Reaching Out and Connecting
2024-10-06 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
When things are difficult, it is all too easy to retreat into our own small worlds and lose connection with the bigger picture. Buddhist psychology suggests that as life takes its toll on us, we tend to reduce our personal spheres. We trap ourselves in loops of thought and behaviour. These can be very self-destructive and addictive, but breaking the cycles is not easy as they have been created over time and feel familiar and often (but not always) comforting. On the other hand, when we find the courage to move on, life becomes richer. Moving on is about connection. Connection to the world, ourselves and our environment. It can take many forms, but ultimately it involves trusting that the connection is worth making and allowing ourselves to be embraced by the reality that surrounds us.

Equanimity and Compassion for Precarious Times
2024-11-03 10:00 - 11:00
Fresh “Lev” White is a love and compassion activist. He offers mindfulness, mediation, and diversity trainings as tools for shifting towards more authentic, conscious, and passionate living. He teaches and writes about how unconditional love and self-compassion are the ultimate gateways to honoring and understanding others; thus, healing our communities and our planet.
Read more about Fresh on our Fresh “Lev” White teacher page.

December 2024 BRN Academy Teaching - Great Compassion
2024-12-01 10:00 - 11:00
Opportunity!
MBAR (Mindfulness Based Addiction Recovery) Course
December 9, 2024 – January 4, 2025

28 days of support during xmas and new year – one 15 minute coaching video sent a day – and meet Vimalasara on a webinar if you have extra time to support your recovery

Special Price for BRN ($90)

www.eventbrite.com/e/906074642647/?discount=VSMailingList

Teacher Bio
Vimalasara (Valerie) Mason-John was the co-founder and guiding teacher of Healing and Insight, an online faculty that explored the sharp edges of suffering. Award-winning author of 11 books, they are the co-founder and co-author of Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction, with 8 step meetings in 3 continents. This year their new book a First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviours was published. They are one of the founding facilitators of Dr Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry. They live on the unceded territory of Kanata.

Mature Recovery: Going Beyond the Self with Anshin Devin Ashwood
2025-01-05 10:00 - 11:00

Meeting the moment with a Clear Heart with Carol Cano
2025-02-02 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Meeting the moment of high stress with a clear heart involves embracing the challenge with a sense of calm and purpose. It’s about grounding yourself in the present, acknowledging the pressure without letting it overwhelm you. A clear heart means letting go of unnecessary tension, judgment, or fear, and instead responding with clarity, focus, and compassion. It’s the ability to breathe deeply, find inner strength, and choose the most thoughtful and constructive course of action. In these moments, your heart remains steady, and you allow yourself to move through the stress with grace and resilience, knowing that the situation is temporary and that you have the tools to navigate it effectively.
“Buddhadasa Bhikkhu reminds us that Dhamma is always available to us, in every moment. It is not an external concept, but an inner experience that we can touch in our daily lives.”

How Buddhist Wisdom Helps Us Stay in Recovery - March Teaching with Walt Opie
2025-03-02 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
The first two path factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, namely Right View and Right Intention, combine to be the wisdom factors. When we understand and develop these to a certain point, we start to see how they can help aim us in the right direction and guide our thinking. This leads to healthier, more wholesome actions and habits, and it can motivate us to really want to stay in recovery from addictions. We start to see more clearly the ways we can reduce suffering in our lives.

Returning to Our Luminosity: The Aggañña Sutta & Breaking Free from Binding Ways
2025-04-06 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Meditation and Dharma Talk with time for Q & A
The Aggañña Sutta offers a striking lens through which we can understand how systems of power, craving, and division take root—both in the world and within ourselves. This teaching traces the movement from a time of luminosity and ease into a world shaped by grasping, hierarchy, and suffering. How does this sutta help us better understand the forces of capitalism, oppression, and instability that reinforce patterns of craving? And more importantly, how can we break free from the binding ways that keep us caught in cycles of suffering? Through this teaching, we will examine how recognizing the constructed nature of the world and our conditioned responses allows us to loosen the grip of craving and move toward a truer liberation.

Who Is Myself?
2025-05-04 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Exploring identity in the context of Dharma and recovery.

