned his Masters of Education in Counseling in 1974. After teaching high school while in the Peace Corps, he served as a Counselor at a Catholic high school before moving to California in search of a meditation teacher. He intensively trained in Tibetan Yoga (Kum Nye) from 1982-1986 at the Nyingma Institute in Berkeley, and then moved to the Odiyan country center.
George describes his daily practice as meditation in action, working on projects in the Nyingma community, cooking, baking, building temples, printing, binding books, and teaching Tibetan meditation. His active meditation has been a solitary practice, internally studying the working of his own mind as he performs dharma activities. Some of his greatest lessons have come from caring for a dying parent and teaching communication to teenagers at a mindfulness-based youth treatment center.
His hobbies include bread baking, basketball, and choir singing.
Details of this retreat
Join Meditation Teacher George Wiegand to explore how to open to this present moment and cultivate love for our life.
Online Book Club
Gesture of Great Love by Tarthang Tulku
Monday-Friday, February 23-27, 9:00-9:30am PT
The times we live in are particularly challenging. While some people today have an abundance of material prosperity, almost everyone is poor when it comes to inner resources. Anxiety, loneliness, guilt, and frustration dominate the emotional landscape. There is a global shortage of joy, inner peace, and the kind of deep caring for self and others that heals the heart and inspires creative action. How sad this is! For at the very heart of being is the open instant, a boundless source of Great Love.
Using clear, accessible language, Tarthang Tulku, a Tibetan lama who has lived in the United States for more than 50 years, presents a simple, non-religious path in Gesture of Great Love that anyone can follow.
Here, this renowned Tibetan lama offers a gentle analysis of the state of our minds when we are untrained in meditative discipline, and he gives suggestions for relaxing and opening to this present moment of our experience.
As we deepen our understanding of the causes of our reactions, we begin to see how we can enjoy each moment of our lives, despite any external difficulties we face.
As a living representative of a centuries-old meditative training discipline, Tarthang Tulku provides teachings that are helpful and reliable.
Each day, we will read together selected parts of the book, contemplate, and discuss.
You can purchase the book at Dharma Publishing, but you donʻt need a book to join our sessions. Please come to listen and reflect.