In-Person: Mahapajapati’s Celebration – A Half-Day Retreat For Those Who Identify On the Gender Spectrum as Women
with Wildecy de Fátima Jury and Gayah (Imani) Gillson
Saturday, August 12th, 2023 | 1:00pm – 5:30pm ET
In-Person Location: Balance Arts Center at 151 W 30th St. 3rd floor, New York, NY
“Where do I go when there’s no one to turn to,
Feel all alone, wondering why I am,
Where do I go when I need familiar,
Woman Hold My Hand”
-From “Mae Frances” by Sweet Honey In The Rock
Mahapajapati, the Buddha’s aunt, raised him after his mother passed away seven days after his birth. When Mahapajapati wanted to go into spiritual life, she was denied three times by the Buddha even though he intended to break the caste system. Mahapajapati didn’t give up. She put on a saffron robe, shaved her head, and walked 150 miles barefoot to where Buddha was residing. She took with her 500 unprotected and vulnerable women: widows, prostitutes, enslaved women, and many from harems, including the Buddha’s.
Mahapajapati held the hands of these women who may have felt angry, abandoned, resentful, and desperate, with a great amount of suffering during a time when many women were outcasts and left by their husbands who were enlisted or went into monastic life. Mahapajapati offered some of the widows a choice besides throwing themselves into the pyre when their husbands died.
Mahapajapati was known as an exceptional woman with a deep level of dignity, compassion, and wisdom. She was caring and nurturing and an archetype of caregivers, mothers, heroes, and leaders. She was a great Bodhisattva whose life is relatively unknown and little spoken about.
Many women today carry patterns that demonstrate Mahapajapati’s divine qualities. Yet, many also face challenges that Mahapajapati and those 500 women encountered 2600 years ago. If not in our day-to-day lives, perhaps these challenges are printed in our psyches and our relationships.
In this half-day retreat, we will:
-Celebrate Mahapajapati’s virtues, attributes, actions, and merits
-Reflect on her compassion and renunciations in order to cultivate her bodhisattva nature
-Contemplate Mahapajapati’s wisdom and how to apply it to our own lives to become a deeper knower of the Dharma
During this program, we will:
-Meditate, contemplate, and chant
-Dance and move as our body allows
-Enter dialogues and group sharings
-Collectively write a script and perform together.
Before registering, please ask yourself if you can commit to staying the entire time. Bring a journal if desired.
Registration:
Please register at the highest level that your generosity offers.
Explanations of levels follow below.
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.
Please contact [email protected] if you need assistance.
Registration Fees include Teacher Support
New York Insight Meditation Center has streamlined the registration fee levels. Members of our Circle of Friends are eligible to receive 20% off of the Sustaining Rate via a code provided in the email confirming membership, which you can enter after clicking the Sustaining Level registration.
*Benefactor Level: Supports NYI’s ability to offer the Subsidized Base.
**Sustaining Level: This level reflects the actual costs to support this program. Circle of Friends members eligible for 20% discount with code. Click here to join.
***Subsidized Base: Made possible by the generosity of Benefactor Level above and other donations to ensure participation by those requiring financial assistance.
If you have questions about your registration (cancellation policy, membership discount, email confirmation, etc.), please read our FAQs. If your question is not addressed in the FAQs, please email [email protected].
If you are unable to pay the Subsidized Base Fee, you can learn about volunteering to offer work exchange and letting us know how much you are able to pay for this program by emailing [email protected].
Please note that New York Insight records online programs. The recorded content may be discoverable should a legal matter arise.
By registering, I give New York Insight permission to use my text/video/audio for educational or other purposes for the duration of New York Insight activities going forward.
If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].
Teacher(s)
Wildecy de Fátima Jury
Wildecy de Fátima Jury has been formally practicing Theravada/Vipassana meditation since 2000. She graduated from the Dedicated Practitioner Program and the Community Dharma Leader Program at Spirit Rock, in California. She is a Dharmacharya Lay-Ordained Monastic Minister by the Venerables Pannavati and Pannadipa. She completed the Dharmapala Training with teachers Thanissara and Kittisaro and the Mindfulness Mentoring Training (MMT) with Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield. In 2024, she completed the Original Medicine Foundation and at the moment she is enrolled at the year-long In-Depth Original Medicine Program, both through Braided Wisdom.
She has offered classes and retreats at East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, Insight LA, Zen Center and University of Syracuse, at meditation centers in Brazil, Harlem Insight Community, Spirit Rock Meditation Center and New York Insight Meditation Center. At the moment Fátima is a resident teacher at NYIMC.
She has studied different spiritual practices and as a spiritual practitioner she has worked with many multicultural communities. She holds a BA in Psychology and Women’s Study and a Master in Social Work. She is certified in Aboriginal Focusing Oriented Therapy through the Justice Institute in Vancouver, BC.
Her intention is to promote the strengthening of sanghas and communities through the cultivation of compassion, unity and decolonization of oppressed and oppressive minds. She is an artist, a writer, and a poet who describes herself as a person within floating identities.
Gayah Imani Gillson
Gayah “Imani” Gillson is a Dharmacharya Lay-Ordained Monastic Minister, and a Theravadan teacher with Mahayana, Vajrayana, and Zen influences. She/They/Kin/Love graduated from a myriad of trainings from Spirit Rock.
Gayah loves sharing the Dharma by weaving the relationality of art, spirituality, and activism – and is informed by additional roots in intersectional spiritual/mysticism/wisdom practices such as earth-based indigenous ceremonies, orisha circles, soul-centered new-thought christianity, and transpersonal astrology.
They recently co-led a QTBIPOC Retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center. She has taught, collectively facilitated, and co-created retreats and workshops in the US and abroad, in Brazil. They currently co-facilitate a nightly Quan Yin Devotional Practice Chanting Circle.
At both the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, CA, and the Heartwood Refuge and Retreat Center in Hendersonville, NC, Gayah has taught her love for the embodiment of the sutras by using her theatrical skills to bring ancient texts to life.