Meditation and Dharma Talk with time for Q & A

Building a Foundation for Freedom
2025-06-01 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
When we are caught in addictive behaviors, we’re often acting from habits that have been strengthened over the years, and which can be difficult to break. The Buddha’s teaching on liberation and awakening, the Eightfold Path, also offers us a path to freedom from these habits. When we intentionally use this path as a roadmap for how we move through the world, we are building a foundation that is strong and serves us in all aspects of our lives. It’s a foundation that offers freedom from addiction.

Recovering the Heart: Loving Kindness as a Path to Addiction Recovery
2025-07-06 10:00 - 11:00
Mikey Livid (he/him) is a Buddhist teacher, author, and counselor. Mikey is the guiding teacher at Wild Heart Meditation Center in Nashville, TN. He regularly brings Buddhist meditation classes into addiction treatment centers, prisons, and a variety of settings. Mikey is the author of his upcoming book Blood, Guts, & Buddhism: The Dharma of Horror Movies, Heartbreak, and The Nature of Suffering. Mikey is the co-host of the punk rock, mental health podcast Punks On Hope and is the singer for the punk band The Rip Taylors.
Mikey is a Buddhist teacher who has been empowered to teach in both Theravada and Mahayana traditions through the authorization of Ven. Pannavati Bhikkhuni and Ven. Pannadipa Bhikkhu. Mikey also holds a master’s degree in Counseling Psychology. He integrates these two worlds: the old school Buddhist teachings with new school psychology, in a way to help individuals free themselves from suffering of all kinds.
LINKS:
https://linktr.ee/MikeyLivid
https://www.wildheartmeditationcenter.org

Building a RAFT: From Addicted Doctor to Freedom
2025-08-03 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
BRN Academy with Dr. Cathryn Jacob – August 3, 2025

Cathryn Jacob is a retired medical doctor who has dedicated herself to the study and teachings of Secular Dharma and early Buddhist teachings. Her recovery journey began with the 12-step program, where she became both a sponsor and teacher, but challenges with the concept of a higher power led her to explore alternative paths. This exploration brought her to the transformative teachings of the dharma, eventually focusing on Secular Buddhism through the works of Stephen and Martine Batchelor.

Cathryn has completed advanced studies in Secular Dharma, including a year-long course at Bodhi College and is currently attending the Committed Practitioner Programme. She gained deep insights and practical tools for integrating the dharma into daily life. She is also a meditation instructor and founder of RAFT to Freedom, a secular dharma-inspired addiction recovery group that offers a structured program combining Buddhist teachings and practical skills for overcoming addiction. For more information, please visit raft2freedom.org.

Beyond her dharma work, Cathryn enjoys creative pursuits such as sewing, ceramics, art, and watercolour painting, which bring balance and joy to her life.

The Buddha's Intoxications
2025-09-07 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
In this session, Vince explored Gotama’s early life and his own “intoxications” with youth, health, and life itself, drawing parallels to the universal human journey of recognising the patterns that hold us back and embarking on a noble search for freedom. The talk is based on chapter two of the RAFT to Freedom Workbook that is being made available freely online at RAFT2Freedom.org. Feel free to sign-up for the RAFT to Freedom newsletter on the website.

About VinceHaving drunk alcoholically from the age of 14 until 39, Vince Cullen sat in his kitchen and poured a glass of lager. He made a promise to himself that this would be his last drink… ever. That was 25-years ago. Since then, he has been associated with Wat Thamkrabok, the famous detox monastery in Thailand and Buddhist-oriented drug and alcohol recovery.

Vince founded and has facilitated Fifth Precept Sangha meditation-for-awakening Sit-and-Share meetings in England, Scotland, Ireland, India, Nepal, Thailand and the USA as part of his ongoing teaching of Hungry Ghost Retreats. He is a board member of the Buddhist Recovery Network and a keynote speaker at Buddhist Recovery Summits.

Starting Over: Recovery and the Courage to Begin Again
2025-10-05 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Recovery is not about perfection. It’s about beginning again—again and again. In this month’s BRN Academy talk Silasiri explores the courage and compassion it takes to let go of the past, return to the present, and choose a new way forward. The Buddha’s teachings remind us that each moment is a fresh start. With beginner’s mind and self-compassion, we can create a healing environment that supports growth, resilience, and recovery.

