Workshops & seminars

If you’re looking for something spiritual but not religious, you've come to the right place.

Stephen Schettini teaches under the banner of Quiet Mind Seminars. We hold eight-week workshops in the Montreal area every fall, winter and spring, and in the summer of 2010 completed our first four-week summer program. They’re advertised locally and offered to the general public. Private workshops, seminars and talks are available on demand. To enquire, please contact us.

Mindful reflection

The basis of all Quiet Mind instruction is mindful reflection, a form of mind-training that combines quiet focus with the thoughtfulness of classical Buddhism. The teachings of the Theravada, the older and more rooted form of Buddhism, founds its practice on mindfulness: non-judgemental, focussed attention to body and mind, in seclusion. The Mahayana teachings emphasise a broader Buddhist path of social and personal relationships, in which thoughtfulness and empathy play an important role.

The language at Quiet Mind Seminars is entirely non-doctrinal — there’s no chanting and no religious undertone. We neither belong to any Buddhist group, nor pretend to be one. If you’re looking for something spiritual but not religious, you've come to the right place.

For us, ‘spirituality’ has nothing to do with escaping the material world. Rather, it’s an integration of body and mind — a facing up to reality and discovering life as a whole. Nor is this a theory; it’s a practice – a way of ensuring that the good sense you already possess doesn’t remain stranded in your head but is integrated into your whole way of life. There’s no magic; there is work.

Background

I studied for eight years under Tibetan Gelugpa teachers, and learned that meditation takes two forms: concentration and reflection. The first develops attention: the muscle of the mind; the second is the entire content of your thinking mind. It both describes and reflects back to you the way you see the world, and your place in it. Normally known as the inner dialogue, it is characterized by cyclic patterns of behavior that bind us to limited ways of seeing. Refining the reflective mind loosens your habits and opens your eyes to more possibilities of who you are and how you can be.

The joint practice of mindfulness and reflection in time delivers insight and strengthens your intuitive senses.

For more, visit www.thequietmind.org.