Home from Retreat

Image via WikipediaI'm just home from a day-and-a-half meditation retreat in Columbia, MO; the retreat leader was Gina Sharpe. Great retreat! We were on the University of Missouri campus, where I went to law school back in the 1970's. The campus has all kinds of construction going on; many new buildings, so much change that I got turned around once, coming out of a parking garage I had never seen before. During the lunch period on Saturday, I took a walk, around and in the midst of a lot of new buildings; to my amazement, I found that somehow, for some reason, miraculously preserved in all the new-ness, was the terrible dorm I lived in during my first year in law school; back in 1974, it was old, outdated, cramped, and not air conditioned... now it is much older, incredibly outdated, undoubtedly much more cramped (by today's grander standards in dorm living); but there are now air conditioning window units (old ones!) hanging haphazardly out the windows. I wonder who the poor souls are who pay to live in that building? Dockery-Folk is its name. Will it live on, forever? Maybe it is true that everything is transitory, everything changes, everything passes away... except the MU dorm named Dockery-Folk...

Gina is a wonderful teacher; it was a very good experience to sit with her, listen to her talks, and spend time with her in interviews. Before embarking on dharma teaching, full-time, she studied philosophy and law, and practiced law (as did I); and now, she teaches meditation to prisoners, which is something I would very much like to do, someday. I will most definitely make it a point to go to retreats she is leading, whenever I get the opportunity. Here is a short biographical note about Gina that I picked up from the Insight Meditation Center web site:

Gina Sharpe is a co-founder and Guiding Teacher of New York Insight Meditation Center. She is a graduate of the first Spirit Rock Community Dharma Leaders Program. Her primary mentor is Jack Kornfield. She has been teaching meditation and Dharma for 11 years. She has taught at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Insight Meditation Society (IMS), Asia Society, Tibet House, the New York Open Center, the Katonah Yoga Center, and at other centers in the U. S. and helped to initiate and teach People of Color retreats at IMS. For the past four years, she has been a volunteer teacher of Dharma and meditation at the only maximum security prison for women in New York State.