Silasiri engaged with the Buddhist Recovery Network in early 2018 as it launched its maiden year of Academy talks, and greatly enjoyed co-hosting this monthly program through 2021. By way of meditation, Dharma study and a beautiful and supportive Sangha, she moved into recovery from childhood trauma, substance abuse, and self-loathing, and continues to deepen her understanding of compassionate healing as taught by the Buddha and shared by the recovery community. A long-time peace and environmental activist and animal lover, Silasiri was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Movement in May 2021. She’s an accounting manager for nonprofits, and currently serves as the BRN’s Board President and Interim Treasurer. She supports Dharma study, anti-racism work, and Eco-Sattva training within her Sangha and in the community at large, and embraces the dana economy for all the freely given resources that it circulates among us.

Angulimala and the Wreckage of our Past
2025-11-02 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Many of us come into recovery, change our lives completely, and then get utterly surprised and disappointed when the closest ones around us still don’t trust or believe us. Some of us have to gruelingly trudge through legal repercussions for many years after committing to recovery. These issues and an infinite of other problems commonly plague our lot, and in the 12 Step world, this is referred to as the “wreckage of our past”.
Thankfully, we have some beautiful and helpful Buddhist teachings to fall back on, including the story of the notorious Angulimala, a serial killer that almost killed The Buddha’s mother!
Let’s gather together and discuss what we, even the WORST of us, can do about this “wreckage of our past”.

Gary Sanders
Gary Sanders is a seasoned meditation teacher and dharma guide based in Los Angeles, CA. As the founder of SCV Mindfulness, Heavy Metta PDX, Boundless Heart, and others, Gary has dedicated himself to sharing the transformative power of Buddhist practices with diverse communities across North America.

Authorized to lead Buddhist meditation and dharma groups at Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, Gary’s teaching journey expanded when he joined the staff at Portland Insight Meditation Community. There, he was honored to be empowered to teach in the lineage of the revered Ruth Denison.
Gary’s approach is deeply rooted in the heart-based practices of the Buddha, which he explores and shares through daylong retreats, workshops, and online sessions. His current practice focuses on Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation, which he has skillfully integrated into a unique blend of mindfulness techniques.
As a frequent contributor to The Tattooed Buddha community, Buddhist Recovery Network, and other communities and platforms, Gary creates meditation videos that make Buddhist teachings accessible and relevant to contemporary practitioners. His compassionate guidance and innovative teaching methods have touched the lives of students across the globe, helping them cultivate mindfulness, wisdom, and inner peace.

Liberate Yourself from Addictive Behaviors
2025-12-07 10:00 - 11:00 | BRN Academy
Meditation and Dharma Talk with time for Q & AJoin the Teaching https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED] Meeting ID: 875 7920 2512 and passcode: [REDACTED]
Signup and Support herehttps://givebutter.com/DEC25More About the Teaching

Are you navigating the challenges of recovery, seeking a deeper, more integrated path to healing? Join Vimalasara, co-founder of the groundbreaking 8 Step Recovery and Mindfulness Based Recovery Program, for a transformative session.
On Sunday the 7th, we will explore the 7 Awakening Factors—a core Buddhist teaching that provides a practical and profound roadmap to freedom. This Academy is designed for anyone who wants to:

Find a sustainable way out of addictive and compulsive cycles.
Strengthen their current recovery journey.
Learn how to seamlessly integrate powerful Buddhist principles into a recovery program.

