Metta Wisdom Way: A nine-month study and practice program
September 2026 – May 2027
Taught by Daryl Lynn Ross, True North Insight Co-founder and Guiding Teacher,
with guest teachers Tatiana Castellanos, Melina Bondy, Muriel Ahmarani Jaouich, Arti Mehta, Rose Mina Munjee and Coral Short
Overview
True North Insight is relaunching Metta Wisdom Way in a revised format, to adapt to responses we received to the program as it was introduced last fall; originally it was longer and included two residential retreats. We are sensitive to the feeling of having limited resources experienced by many in our practice community at this time, due to uncertainty and world events. This is a shorter program, without any required retreats, which still offers an immersion in Dharma teachings, practices and relationships.
Metta Wisdom Way is a 9-month study and practice program to support you in deepening in Dharma wisdom and Metta (kindness). It’s an opportunity to bring open-heartedness and mindfulness into all aspects of our lives. An integral focus will be creating a practice community of friends which will be a network of support during the months of the program and beyond.
In this course we’ll integrate Metta into every part of practice. Wisdom and Metta are essentially not separate; connection with all of life is at the heart of awakening. Practicing in daily-life settings with times for non-residential retreat and group meetings gives us opportunities for supported group practice and an emphasis on living and learning Dharma in the myriad encounters of daily life.
So many of us wonder, how can we respond to painful and distressing events in the world with skill and kindness? Whatever our unique gifts and callings in our lives, deepening in Metta wisdom enables us to engage with a quality of being that embodies kindness and openness. This invites something new to emerge.
“A deep calling of being alive now is to tend the quality of our presence in this breaking, hurting world to foreshadow and make the world we want to inhabit in the beyond of it.”
—Krista Tippett, host of On Being podcast, newsletter Oct 4, 2025
In practicing “the sacred turn”, inquiring with Metta and insight into the nature of habitual reactivity within ourselves, we understand that these are the same forces which are embedded in the suffering in the world. This turning of the mind and heart transforms our suffering into compassion, discernment and courage. We can show up in ways that offer alternatives to polarization, grasping, enmity and bias in our circles of relations, coming from insight into inter-connection and impermanence. This is an ever-deepening path of a lifetime.
We’ll be exploring teachings drawn from Early Buddhist discourses and other Buddhist traditions. Rob Burbea’s teachings, as expressed in his book “Seeing That Frees: Meditations on Emptiness and Dependent Arising,” are influential in the framing of this course. Another major source is “Awakening Through Love; Unveiling Your Deepest Goodness” by Lama John Makransky. Other teachers’ contributions are also included and will be credited during the program.
The main topics which will be explored:
- We are drawn to freedom: motivations and pitfalls in approaching practice
- Establishing practice in daily life
- Understanding dukkha – unsatisfactoriness/suffering
- Metta – kindness permeating our lives, our relationships, our attitude towards self
- Karuna – turning toward suffering with kindness
- Mindfulness in the Body
- Mindfulness and Kindness through Sila – ethical training
- The three marks of existence:
- Seeing anicca (impermanence) deeply
- Seeing dukkha (unsatisfactoriness) pervasively in experience
- Experientially understanding anatta (non-self, non-separation)
- Exploring these three characteristics as doorways to freedom
- Exploring and deepening understanding of emptiness
- Brahma viharas – boundless states of heart – as practices to live from
Registrations and More Information: https://www.truenorthinsight.org/index.php/en/metta-wisdom-way-2026-27