Cathy Small is an author and retired professor of anthropology. who has been practicing vipassana meditation for more than twenty-five years. She has completed numerous extended meditation retreats focusing on awareness, loving kindness and concentration. Since 2010, she has co-taught this six-week course in Insight Meditation every semester for community members and faculty and staff at Northern Arizona University, and has also offered a mindfulness course for inmates at the Coconino County jail. She is a regular teacher at the Flagstaff Insight Meditation Community.
This talk looks at the intersection of practice and life through the issue of homelessness. Based on her book, The Man in the Dog Park, co-authored with a homeless man, Dr. Cathy Small (a cultural anthropologist and meditation teacher) explores how social issues can become part of our practice, and how her decade-long journey with people experiencing homelessness offered Buddhist lessons about love and fear, self and other, and compassion and equanimity.
