Due to the small number of participants, the upcoming retreat with Bob has been slightly modified.
The noon meal will be served each day and take a creative departure from the menu that's been in place for many years. Breakfast and dinner will be self-served from prepared foods that will be available. Some staff will be carrying on with their day-to-day work, but will be maintaining a silent retreat atmosphere. Also, the evening sitting will be from 7-8 p.m. and thereafter there will be open sitting.
Bob will give give talks, be available for private meetings, and take part in the afternoon group dialogues. In sad news for feline fans, he won't be bringing his cuddly friend Ariel with him as he travels from Ithaca to Springwater for the retreat. The retreat is in-person only, though members are invited to listen to the daily talk online (see below for details).
If you have only a few days free in your schedule, part-time attendees are most welcome. (We do ask that all first time attendees arrive on the opening day to be oriented to the retreat program.)
Register here, or use the green button below.
Bob has been involved with the Center since its inception, and in addition to leading retreats, he has served as a valued member of the Board of Trustees for many years. Some flavor of Bob's clarity of mind and deep-probing inquiry may be found in a talk he gave here on Day 3 of the March retreat where he spoke of working on problems. Rationality, intellectual intelligence, may be used, but there’s another aspect to problem solving:
...finding that sometimes it worked best to put the problem down, and pick it up again later... And so, throughout the years there’s been this kind of gradual understanding that what we’re calling awareness or presence or silence, is more than just this seeing that we’ve talked about. There’s actually, I’ll call it a mysterious intelligence involved. And this is not the same intelligence that we use in our everyday life where we look at something, we analyze it, we compare it, etc. This is more “out of the blue” intelligence, where something just pops up. It can be a response, it can be a talk, it can be maybe an action that’s taken, where you don’t think about it. Something just happens. But what has become clear is that this type of intelligence is, not quite sure how to put it, but when there’s a lot of rational thinking going on, in some sense it blocks this other intelligence… Only when there’s a little bit of quiet or space does it seem to operate.
Bob goes on to speak of another aspect to this mysterious intelligence that is better referred to as compassion, and asks if there is such a thing as a compassionate person.
Listen to the talk here.
Visit Bob's teacher page for articles and recorded talks.
Center members, please note that a day before the retreat begins, the online coordinator will email you with links to access Bob's talk live and online or, listen to the recorded talk. This is a benefit of membership in 2025.
