Natural Compassion: Opening the Heart Through Practice (Online)

This is the ONLINE component of the retreat. For the RESIDENTIAL component, please click here.

This retreat is the annual Margha Summer Retreat. While open to everyone, regardless of past or current participation in Margha, students enrolled in the current Margha Program Year are especially encouraged to attend.

This six-day retreat explores Buddhist practices of love and compassion as a way of opening the heart and accessing our deepest nature. By cultivating bodhicitta—the mind of awakening, expressed as our natural impulse toward compassion and our aspiration to awaken for the benefit of all beings—we discover our innate capacity for compassion within all experience, both difficult and pleasant.

An important part of NDF’s Margha Program Year of Bodhicitta/Natural Compassion, this retreat cultivates self-compassion and compassion for others as interconnected pathways that deepen wisdom, openness, and skillful engagement in the world.

Please join us to:

• Open the heart through Buddhist practices of love and compassion
• Learn to access bodhicitta in everyday experience
• Practice deeply, supported by Noble Silence and embodied listening
• Discover your innate capacity to care for self and others
• Develop greater capacity to skillfully engage life’s difficult moments

Natural Compassion: Opening the Heart Through Practice offers an opportunity to engage with Buddhist practices of love and compassion to open our hearts and access our deepest nature. Together, we will explore these practices to discover the power and potential which are innate to all our experience both difficult and pleasant.

While all are welcome, this retreat is an integral part of NDF’s Margha Program Year of Bodhicitta/Natural Compassion. Throughout the six days, we will focus on bodhicitta practices that reveal how self-compassion and compassion for others are interconnected, and how, together, they deepen our ability to meet the world with wisdom, openness, and effectiveness.

Together, we will share in dharma teachings and meditation, along with small group inquiry and deep listening. Our time will be held in the stillness of Noble Silence, with space for solitary walks in nature, meditation, contemplation, and reflection.

This retreat is an invitation to be immersed in Buddhist practices that reveal our inherent compassionate nature and our capacity to care for ourselves, others, and our struggling world. 

Natural Compassion: Opening the Heart Through Practice includes yoga. Please bring clothing suitable for movement. This retreat will be held in Noble Silence.

Meditations supported by various Margha Mitras
Yoga offered by Matt Fritts

Typical Retreat Schedule

(All times are Eastern time zone)

First Day — Opening session begins around 7:00 pm.

Full-Day Schedule — Morning meditation 7:00 am; Breakfast break 8:00-9:30 am; Lunch break 12:00-2:00 pm; Dinner break 5:30-7:00 pm.

Last Day — The closing session typically ends by 11:00 am.

These times are just for reference. An expanded schedule will be provided in pre-retreat information emailed during the week prior to the event.

Zoom Link

The Zoom link will be sent several days before the retreat to all those registered. If you register after that date, you’ll receive the link with your confirmation email shortly after submitting your registration. If you don’t see an email from Natural Dharma Registrar or Wonderwell Mountain Refuge, it may have mistakenly gone to your spam folder or to Promotions or Updates in Gmail.

Important: Please put these this email address in your Contact or Safe-Send list to make sure you receive our emails:

• register@naturaldharma.org

Program Cost

Our program fees provide essential support to our non-profit operations and NDF’s mission to spread the Dharma in accessible, relevant, and creative ways. Our goal is that no one misses out on our events due to lack of funds. Thanks to our generous donors, we are able to offer tiered pricing and additional support to fit varied financial situations: 

• May All Beings Benefit! *– supporting access for all and general support for NDF operations
• A Middle Way – covering the base cost
• Held in Sangha Loving-kindness – offering ease when financial resources are limiting

If the lowest cost tier creates an obstacle to your attendance, please see our financial support options on the registration page. The process is simple and does not require extensive information. Financial aid is immediately approved using discount code options that allow you to contribute the most you are able while honoring your particular resources.

* The difference between the May All Beings Benefit! tier and the Middle Way tier will be considered a tax-deductible donation and will be acknowledged as such in writing. Contributing at this level helps us offer financial aid to other participants. Thank you!!

Access to Recordings

NDF offers unlimited access to recordings, which are available in your user dashboard (more information about user accounts provided in pre-retreat materials). If you have a user account, please register with the same email you use to log into your dashboard. If not, an account will be created for you using your registration address.

Availability will vary depending on the type of event and the backlog for our precious resource volunteers. Thank you for your patience.

Natural Dharma Fellowship Full Calendar