Welcome to The Mountain Hermitage
OFFERING BUDDHIST RETREATS IN TAOS, NEW MEXICO
The Mountain Hermitage is dedicated to the inner cultivation and outer manifestation of concentration, wisdom, lovingkindness, compassion, and peace. This home for long-term spiritual practice, grounded in the principles of Theravada Buddhism, is based in the quiet and beautiful mountain area of Taos, New Mexico.
Many Mountain Hermitage retreats are for experienced Dharma practitioners; however, the Hermitage is now offering some week-long retreats open to both beginning and experienced students. All retreats are held in appropriate rented places in and around Taos. The small group size at Hermitage retreats (usually a maximum of 18 students) helps create a more intimate experience and easier access to teachers.
The Mountain Hermitage extends a special welcome and has established a scholarship fund to support Buddhist monks and nuns and lay Dharma teachers, as well as multi-cultural practitioners and other Dharma students who without scholarship aid would not be able to attend Hermitage retreats.
All who come to practice at The Mountain Hermitage will be honored and supported in their quest to awaken to the deepest truths and to manifest these truths in their daily lives.
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Every month we add a new Dharma article to the Reflections on Practice page. Sign up for our newsletter if you’d like to receive these insights by email
Latest News, Dharma Talks, and Reflections on Practice
On Writing Practice & the Separate Self
Perhaps the most striking thing about doing writing practice – in other words, story-telling – in the context of a meditation retreat is the bearing it has on the understanding of ‘no-self’: the lack of a separate self, a central doctrine of Buddhism. The reason being...
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Reflection on Self-worth…
In his book The Art of Happiness and often in his teachings, His Holiness the Dalai Lama likes to point out that an often-overlooked source of happiness and resilience is a sense of self-worth. When I share this with Dharma students, they often draw a blank: What does...
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Of Greatest Value…
As our beautiful home planet revolves & we turn again toward the light, the New Year often inspires reflection on what has taken place, changed and passed… in our personal life, our community, our country and in the world at large. We might note how, as life...
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Hermitage Retreat Cook Amy Gates Shares Tasty Winter Recipes
We are delighted to welcome our new Mountain Hermitage retreat cook Amy Gates by sharing a couple of her excellent healthy recipes for the winter season. Amy traveled here last summer from her home in the Bay Area to cook for the Hermitage’s 5-week retreat with...
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A Deeper Sense of Happiness…
During the Buddha’s time, a group of monks happened upon one of their fellow monastics in the forest, the Venerable Bhaddiya (Ud 2.10). “Ah, what bliss, ah, what bliss…,” they heard him muttering to himself. The monks were worried that Bhaddiya felt disheartened with...
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Pure, clear and calm….Insights into Concentration Practice from Bhikku Bodhi & Marcia Rose
“The commentaries define samadhi as the centering of the mind and mental factors rightly and evenly on an object. Samadhi, as wholesome concentration, collects together the ordinarily dispersed and dissipated stream of mental states to induce an inner...
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