Dr. Vimalasara) Mason-JoY M.A (hon.doc)
has been hailed by Dr. Ken Hardy as “one of the premier social, cultural, and psychological healers of our time.” They are an award-winning author of 11 books : Detox Your Heart, Meditations for Emotional Trauma, and Eight Step Recovery: Using The Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction. This year their new book a First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviours was published. They are one of the founding facilitators of Dr Gabor Mate’s Compassionate Inquiry. They live on the unceded territory of Kanata.They are a co-founder of the secular 8-week course Mindfulness-Based Addiction Recovery MBAR and is one of the new leading African Descent Voices in the field of Mindfulness Approaches for Addiction. They are one of the founders for Freedom Together, a mindfulness course by BIPOC for BIPOC. They live in BC. www.valeriemason-john.com

Remembering to Remember. What would be wise for us to remember?
2026-01-04 10:00 - 11:00
As we enter a new (Gregorian) new year (also, a new day, moment, hour) we can take a moment to reflect on this practice of remembering to remember as well as our practice of recovery and how they support one another.
What would be wise for us to remember? In this time together, we will talk about remembering what is wholesome/skillful and wise according to the Buddhist suttas and how that can support us in our recovery.
Links

Connect with Dalila on her website
Dana (Donations)
Find Her: The Power of Connection – January 2026
Listen: Cosmic Clowns Podcast
Read: Nature Needs a New Pronoun

Living in Vow - BRN Academy with Ryuko Laura Burges
2026-02-01 10:00 - 11:00
Living in Vow

Ryuko Laura Burges is a lay entrusted dharma teacher in the Soto Zen tradition, teaching and leading retreats in California. She received monastic training at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. A longtime educator, Laura co-founded the Meditation in Recovery programs at San Francisco Zen Center. She has been featured in Tricycle Magazine and Buddhadharma and her books include Wisdom Stories of Tibet (2025), the first volume in a three-part series that will also feature wisdom stories from India and Japan. Other titles from Shambhala Publications are The Zen Way of Recovery: An Illuminated Path Out of the Darkness of Addiction (2023), Zen for Kids (2023), and Buddhist Stories for Kids (2022).

Photo Credit: Lauren Rudser

Happiness Follows Like a Never-Departing Shadow
2026-03-01 10:00 - 11:00
More About George

George Beecher first encountered the Dharma in 2010 when he read Thich Nhat Hanh and Dr. Lilian Cheung’s book Savor, about mindful eating and the Buddhist path. Over the next 11 months, George lost 110 pounds and found a passion for the Dharma. This passion for sharing the Dharma led him to found his own local meditation group, Two Hands Sangha, in 2012, and in the Mindful Eating and Living Sangha (M.E.A.L.S.) program in 2014. He has since launched and led various in-person and online Buddhist communities including over 30 Recovery Dharma chapters. He served the Recovery Dharma community at both the local and national level as it formed and grew to over 500 chapters worldwide.
In 2018, he graduated as a Certified Facilitator through the original Against The Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, taught by Vinny Ferraro and JoAnna Hardy, and in June 2022 he completed the Dharmacharya training program with Venerables Pannavati and Pannadipa of Heartwood Refuge and ordained as Reverend George Beecher (Dharmacharya Khantu-Abatti).
In 2020, he started the first ever Recovery Dharma meeting in virtual reality and enjoys teaching the Dharma and leading meditations twice a week with the MindfulnessVR Community.
Read more about Rev. George Beecher and Listen to his Podcast : Teas with Mara Here
https://bio.reverendgeorgebeecher.com/

More About the Academy
The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.

Transforming the Heart
2026-04-05 10:00 - 11:00
April BRN Academy
SUNDAY April 5, 2026 at 10AM PST
With BRN Board President Walt Opie
Transforming the Heart
Both Buddhist practice and recovery from addiction point to an inner transformation of the heart. As practicing addicts, our hearts may have been pretty shut down, which we may not even realize until it starts to open in recovery, perhaps quite slowly at first. One of the wonderful things about Buddhist practice is that we learn we can train the heart through certain practices like lovingkindness (metta). Then we realize we’re not practicing Buddhist recovery for ourselves alone–we’re also learning how to benefit others. In fact, the Buddha encouraged us to be a refuge for all beings.

The Mind in the Body: Breathing with the Nervous System with Kevin Griffin
2026-05-03 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]

June BRN Academy with Rev. Myokei Caine-Barrett
2026-06-07 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]
More About the Academy
The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.

