Deepening Practice 28-Day Retreat
with Patrick Kearney, Emma Pittaway and Robyn Gibson
January 16 - February 13, 2026
This retreat is open to people who have done at least three insight meditation retreats in the Mahasi tradition of nine days longer.
Satipaṭṭhāna, the applications of mindfulness, is based on the continuity of awareness cultivated in every circumstance of life. We practise to become intimate with ourselves, our circumstances and the world around us. As we do so, we discover what the Buddha calls the three universal characteristics of experience – that all we undergo is changing, fundamentally unsatisfactory, and neither ours nor us.
This retreat is for experienced practitioners who want to deepen their practice and understanding. The first two weeks will be co-taught with Robyn Gibson and the second two weeks with Emma Pittaway.
Teachers
Patrick Kearney has practised mindfulness meditation (satipaṭṭhāna vipassanā) since 1977. At that time there was little or no Buddhist meditation training available in Australia, so he spent years travelling in Asia and the USA working with teachers from different Buddhist traditions to learn the craft of meditation practice. Most of his training has been in the insight meditation lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw of Burma, which included several years as a Buddhist monk. His main teachers were Sayādaw U Paṇḍita and John Hale. He has also trained in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen where his teachers have been Robert Aitken…
Learn more about Patrick Kearney
Emma Pittaway teaches an open ‘natural awareness’ approach that emphasises meditation as a way of being in the world. Her style is drawn from 25 years experience in the Burmese lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw, via her primary teacher Patrick Kearney, and her training with Sayādaw U Tejaniya. These two influences combine relaxation and creativity with investigation and clarity. Inspired by the Buddha and his followers, who lived and meditated in the forest, Emma draws on the natural world to support her practice. She is the principal insight teacher at the Kuan Yin Meditation Centre in Lismore, NSW.
Learn more about Emma Pittaway
Robyn Gibson has been practising and studying meditation for 30 years, predominantly in the Mahāsi lineage of Theravāda Buddhism. Her principal teachers have been Patrick Kearney and Carol Perry. Teaching since 2016, Robyn’s approach brings together the Buddha’s radical teachings of freedom through embodied presence, deep ecology and other nature-based practices, and creative expression. All this allows us to enquire into what it means to live a wise and ethical human life on this earth, and how to face the challenges of our current times with courage and integrity.
Learn more about Robyn Gibson