Path Programs

To provide opportunities for deep engagement in a collaborative and supportive environment, the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies offers multi-month Path Programs that integrate the study and practice of the dharma with a consistent cohort of practitioners.

The intention is to create a space expansive enough for teachers and participants to engage in far-reaching explorations of classical and contemporary Buddhism — cultivating wisdom, deepening practice, and building a community grounded in Buddhadharma.

See the links below for further information on the individual programs and how to apply or register for a Path.

Please get in touch with us if you have any questions about these programs at contact@buddhistinquiry.org.

Upcoming Path Programs

February 28, 2025 - April 19, 2026

Nicola Redfern and Bart van Melik

Finding Freedom Together

A BCBS Insight Dialogue Path Program

In this program, we will draw upon the practice of Insight Dialogue to explore the liberating potential of the Four Noble Truths in an immediate and relational way. Insight Dialogue is a relational meditation practice for developing awareness and wisdom, designed to help us awaken together and integrate our understanding of Dharma teachings in a direct and immediate way.

April 4 - August 31, 2025

Lama Liz Monson

The Wild Edge of Love

Buddhist Rituals of Reconnection to Nature

In this five-month program, through the creation and enactment of time-honored Buddhist rituals of care and love, we will directly engage the healing power and potential of the troubling emotions many of us experience through daily exposure to the decline and destabilization of the natural world.

July 3, 2025 - June 22, 2026

Pilar Jennings

Love in Buddhism & Psychotherapy

A Contemplative and Clinical Exploration

This Path program will explore the complex nature and role of love as it is presented in Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapeutic theory and practice. For both clinicians and meditators, this course will offer a deepening understanding of the spiritual challenges posed by authentic love and efforts to cultivate it with fewer unconscious conditions.

November 14, 2025 - May 24, 2026

Kaira Jewel Lingo and Erin Selover

Living within Interbeing

Practical Nonviolence and Engaged Buddhism

In this course, we intend to explore how Engaged Buddhism and the Nonviolent Global Liberation framework can be expressed in daily life, individually and collectively, to help us respond and live meaningfully as peacemakers in a world where violence and war are increasing. Our study and practice will include the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh and other sacred activists and peacemakers.

Current Path Programs

November 1, 2024 - February 5, 2025

Application Closed

Chris Crotty

Heart of Refuge:
A Winter Immersion in the Triple Gem

Participants in Heart of Refuge will work closely with Chris Crotty, and with each other, to establish and maintain a container for exploring the dharma which integrates the support of community, the unfolding of self-sustained practice, and teacher guidance.

Past Path Programs

August 2023 - July 2024

Dawn Scott, Rhonda Magee, Bhikkhunī Dhammadinnā, and Bhikkhu Anālayo

Early Buddhist Meditation

This Path program was an in-depth study of meditation as it emerged in the early Buddhist discourses, extant in Pāli, and compared with their parallels in Chinese and other languages.

May 2023 - May 2024

Rhonda Magee

Mindfulness, Soulfulness, and Socially Engaged Practice

This Path Program explored mindfulness, soulfulness, and social engagement in the face of such challenges as climate distress, immigration and demographic changes, economic inequality, the increasing implications of extractive technology, and the increasing visibility of White supremacy-based ideology and politics.

May 2024 - March 2025

Lama John Makransky

Drawing on the Unconditional Love and Wisdom of Our Buddha Nature

This Path Program adapted the practice of cultivating buddha nature from Tibetan Buddhism, with assistance from modern psychology, to make it accessible for people of all backgrounds and faiths seeking a way to cultivate unconditional love and wisdom.

December 2022 - December 2023

Dr. Pilar Jennings

Buddhism and Psychotherapy: A Healing Partnership

This Path Program explored how the contrasting traditions of Buddhist psychology and Western psychotherapy approach the roots of personal and collective suffering and how their complementary, though divergent methods offer increased opportunities for healing when used in tandem.

November 2021 - October 2022

Lama Liz Monson

Writing Liberation: The Buddhist Practice of Spiritual Autobiography

This Path Program explored the writing of a Buddhist spiritual autobiography as a self-reflexive act through which the writer finds meaning in and metabolizes life events as transformative experiences along the Buddhist path to fulfilling one’s deepest human potential.

March 2024 - July 2024

Kaira Jewel Lingo, Deborah Eden Tull, and Konda Mason

Embodied Change-Making and Sacred Justice On Behalf of Life

This Path Program provided support and resources to change agents, community organizers, activists, as well as practitioners looking to engage more directly in justice work as spiritual practice during this time of accelerated change.

March 2022 - July 2022

Shaila Catherine

Cultivating Concentration and the Absorption States of Jhāna

This Path Program explored the benefits of deep samādhi, developing the skills that support the attainment of jhāna, and experiencing the powerful role that right concentration plays on the path of awakening.

March 2022 - July 2023

Dawn Scott, Jill Shepherd, William Edelglass, Nicola Redfern, Roxanne Dault and Vance Pryor

Exploring the Heart of Freedom

Jointly offered by BCBS and IMS, this Path Program explored how to cultivate our understanding of the core teachings of the Buddha, deepen our meditation practice, and help us to embody the dharma in spiritual friendship and community.

Deepening Practice,
Building Community.

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Located in Central Massachusetts