Remembering Awareness – Nine-day retreat
with Patrick Kearney and Emma Pittaway
November 6 - 15, 2026
Our practice is based on mindfulness, which emerges from the continuity of awareness. How can we maintain continuous awareness? By remembering that we are already aware. We do not need to generate awareness. When we “try” to be aware, our effort is based on our desire to be someone different, to have something different. But if awareness is already available, then what is there to try for? When we stop trying and allow ourselves to recognise what is already here, the continuity of awareness naturally emerges.
Teachers
Patrick Kearney
Patrick Kearney is an independent dharma teacher in the lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw of Burma, his principal teachers being Paṇḍitarama Sayādaw and John Hale. He has also trained in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen Buddhism. His original teacher was Robert Aitken Roshi, and he is now studying with Paul Maloney Roshi. Patrick has a particular interest in the Buddha’s teachings before Theravāda or Mahāyāna were thought of. He studies Pāli and seeks to bring his understanding of the early texts to the practice of dharma in the contemporary world. For further details see his website.
Learn more about Patrick Kearney
Patrick Kearney is an independent dharma teacher in the lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw of Burma, his principal teachers being Paṇḍitarama Sayādaw and John Hale. He has also trained in the Diamond Sangha lineage of Zen Buddhism. His original teacher was Robert Aitken Roshi, and he is now studying with Paul Maloney Roshi. Patrick has a particular interest in the Buddha’s teachings before Theravāda or Mahāyāna were thought of. He studies Pāli and seeks to bring his understanding of the early texts to the practice of dharma in the contemporary world. For further details see his website.
Learn more about Patrick Kearney
Emma Pittaway
Emma Pittaway teaches an open “natural awareness” approach that emphasises meditation as a way of being in the world, based on her training in the Burmese lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw via Shwe Oo Min Sayādaw and his dharma successor, Sayādaw U Tejaniya. Inspired by the Buddha and his followers, who lived and meditated in the forest, she 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
Emma Pittaway teaches an open “natural awareness” approach that emphasises meditation as a way of being in the world, based on her training in the Burmese lineage of Mahāsī Sayādaw via Shwe Oo Min Sayādaw and his dharma successor, Sayādaw U Tejaniya. Inspired by the Buddha and his followers, who lived and meditated in the forest, she 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