In-Person and Online: Queer Eye(s) on the Precepts
with Leslie Booker, Jay Michaelson, and Jacoby Ballard
Four Tuesday evening classes plus a Saturday half-day retreat
Evening Classes: Tuesdays, February 17th, March 17th, May 12th, and June 16th 2026 | 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET
Half-Day Retreat: Saturday, April 18th, 2026 | 10:00am – 1:00pm ET
Sign up for the full course, a single session, or anything in-between!
In-Person Location: New York Insight at 115 West 29th Street, 12th Floor
The Five Precepts form the foundation of Buddhist ethics in the insight tradition. Yet for queer people in 21st century America, they can also be a little…. fraught. What counts as “sexual misconduct” (if that’s even the right term to use)? Do all drugs “lead to confusion”? What counts as “harsh language” in a culture that is often serving tea?
In this 5 month series, we’re going to take an honest, deep, and participatory dive into the precepts. We’ll explore where they serve us, and where they may not. We’ll work with the complexities that come with any 2500-year-old tradition, particularly one which often promotes monasticism as an ideal.
There will be a ½ day retreat mid way through the course, and we’ll also have the opportunity to meet in small groups and with a teacher in between the monthly sessions for support to deepen our personal understanding and to cultivate spiritual friendships.
Ultimately, we hope to arrive at multiple ways of navigating ethics and community together. (And since we take an expansive definition of queerness, you’re welcome to join if that word speaks to your experience.)
Descriptions for each class session appear below. You are welcome to sign up for the full course, or for individual sessions.
Class 1 – Protecting Life (Tuesday, Feb. 17, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
Beyond “not killing”, what might it look like to protect life and cultivate non-harming (including non-self-harm) in our violent, oppressive and extractive society?
Class 2 – Cultivating Generosity (Tuesday, March 17, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
How can queer communities cultivate generosity, mutual aid, and collective care in a society built on commerce (and theft)? How might this be expressed in creating cultures of belonging?
Class 3/Half-Day Retreat – The One about Sex (Saturday, April. 18, 10:00am – 1:00pm ET)
What does it mean to engage in sexual relationships ethically? How do queer relationship structures and practices – including polyamory, kink, open relationships, asexuality, and periods of celibacy – fit within the precepts? How do we lovingly navigate relationships with exes and former lovers in often tightly-knit communities?
Class 4 – Skillful Speech (Tuesday, May 12, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
What does “right speech” look like in communities where accountability is important, in which conflict is not abuse, and yet where harm can still be done by harmful or hurtful speech, by gossip, or even by idle chatter?
Class 5 – What is an intoxicant? (Tuesday, June 16, 6:30pm – 8:30pm ET)
Queer people have a wide variety of relationships (often fraught) toward substances. What might healthy relationships to substances look like? What forms of substance use block the heart from belonging to one other, and what might empower it? Other than substances, what intoxicants might we encounter in our lives (e.g. dating apps, social media)?
In-Person Registration:
Please register below for the full course or individual sessions. If you are able, registering at the “Supporter” level enables others to attend at the “Subsidized” level. Thank you for your generosity! (Please note that the registration price includes a base level of teacher support, and all additional contributions will go to the class’s teachers.)
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Online (Zoom) Registration:
If you are registering via a mobile device such as a phone or tablet, you can scroll right and left and up and down within the below form if it is partially obscured or cut off.
CLICK HERE to open the registration form in a new browser window.
Volunteering
All of our programs rely on volunteers to support our teachers and staff with various tasks and responsibilities. Volunteering allows you to participate in our programs at no cost. To inquire about volunteering opportunities, please fill out our inquiry form, and we will get back to you as soon as possible.
Teacher(s)
Jay Michaelson
In the dharma world, Jay is authorized to teach in the Theravadan Buddhist lineage of Ayya Khema, and was a teacher and editor at Ten Percent Happier for five years. He has held leadership roles at the New York Insight Meditation Center and the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies, and has sat many long retreats in the US and Nepal.
Outside the dharma world, Jay is a journalist, a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School, a field scholar at the Emory Center for Psychedelics and Spirituality, a nondenominational rabbi, and the author of ten books. He worked as an LGBTQ activist for ten years.
Leslie Booker
Booker is a heart – centered, spirit – driven activist and meditation teacher committed to creating a culture of belonging through her teaching and writing. She completed Spirit Rock’s 4 year Retreat Teacher Training in 2020, and shared the practices of yoga and mindfulness with New York City’s most vulnerable populations for over a decade. Booker has co – authored and contributed to several publications including the trauma – informed anthology Practicing Liberation and its accompanying workbook, for folks working towards social justice. She is a co-founder of the Yoga Service Council at Omega Institute and the Meditation Working Group of Occupy Wall Street. In 2020 she was invited to be a Sojourner Truth Leadership Fellow through Auburn Seminary and was voted by her peers as one of the 12 Powerful Women in the Mindfulness Movement.
Booker moved to Philadelphia in August of 2020 to vote in a swing state, and currently serves as the Guiding Teacher of New York Insight.
W | LeslieBooker.com
IG | TheRealBookerProject
FB | LeslieBooker
Jacoby Ballard
Jacoby Ballard is a social justice educator, poet, yoga teacher, and papa. With 25 years of experience at the nexus of justice, embodiment, and contemplative practice, he leads workshops, retreats, and has been an artist-in-residence on dozens of college campuses. He is a co-founder of Third Root Community Health Center which operated in Brooklyn for 13 years, currently serves as the Board President of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and is the author of A Queer Dharma: Yoga and Meditations for Liberation. He teaches a virtual queer and trans-centered prenatal and postnatal yoga class that gives parents and families the tools and community that they need to be grounded, creative, and resourced. Jacoby has taught Queer & Trans Yoga since 2006, and regularly offers retreats for queer communities. His current book project focuses on the relationship and tension between internal practices of forgiveness and external calls for accountability, and the internal work we must do to grow a large, cohesive, connected, powerful movement in these times. Find more at jacobyballard.net or follow him on Instagram.