The Unshakeable Heart with BRN July Academy with Vince Cullen
2026-07-05 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]
Gotama, the Buddha, taught processes, not virtues. Equanimity is the clear‑eyed balance that stops us taking the world’s friction personally. Resilience is the active staying power to endure that friction without striking out. And forgiveness is their most radical by‑product. In this unsentimental talk, Vince reframes equanimity as grounded awareness, resilience as a practical capacity of a regulated nervous system, and forgiveness as a radical act of intelligence. Drawing on secular dharma and evolutionary psychology, he explores how our basic survival instincts — to protect, promote, and satisfy — map directly onto Buddhism’s three types of craving, trapping us in a state of existential friction that fuels resentment, shame, and defensive living. The talk offers a practical way out: not another set of rules to live up to, but a way to settle the nervous system so the heart no longer has to fight reality.

More About the Academy
The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.

BRN August Academy with Ven. Dayananda
2026-08-02 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]
To Sign Up and Give Dana and Get Reminders Click Here

The True Nature of Existence: Deconstructing the Sensation of Incompleteness

This talk investigates the true nature of existence through the Buddha’s teaching on the four inversions of perception, mind, and view, found in the Vipallasa Sutta. Rather than viewing our lives through personal narratives, we will examine how these inversions cause us to instinctively mistake the impermanent for permanent, and the non-self for a solid, unchanging “I.”
We will explore how these distortions manifest as a persistent sensation of incompleteness, the precise meaning of dukkha, which arises whenever existence is “not entirely to our way.” By recognizing that existence is a series of conditional arisings rather than a state governed by a fixed “master,” we begin to loosen the unquenchable thirst of the unawakened mind. The talk focuses on how untrapping ourselves from these views allows for a steady, balanced mind, no longer driven by the eight vicissitudes of worldly gain and loss.

More About the Academy
The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.

BRN September Academy In Conversation with Vimalasara
2026-09-06 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]
In Conversation with Vimalasara
SUNDAY September 6, 2026 at 10AM PST
Join us Online with Vimalasara
More About the Teaching
This month’s Academy is your chance to ask anything about Buddhist recovery—no question too small, too big, or too personal. Whether you’re new or seasoned, bring what you’ve always wondered. Vimalasara will meet you with wisdom and warmth.
Your questions welcome. Your journey honored.
Please send your questions in ahead of time. Your voice matters—don’t hold back.

CLICK HERE to Send your questions in advance.
More About the Academy

The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.

BRN October Academy with Joe Clements
2026-10-11 10:00 - 11:15 | https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87579202512?pwd=[REDACTED]
BRN Academy with Joe Clements
SUNDAY October 11, 2026 at 10AM PST
Join us Online with Joe Clements
About Our Teacher:
Joe Clements grew up in Santa Cruz, California, where music, chaos, and addiction shaped his early years. As a teenager, drugs and alcohol became both escape and belonging, a path that eventually unraveled into substance addiction and destructive patterns of seeking approval and connection.
Introduced to mindfulness in the 1990s through friends at Dharma Punx and Against the Stream, Joe didn’t fully commit until his own recovery required a new way of living. Buddhist practice became the foundation of that recovery, teaching him how to sit with his mind and heart instead of running from them. Over time, he discovered that true recovery also meant reconnecting with the body. Somatic healing practices became essential, allowing him to weave nervous system regulation and embodied presence into his meditation and his teaching.
For the past decade, Joe has facilitated mindfulness-based recovery and emotional awareness groups in treatment centers, juvenile halls, and community spaces throughout California. He trained with teachers like Vinny Ferraro and Joanna Hardy, worked with the Mind Body Awareness Project, and continues to ground his work in trauma-informed care and long-term recovery.
Joe is the founder of Sit.Feel.Heal., a mindfulness-based center for recovery, community, and resilience in Santa Cruz. His teaching is simple, direct, and relational—rooted in the belief that healing doesn’t come from fixing ourselves, but from learning to sit with what’s real.
Learn more at josephclements.com and sitfeelheal.org.

More About the Academy

The Academy has invited some of the leading teachers in the field of Buddhist recovery. On the first Sunday of every month for an hour each teacher will explore the sharp edges of suffering through the lens of the Buddhist Teachings.
The Academy brings together teachers from different Buddhist lineages and approaches. Themes like addiction, alcoholism, depression, stinking thinking and compulsive behaviors will be explored.
During this event we will meditate, listen to the teaching, then have time for a Q & A at the end.
