Winter Practice Period 2026
Compassion as the Basis for Meditation
with Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi
Sunday, January 18th, 2026
9:00 am - 1:00 pm ET (New York)
Receiving care by constructing a relational field in which one is held in the unconditional love of caring connection, benefactors, and/or ancestors…serves as an outer secure base that evokes the inner secure base of caring capacities that the practitioner needs to extend care reliably to others.
- Lama John Makransky
Mondo Zen is a the marriage of wisdom and compassion. In its contemporary form, compassion arises naturally from emptiness meditation. In contrast, Theravada and Vajrayana Buddhism have developed extensive practices to proactively develop and encourage compassion. Cosmopolitan Zen offers a blend of practices that includes Mondo Zen, Rinzai Zen and Soto Zen with modern developmental psychology and scientific perspectives. Lama John Makransky, a graduate professor at Boston College, has developed a robust training called Sustainable Compassion Practice, which is based in science and Vajrayana teachings. This half-day retreat will introduce the full set of practices in a hands-on, retreat-like setting. Ample time will be devoted to discussion.
This Retreat will:
Introduce the basic philosophical and scientific basis of establishing a compassion practice.
Teach the three phases of compassion meditation:
Receptive Mode - Helps us find new access to hidden qualities of love, compassion, inner peace and wisdom.
Deepening Mode - Helps us settle into the source of those qualities in the depth of our awareness with a deepening relaxation, inner acceptance and spaciousness that is healing and freeing in mind and body.
Inclusive Mode - Helps us come from that depth to respond to others in their deep dignity and potential with more replenishing, unconditional and expansive powers of care, compassion and wisdom in action.
Lead participants through six meditations across the three modes of compassion.
Prepare participants for working with emotional awareness koans.
This half-day retreat offers a series of hands-on teachings designed to introduce participants to the full range of meditation practices developed by Lama John Makransky to create a compassionate field of care. This retreat is designed as the hands-on practice for the dharma reflections offered during Winter Practice Period 26 Saturday mornings.
About Ekai Joel Kreisberg Roshi
Ekai continues to evolve his practice to incorporate a variety of Buddhist wisdom in his teachings. His commitment to compassionate action keeps offering endless opportunity for learning and growth.
“This pattern of practice mirrors both the basic framework for cultivating all-inclusive love and compassion found in many of the world’s spiritual traditions and the kinds of patterns of human emotional development that are described in attachment and social baseline theories.”