Barre Center For Buddhist Studies

Barre Center For Buddhist Studies Barre Center for Buddhist Studies offers residential and online courses combining study, discussion, and meditation.

Located on 90 acres of wooded land in rural, central Massachusetts, just a half mile from the Insight Meditation Society, BCBS provides a peaceful and contemplative setting for the study and investigation of the Buddha’s teachings. The secluded campus consists of a 250 year-old farmhouse, a dharma hall, and three cottages which taken together provide space for a 5,000 volume library, classroom, me

ditation hall, student housing, dining, and offices. The study center offers a variety of courses, workshops, retreats, and self-study programs to further research, study, and practice. Our programming is rooted in the classical Buddhist tradition of the earliest teachings and practices, but calls for dialogue with other schools of Buddhism and with other academic fields. All courses support both silent meditation practice and conscious investigation of the teachings.

What happens when we loosen our grip on certainty and make room for wonder?In this month’s Dharma Resource, Chan teacher...
09/01/2026

What happens when we loosen our grip on certainty and make room for wonder?

In this month’s Dharma Resource, Chan teacher Guo Gu Laoshi explores silent illumination, embodied awareness, feeling tone, and the practice of “not knowing.”

The resource includes a guided meditation, dharma talk, and Q&A from Liberation: A Dialogue Across Buddhist Traditions, with reflections on relaxing and grounding, recognizing habitual tendencies, cultivating wonderment, and meeting experience with a wakeful, responsive presence.

Explore Guo Gu’s teaching on silent illumination and wonderment, and listen to the full session:

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/blog/dharma-resource-guo-gu-on-silent-illumination-and-wonderment/

What if our relationships aren’t separate from our practice, but one of the places where awakening happens?Join Jacoby B...
09/01/2026

What if our relationships aren’t separate from our practice, but one of the places where awakening happens?

Join Jacoby Ballard and Calvin Burnap for Free and Connected: Relationships as a Dharma Door to Awakening, an interactive online retreat exploring how relationships with partners, friends, family members, colleagues, and others can become part of the path.

Through meditation, relational practices, movement, journaling, dharma talks, and experiential exercises, we’ll explore how Buddhist teachings can help us lean toward one another, navigate conflict and change, and meet the challenges of relationships with greater wisdom and care.

October 2–4 | Online

Suitable for beginning and experienced practitioners.

Learn more and register at: https://bit.ly/45KPC6E

Our hearts are with everyone affected by the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet.For those in the BCBS community looki...
08/31/2026

Our hearts are with everyone affected by the devastating floods in Nepal and Tibet.

For those in the BCBS community looking for ways to help, we’ve gathered several relief efforts and organizations responding to the disaster, including Buddhist-led organizations and groups with longstanding ties to communities across the Himalayan region.

Read more and find ways to support relief efforts: https://bit.ly/4i07wK1

How do we bring the clarity of retreat into the busyness of everyday life?Join Bill and Susan Morgan, November 1–7, for ...
08/31/2026

How do we bring the clarity of retreat into the busyness of everyday life?

Join Bill and Susan Morgan, November 1–7, for The Four Great Endeavors: An Online Householder Retreat, a week of practice designed to unfold right in the midst of your normal life.

Morning and evening sessions will “bookend” each weekday, while afternoons remain open for work, relationships, responsibilities, and everything else the day brings.

Together, we’ll explore compassion practices and the Buddha’s four endeavors: cultivating wholesome states of mind and letting go of unwholesome ones. Along the way, we’ll find ways to weave mindfulness into daily life in real time.

Practice from home, in good company with others.

November 1–7, 2026 | Online | By Donation

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4c3LLVY

How do we free ourselves from the patterns that keep us tangled?In this five-night residential retreat, Ayya Santussika ...
08/30/2026

How do we free ourselves from the patterns that keep us tangled?

In this five-night residential retreat, Ayya Santussika will guide participants through the Four Establishments of Mindfulness, exploring how we create entanglements and how we can meet them with kindness and understanding. By turning toward these recurring patterns, we can begin to recognize and release old habits.

