Welcome to the Burlington Area Buddhist Fellowship in Vermont. We are a peer-led practice group primarily rooted in the Vipassana (Insight) Tradition. While many of us have practiced at IMS in Barre, MA we welcome all who are on the path to liberation through meditation and integration of the Buddha’s teachings into daily life, regardless of cultural and religious background, race, ethnicity, socio-economic class, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, educational background, or ability. If you are a beginner, we offer donation based classes so you might become familiar with Buddhist practice. We are dedicated to supporting each other’s practice and to creating a culture of inclusion, kindness and generosity.
Our primary meeting time is Sunday mornings from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. The first, second, and third meeting of every month are held in-person. Join us for meditation, dharma talk, discussion, and tea. You can find material from our past meetings in the Archive. Also, you can check out our calendar as we are starting to offer more ways to gather for meditation and study. Please read below for ways to contact us.
The Burlington Area Buddhist Fellowship is primarily a group of long-term dharma practitioners living in northern Vermont who meet to study, discuss, and practice together. We do not have a dedicated teacher, but instead take turns offering and leading the Sunday meeting. Anyone is welcome to join us in person for our meetings on the first three Sundays of the month. We also offer an option to join via zoom, but have found it challenging to welcome those with little or no experience with Buddhist practice to the online portion of our Sunday meetings. We are expanding our offerings if you would like to join us; please read through the options below.
If you are an experienced practitioner and would like to be added to our regular newsletter and join us for our Sunday meetings online, please introduce yourself by emailing us and tell us a little bit about the nature of your past training or study of the dharma and your daily practice. You can also check out some of the resources listed below.
If you are a beginner and interested in Buddhist practice we offer several ways to get started.
- Join us in person any of the first 3 Sundays of the month
- Check out some resources on meditation
- Browse our archive to see the topics we cover
- Read about the classes we offer and sign up for our class e-mail list
Everything we do is offered freely, but if you would like to support us, you can do so here.
The nature of a Sangha is to be inclusive and, we believe, to actively work toward equality. To that end, we have collected some resources which you may find useful regarding anti-racism on a dedicated page.
Recent talks (see more in our archive)
Illusion / Maya
From the Buddhist teachings on emptiness to Plato’s allegory of the cave to a more modern view of the brain as a virtual reality machine, we are often told that what we think is real is actually more like an illusion… like a mirage, or a rainbow. What are we to do with claims like…
What’s beneath the suffering?
Our mind loves to feel safe, and in order to feel safe it wants to have control. If I think about my problems enough, will they go away? If I am careful enough, can I prevent pain? If I practice hard enough, will I stop feeling afraid? Most people would say no, of course not.…
The Middle Way – Still More Depth
Continuing with our explorations of The Middle Way and personal agency/responsibility, this week we considered and discussed a talk by Kamala Masters. She has been practicing in the Theravada tradition since the 70’s. Anagarika Munindra (Munindraji) and Sayadaw U Pandita (trained under Mahasi Sayadaw) have been her primary teachers. Darryl led our Sangha this week. She writes: I have…
