AUGUST 27 2023 Noon- 5 pm

There are many different traditions and styles of meditation, from ancient lineages to the modern mindfulness movement. Currently, some people seek to simplify and modernize these techniques, to make them more approachable for westerners. While this can make it easier for people to connect with them, there can be a cost to doing so.

In this half-day retreat, we will explore a traditional Tibetan Buddhist method of meditation, a Vajrayana practice where one visualizes a deity and repeats a mantra. In these liturgies, or sadhanas, there are certain common elements. Even for seasoned practitioners, it is easy to gloss over these introductory prayers, looking forward to the visualization and mantra section. It is not always easy to see what they are really about. But they are included for a reason. Understanding these, and relating with them appropriately, can bring power and sturdiness to your practice.

We will use a sadhana on Avalokiteshvara, the Buddha of compassion, as the example. After exploring each section of the text, we will spend some time actually doing the practice together, partly reading in English and partly chanting in Tibetan. 

We will begin our afternoon with a short session of yoga, and there will be time for a swim as well!

  Thomas is a long-time practitioner in the Palyul lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, where he has received many teachings and empowerments from his root teachers the late Pema Norbu Rinpoche and Khenchen Tsewang Gyatso Rinpoche. He completed an eight-year series of summer retreats at the Palyul retreat centre in upper New York state, which covers all the main teachings of that tradition. He has also done numerous solitary retreats.

He is a family physician and psychotherapist who worked for many years in Wakefield and Ottawa, but now makes his home in Montreal. He has taught at the University of Ottawa and at the Ottawa Palyul Centre, and now works and teaches in the Department of Family Medicine at McGill.

He strives to be a bridge between Buddhism, medicine, and western psychology & psychotherapy. In his therapy work and in his Dharma teaching he uses a wide range of approaches and tools, working with thoughts, emotions, energy and with the body. His passion is the exploration of Awareness itself, which is at the heart of the Dzogchen tradition. In this view, everything is already perfected, and the invitation is to connect with this simple but elusive truth.

Thomas is appreciated for his warm and inclusive way of relating with clients and students, and for his skilful weaving together of different perspectives and methods. 

In 2015, Bonnie Vanasse, inspired by a pilgrimage throughout India and Sri Lanka bought a small camp, previously used as a log driver's headquarters, on a 4 acre island on the Paugan Reservoir, of the Gatineau River. Her intention of building a meditation retreat centre was, and remains, to build a place to host intimate meditation retreats for small groups and solitary retreats for individuals.

With the help of John Godwin (Tenzin Dorje), a fellow practitioner and student of Anyone Rinpoche, as well as many volunteers who laboured and contributed funds for materials, the construction for the retreat house began, and has since been underway. 

Every building season, more steps are taken to completing the project and soon the building will be finished. In the meantime it is a place for simple retreats for those who are willing to 'rough it', without indoor plumbing or electricity. 

In 2020, Bonnie bought the island from Hydro Quebec, which until this point, had been leased with a 100 year lease. 

The island plans include the construction of a small cabin to house an attendant. A person to care for and support solitary retreatants. 

People interested in retreats are welcome to reach out. Sliding scale starting at 50$/ night