Six-Week Retreat 2027

Dates: 3 April – 15 May 2027
Teachers: Jill Shepherd and Willa Thāniyā Reid, with Elizabeth Day

At the heart of our offerings is a long, silent retreat held in Aotearoa.

This retreat is intended for experienced meditators and includes alternating periods of sitting and walking meditation, guided instructions, Dhamma talks, and one-on-one practice discussions with the teachers.

The teachings will be rooted in Early Buddhism, drawing inspiration from the Western Insight tradition and the Thai Forest lineage.

Description of Teachings

Kalyāna: Cultivating the Beautiful in the Spiritual Life

The Buddha has pointed out the way:
beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle,
and beautiful in the end.

Supported by spiritual friendship and seclusion, this six-week retreat offers the ideal conditions for establishing the heart-mind (citta) in kind, steady knowing. Here, we attune to the presence of the beautiful—profoundly skillful mental states such as the Seven Factors of Awakening, the brahmavihāra heart qualities, and awareness itself.

Through an integrated approach that weaves together Satipaṭṭhāna (The Four Foundations of Mindfulness) and Ānāpānasati (Mindfulness of Breathing), the teachings and practices will support a sustained focus and deep inquiry into the nature of experience, guiding the citta toward liberative transformation.

Teachers:

Willa Thāniya Reid spent 18 years in Ajahn Chah monasteries in Thailand and the UK extending her practice of meditation and Buddhist contemplation. In the lineage of the Thai Forest Tradition, teachers offer Dhamma reflections in response to the present moment (the ‘here and now’ Dhamma), rather than prepared Dhamma talks. Her teaching is informed by the graduated teachings of the Buddha, drawing on primary texts relevant to the unfolding learning in the retreat itself. She has taught retreats in Aotearoa and internationally, primarily in the Pacific Northwest. Willa is currently in the process of retiring, allowing her to further orientate to providing Dhamma guidance. With Elizabeth Day, she lives in Kihikihi where they have established a practice community. They are intending to spend next year offline in meditation retreat. Appreciating that time is short, they will be cultivating what is most precious.

Jill Shepherd is the guiding teacher for Auckland Insight and is a graduate of the IMS / Spirit Rock teacher training program in the US, under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Gil Fronsdal. She lives in Aotearoa / New Zealand and teaches internationally, offering insight / vipassanā and brahmavihāra retreats as well as ongoing study and practice groups focused on bringing the dharma into daily life. She also leads courses and non-residential workshops exploring the relational practice of Insight Dialogue, as developed by Gregory Kramer and colleagues.

Part-time teacher:

Dr Elizabeth Day commenced concerted Buddhist practice in her 20s, building on earlier enquiries into experiences of no-self, and intersubjectivity. Her initial teachers were Ven Rakkhita Thera, then abbot of the Sri Lankan forest hermitage, and Ven U Jotiko Sayadaw, of the Burmese Theravadin lineage of Shwe Oo Min Sayadaw. She ordained in the Thai Theravada Forest tradition of Ajahn Chah, with Ajahn Sumedho as preceptor, spending six years as an ordained monastic in the UK.

Her practice continues to integrate and represent Theravada trainings, lived within the context of lay life. She is committed to presenting the clarity of the core teachings, and bringing these alive for minds shaped by contemporary democratic understandings in her local and international teaching. Elizabeth works as a professor of psychotherapy, and offers individual therapy and Dhamma guidance. She has a Doctorate in intersubjectivity and is a qualified yoga teacher and psychotherapist.

Accommodation:

The rooms sleep 1-3 people. For keen, healthy retreatants there may also be camping spaces available. Note: couples and/or friends are housed separately, to protect their solitude during the retreat.

Food:

The Collective will provide nourishing vegan food (breakfast, dinner, supper) for retreatants. As a dāna based organisation, we will have limited capacity to cater to dietary requirements, but we will accommodate coeliac and nut allergies.

Work meditation:

All participants will take part in caring for the spaces and supporting the upkeep of retreat life by engaging in mindful work meditation which will last around one hour a day.

Location

Mahamudra Center For Universal Unity will be our beautiful home for the 2027 retreat. We are so excited to be able to practice in and share with beautiful space with you. Mahamudra is in Colville, Coromandel.

Getting to the retreat centre:

Mahamudra is a retreat centre set amongst the bush and farmland in a fairly remote location about 3 hours drive from Tāmaki Makaurau / Auckland.

If coming from overseas and flying into Auckland Airport, please book flights that allow you enough time to get to the centre for the start of the retreat, and to get back to Auckland only once the retreat ends with a buffer for any delays en route to your departure flight.

Cost

We believe that the Dharma is a priceless gift, and that it is diminished when consumed as a product. This means we will never charge a "fee".

Our offerings will be supported solely by dāna* - gifts that have been freely given. We feel that the practice of dāna can take us out of transactional relationships and into relationships based on trust, kindness, and generosity.

To protect the viability of the retreat from last-minute withdrawals, which for a retreat of this kind may be very challenging, there will be a NZD $600 ‘bond’ to be paid when accepting a place in the retreat. The bond will be reimbursed at the end of the retreat.

Cancellation policy:

If a retreatant withdraws within three months of the retreat starting-date, or leaves early during the retreat, they will forfeit their bond and it will be used solely to cover the costs of the retreat. We ask for three months notice because all prospective retreatants will need sufficient time to make arrangements to attend a retreat of this length. We will consider exceptions in cases of emergency, bereavement or significant illness. Importantly, if the bond is a financial impediment, let us know in your application. We are committed to supporting wholehearted applicants with attending the retreat regardless of your means.

Retreatant selection process:

We are strongly expecting to have more applications that spaces available on this retreat. We intend to manage this by primarily selecting eligible applicants (those meeting the Teachers´ assessments of their suitability based on experience and application particularities) through a lottery process.

The lottery which will be drawn in January 2026 and notification of offers will be given shortly after.

Apply

Registration for this retreat opened on the 1st of December. If you want to maximise your chance of being offered a place on the retreat please apply within three weeks of registration opening. We will begin reviewing applications throughout December 2025.

Click here to register

Supporting this retreat

Generally retreats offered on a dāna basis rely on financial support that comes after a retreat and then helps fund subsequent ones. Because this is our first retreat, donations in advance will be extremely helpful.

The retreat will be facilitated completely by volunteers of the collective and we will have no paid staff. However, we estimate the total costs of the retreat to be around NZD $50,000, with the principal expense of the venue hire being confirmed as NZD $35,700 (six weeks hireage fee and utilities). We estimate that food and other minor costs will be another NZD $14-$18,000. So far we have been able to raise slightly over NZD $10,000 from the founding members of the collective to cover the deposit on the venue.

If you feel moved to give, your contribution would go directly towards these costs. At present, we in the collective—and our teachers Jill, Willa and Eliza—are covering these expenses. Our hope is that, through the generosity of the wider community, we can cover the cost of this retreat but importantly also create a pool of resources for facilitating annual long retreats in Aotearoa.

Click here to find out how to support this retreat

*Dāna: In most Buddhist traditions the teachers are not paid to teach. Instead, the teachings are given on a ‘dāna’ basis – dāna being the Pali word for generosity or giving freely - so there will be an opportunity to offer a donation for the teaching at the end of the event.