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Our quest for spiritual wholeness all too often fails to include the self; we are eager to conclude that because it is “empty,” we can bypass dealing with the difficulties of everyday life that we imagine practice will enable us to escape. Taking life whole must begin with taking the self whole, fully accepting who and what we are. This retreat will explore what it means to practice with the self, explain why zazen is not a meditation technique, and work with two classic Zen koans.

Barry Magid is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in New York City. He received his M.D. from the New Jersey College of Medicine in 1975, and completed his psychoanalytic training at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health in 1981. In October 1996, Charlotte Joko Beck gave him permission to establish The Ordinary Mind Zendo as an affiliate of the San Diego Zen Center, and to serve as its Zen Teacher. He received Dharma Transmission from Joko in 1999. He is committed to the ongoing integration of the practices of psychodynamic psychotherapy and Zen. He is the author of “Ordinary Mind: Exploring the Common Ground of Zen and Psychoanalysis” (Wisdom, 2002), and “Ending the Pursuit of Happiness: A Zen Guide” (Wisdom, 2008).