Cathy Small if a Professor of Anthropology and author, who has been practicing vipassana meditation since 1999. She has participated in more than a dozen extended meditation retreats in Nepal and the U.S., focusing on awareness and concentration. Cathy co-teaches a six-week course in mindfulness every semester for faculty and staff at Northern Arizona University, and offers a mindfulness course for prisoners at the Coconino County jail.
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.