Southern Dharma

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Southern Dharma Retreat Center offers rustic and intimate retreats, grounded in Buddhist traditions.

10/15/2026

Please join us in welcoming Darci to the Southern Dharma team!

Darci brings a lifelong love of food, creativity, and community to the Mountain. Her culinary journey began as a humble burger flipper and has since taken her through farmers markets, catering and personal chef work, fine dining, and food relief operations in Marshall following Hurricane Helene.

In the kitchen, Darci is passionate about creating healthy, nourishing meals inspired by local and seasonal ingredients and culinary traditions from around the world. For her, food is a multisensory experience—one that can nourish both body and spirit.

Darci has called Western North Carolina home since 1995, where she has homesteaded, raised and homeschooled two children, and built a life close to the land. Outside the kitchen, she’s a lifelong musician who sings and plays “various things with strings, with varying degrees of success.” She also enjoys running, yoga, beadwork, and making wonderfully weird sculptures out of whatever happens to be at hand.

We’re so glad to have Darci bringing her creativity, care, and love of nourishing others to Southern Dharma.

10/12/2026

Community can inspire and sustain our Dharma practice. Here are just a handful of Buddhist-related events happening around our region that may be of interest to the Southern Dharma intersangha.

Know of an upcoming Dharma event? Feel free to share it in the comments.

10/09/2026

The jhānas are progressively subtle states of meditative absorption that can deepen concentration and support insight.

Curious about the jhānas? Mary Aubry will lead Jhānas, Metta, and Emptiness, December 3–13 at Southern Dharma. There is currently space available for those who would like to join.

Visit the retreat calendar on our website for details and registration.

10/05/2026

On World Teachers’ Day, we offer gratitude for the teachers who have helped illuminate the dharma path—those who have shared wisdom, asked important questions, offered encouragement, and helped us see more clearly.

And sometimes our teachers are unexpected—a difficult experience, a community, a moment of silence, or a moment shared with a young deer.

Today, we offer special gratitude to the teachers who have shared their wisdom and practice with the Southern Dharma community—and to all the teachers we encounter along the way.

Is there a teacher who has influenced your life or practice? We invite you to honor them in the comments.

10/01/2026

Tārā is often called “She Who Liberates.”

One of the most beloved female figures in Buddhism, Tārā is a powerful symbol of compassion that moves into action. In many images, she sits with one leg extended, poised to rise—a reminder that awakening is not separate from our willingness to respond to the suffering of the world.

Tārā appears in many forms. Green Tārā is often associated with courageous, active compassion, while White Tārā is associated with healing, serenity, and longevity.

Her presence invites us to consider: How might we meet the world with both a steady heart and a readiness to act?

This October, Lisa Ernst will draw inspiration from Tārā, Kwan Yin, and the wise women of the early Buddhist traditions during Awakening the Feminine Buddha: From Tārā and Kwan Yin to Our Own Embodied Wisdom, October 13–18 at Southern Dharma.

Learn more and register on our website.

09/29/2026

David McKay offers this notion: people often come to spiritual practice because, in some way, their life isn’t working. They may feel stuck in familiar patterns or out of alignment with themselves and wonder: "Is there a better way?"

Through Dharma practice, we learn to pay attention—to notice how the mind operates, see more clearly, and begin to let go of the patterns that contribute to suffering. Over time, practice can help us cultivate greater self-compassion, clarity, and skill in navigating life, even as life remains imperfect and challenging.

If you’d like to explore this more, David is offering a retreat at Southern Dharma November 11–15. Visit our website for details and registration. There is currently space available.

09/22/2026

How do we meet our own suffering and the suffering of the world?

The Dharma invites us to investigate this question—not by turning away from suffering, but by learning to meet it with awareness, compassion, and wisdom.

Peace is something we can practice. In the way we meet ourselves. In the way we listen to one another. In how we respond to difficulty, conflict, and uncertainty.

On this International Day of Peace, we’re reminded that creating a more peaceful world is connected to how we show up within it.

And we practice finding peace, one moment at a time.

09/16/2026

How do our conscious and unconscious patterns shape our lives—and the world around us?

This poem, often shared in Buddhist contexts, offers one way of understanding the chain between thought, action, habit, and who we become.

This fall, Rev. Teijo Munnich and Meredith McIntosh invite us to explore our patterns through the body in Zen and the Undoing of Doing: A Body/Mind Retreat November 3-8.

Even in meditation, we may be unaware of habitual ways we hold, move, and use our bodies. Drawing from the teachings of Zen Master Dogen and the embodied awareness of the Alexander Technique, this retreat will explore how greater awareness can open possibilities for ease, flexibility, and responsiveness in both body and mind.

Visit SouthernDharma.org for details and registration.

09/11/2026

Before each staff meeting at Southern Dharma, we’re invited to recite the Samu Gatha.

Samu is a Zen term for work as practice—an invitation to bring the same awareness and intention we cultivate in meditation to the everyday work before us.

Gatha refers to a short verse or teaching that helps bring mindfulness and intention to an activity.

At Southern Dharma, practice doesn’t end when we leave the meditation cushion. Cooking a meal, caring for the retreat center, tending the grounds, responding to your questions—all of it can become part of Dharma practice.

Is there a prayer or mantra that you use every day to center and sustain your practice in and throughout "real world" experiences?

09/08/2026

Join us in welcoming Lauren, our new Retreat Manager!

Lauren has studied Buddhism and meditation since 2018, primarily through the Won Buddhist tradition. Her background also includes teaching yoga, Reiki, and sound healing, with an approach grounded in presence, compassion, and honoring each person’s unique experience.

She’s excited to continue learning from the many teachers and lineages that come through Southern Dharma—and to connect with our retreat community.
Outside of work, Lauren enjoys exploring the mountains, thrifting for vintage treasures, practicing yoga and meditation, and spending time with her cat.

Please join us in giving Lauren a warm welcome!

Address

1661 West Road
Hot Springs, NC
28743

Telephone

(828) 622-7112

Website

http://www.southerndharma.org/

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