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 if our relationships aren’t separate from our practice, but one of the places where awakening happens?Join Jacoby B...
08/26/2026

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

Happy National Dog Day from two beloved BCBS Dharma Dogs, Zephyr and Murphy. 🐾Zephyr often visits BCBS between retreats ...
08/26/2026

Happy National Dog Day from two beloved BCBS Dharma Dogs, Zephyr and Murphy. 🐾

Zephyr often visits BCBS between retreats with his mom, Chef Tarrah. He’s endlessly playful, loves a good game of fetch, and always brings more joy to campus.

Murphy spent many happy days at BCBS too. He passed away almost two years ago, and we still miss him very much.

There’s an old Zen koan that asks, “Does a dog have Buddha-nature?” We’ll leave that one to the Zen masters. But the dogs in our lives definitely seem to know something about loving-kindness, compassion, joy, and ease.

Today we’re celebrating Zephyr and Murphy, and all the Dharma Dogs in our lives who remind us to love with our whole hearts, live fully in each moment, rest when we need it, and always find time for play. ❤️🐾

What are the small moments that make BCBS feel like BCBS?A quiet lunch beneath the trees. Chipmunks scrambling along the...
08/25/2026

What are the small moments that make BCBS feel like BCBS?

A quiet lunch beneath the trees. Chipmunks scrambling along the stone walls. Baby deer and foxes appearing outside the window. Laughter with colleagues. A familiar voice on Zoom.

While Melissa was away on silent retreat, the BCBS staff stepped in for her monthly letter and shared some of the small moments we love most about this place.

From the wildlife and the beauty of the land to the friendships and everyday moments we share, these are some of the things that make BCBS feel like home.

❤️ Read “A Letter from the BCBS Staff: The Small Moments We Love.”

https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/blog/a-letter-from-the-bcbs-staff-the-small-moments-we-love/

What comes alive when we learn Pāli through the suttas themselves?In "Introduction to Pāli for Reading Suttas: A Text-Ba...
08/25/2026

What comes alive when we learn Pāli through the suttas themselves?

In "Introduction to Pāli for Reading Suttas: A Text-Based Study of the Buddha’s Words," Oliver Tanner offers a supportive introduction to Pāli through selected passages from the Early Discourses.

Rather than starting with abstract grammar, this 12-week online course introduces vocabulary, recurring stock phrases, translation choices, and key grammatical points as they appear in the texts. Participants will explore how meaning emerges through language and context, while beginning to read foundational Pāli passages with more confidence and understanding.

Introduction to Pāli for Reading Suttas
with Oliver Tanner
Online | Wednesdays, Sep 2 – Nov 18, 2026
7:00–8:30 PM ET
Limited to 30 participants

A note for those who took this course earlier this year: This offering will use different passages from the suttas, so you are welcome to take the course again.

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

How do we become a healing presence for others without losing touch with our own ground of safety, compassion, and inner...
08/21/2026

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

How can the Four Noble Truths become a living path for meeting our lives with more harmony, steadiness, and resilience?I...
08/19/2026

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 free ourselves from the patterns that keep us tangled?In this five-night residential retreat, Ayya Santussika ...
08/18/2026

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...
08/17/2026

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

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

Category