Offered in keeping with the Buddhist monastic tradition, the retreat will include Dhamma reflections, guided meditation, silent sitting and walking meditation, group practice discussions, Q&A, optional qigong, chanting, and simple ritual. Participants may also choose to observe the Eight Precepts.

The Liberating Power of Mindfulness: Finding Freedom from Entanglements
With Ayya Santussika
October 30–November 4, 2026
Residential at BCBS

For intermediate and advanced practitioners with a regular meditation practice who have completed at least two Buddhist residential retreats of five or more days.

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/45v4lSY

What does liberation ask of us when the conditions around us are unjust, painful, and deeply entangled?In this five-nigh...
08/29/2026

What does liberation ask of us when the conditions around us are unjust, painful, and deeply entangled?

In this five-night residential retreat, Lama Rod Owens will draw on the Heart Sutra as a practice of spiritual abolition. Participants will explore how tensions between form and emptiness, self and collective, and suffering and freedom can become part of the path rather than obstacles to it.

Through meditation, dharma talks, group discussion, wise speech, and periods of noble silence, the retreat will offer space to consider how these teachings can be lived in service of our own liberation, the liberation of others, and the unseen ecologies of ancestors and descendants.

Practicing Spiritual Abolition through the Heart Sutra
With Lama Rod Owens
October 16–21, 2026
Residential at BCBS

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4wn5o37

How can the Four Noble Truths become a living path for meeting our lives with more harmony, steadiness, and resilience?I...
08/28/2026

How can the Four Noble Truths become a living path for meeting our lives with more harmony, steadiness, and resilience?

In this nine-month online program, Tuere Sala invites us to explore the Buddha’s first teaching through meditation, contemplation, and everyday experience. Together, we will look closely at dukkha, craving and clinging, moments of release, and the ongoing cultivation of a more harmonious way of being.

The course includes monthly teachings, Q&A, short breakout sessions, guided Nine Bodies meditations, contemplation prompts, and practice partner reflections.

The Four Noble Truths: A Path to Harmony and Resilience
with Tuere Sala
Online | September 30, 2026 – May 26, 2027

Suitable for beginning and experienced practitioners.

Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4x3Z6FF

How do we become a healing presence for others without losing touch with our own ground of safety, compassion, and inner...
08/27/2026

How do we become a healing presence for others without losing touch with our own ground of safety, compassion, and inner steadiness?

In this weekend online retreat, John Makransky and Rachel Cronin draw from Tibetan Dzogchen practice, with support from modern psychology, to explore the innate capacities of warmth, presence, unconditional love, and wisdom available within awareness itself.

Innate Wholeness as a Profound Power of Healing for Self and Others
Online Retreat | September 26–27, 2026

Open to Buddhist practitioners and people of all backgrounds and faiths with at least two years of daily contemplative practice.

→ Learn more and register: https://bit.ly/4wooOF1

We invite you to join in the spirit of Ullambana, a Buddhist festival of gratitude, generosity, and remembrance.Observed...
08/27/2026

We invite you to join in the spirit of Ullambana, a Buddhist festival of gratitude, generosity, and remembrance.

Observed on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, Ullambana has its roots in the Buddhist story of Mahāmaudgalyāyana, who sought the Buddha’s help after using his meditative powers to see that his deceased mother had been reborn in a realm of suffering. The Buddha taught him to make offerings to the Sangha and dedicate the merit to her.

Today, Buddhists in different cultures mark the occasion by honoring parents and ancestors, remembering loved ones who have died, making offerings, chanting and praying, practicing generosity, and dedicating merit for the benefit of others.

This photo comes from the Vu Lan Festival, the Vietnamese celebration of Ullambana, at Vietnam Quoc Tu Pagoda in Ho Chi Minh City. Thousands of people gathered for an evening prayer ceremony, filling the temple grounds with the light of around 2,000 lotus lanterns.

To all those celebrating Ullambana and Vu Lan, may this be a beautiful day of gratitude for those who came before us, care for those who are with us now, and compassion for all beings.

Address

149 Lockwood Road
Barre, MA
01005

Telephone

+19783552347

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Barre Center For Buddhist Studies posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share