The Dharma Student Project
about the teacher
about the teacher
Peter Doobinin
biography
Peter Doobinin established The Dharma Student Project in an effort to help advanced dharma students to develop a stronger meditation practice and deepen in their skill in practicing what the Buddha taught. Peter has been teaching insight meditation since 1998. Since 2002, he has been a full-time meditation teacher. Unlike many meditation teachers whose primary income is from other forms of employment, Peter's income - other than a small amount from his writing - comes entirely from teaching meditation. Whatever support he receives from teaching the dharma goes toward meeting basic living expenses such as food, clothing, shelter, medical needs, and other fundamental requirements for an individual in contemporary society.
After living in Germany for two years, Peter has returned to the US to continue to teach and pass on what he's learned about the dharma. From 2018 to 2020, Peter was the guiding teacher of Berlin Dharma. Before going to Berlin, he was the guiding teacher of Downtown Meditation Community in New York City. He founded Downtown Meditation in 2002. Prior to that, Peter was a co-founder of New York Insight Meditation Center. Over the years, he’s taught at many places including the New York City Public Schools. He’s taught meditation and mindfulness skills at NYU, Columbia, Pratt Institute, Hunter College and City College of New York. Peter is a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leaders program. Peter’s dharma book, The Skill of Living, was published in the spring of 2013. His writing has appeared in Tricyle; the anthology Commit to Sit; The New York Times; and other publications. Before becoming a meditation teacher, Peter worked in publishing for Simon & Schuster for more than twenty years. He also writes fiction and has published two novels: Daylight Saving Time and Suburban Boy..
As a teacher, Peter's vision is to offer the Buddha's teachings to people living amidst the speed and complexity of the modern world. For more than twenty years, he has been devoted to helping people find a way to practice the dharma as householders, meeting the various responsibilities of work, relationship, and so forth. He is especially interested in teaching individuals to develop breath meditation and to live more skillfully, with greater wisdom, compassion, love, and joy. In starting Downtown Meditation, New York Insight, and Berlin Dharma, he has been motivated by the understanding of the importance of practicing the dharma with others. As a teacher, and a student, he has come to know the extraordinary blessing that is it to be part of a community that embodies trust, care, kindness, and joyful companionship. Through his years of teaching, Peter has come to see that if we make a wholehearted effort to practice the skills the Buddha taught, there is no questions that we will find greater happiness in our lives.
biography
Peter Doobinin established The Dharma Student Project in an effort to help advanced dharma students to develop a stronger meditation practice and deepen in their skill in practicing what the Buddha taught. Peter has been teaching insight meditation since 1998. Since 2002, he has been a full-time meditation teacher. Unlike many meditation teachers whose primary income is from other forms of employment, Peter's income - other than a small amount from his writing - comes entirely from teaching meditation. Whatever support he receives from teaching the dharma goes toward meeting basic living expenses such as food, clothing, shelter, medical needs, and other fundamental requirements for an individual in contemporary society.
After living in Germany for two years, Peter has returned to the US to continue to teach and pass on what he's learned about the dharma. From 2018 to 2020, Peter was the guiding teacher of Berlin Dharma. Before going to Berlin, he was the guiding teacher of Downtown Meditation Community in New York City. He founded Downtown Meditation in 2002. Prior to that, Peter was a co-founder of New York Insight Meditation Center. Over the years, he’s taught at many places including the New York City Public Schools. He’s taught meditation and mindfulness skills at NYU, Columbia, Pratt Institute, Hunter College and City College of New York. Peter is a graduate of Spirit Rock Meditation Center’s Community Dharma Leaders program. Peter’s dharma book, The Skill of Living, was published in the spring of 2013. His writing has appeared in Tricyle; the anthology Commit to Sit; The New York Times; and other publications. Before becoming a meditation teacher, Peter worked in publishing for Simon & Schuster for more than twenty years. He also writes fiction and has published two novels: Daylight Saving Time and Suburban Boy..
As a teacher, Peter's vision is to offer the Buddha's teachings to people living amidst the speed and complexity of the modern world. For more than twenty years, he has been devoted to helping people find a way to practice the dharma as householders, meeting the various responsibilities of work, relationship, and so forth. He is especially interested in teaching individuals to develop breath meditation and to live more skillfully, with greater wisdom, compassion, love, and joy. In starting Downtown Meditation, New York Insight, and Berlin Dharma, he has been motivated by the understanding of the importance of practicing the dharma with others. As a teacher, and a student, he has come to know the extraordinary blessing that is it to be part of a community that embodies trust, care, kindness, and joyful companionship. Through his years of teaching, Peter has come to see that if we make a wholehearted effort to practice the skills the Buddha taught, there is no questions that we will find greater happiness in our lives.
Peter Doobinin
my story
I first learned to meditate in 1975 when I was in my junior year at SUNY Binghamton. My roommate, Ed Spiegel, was my first teacher. I'm forever grateful to Ed for turning me on to meditation and showing me how to practice. For some years, I meditated, albeit on an on-again-off-again basis. Eventually, though, I became caught up in the vicissitudes of life, the ways of the world, and I stopped. Then, in my mid-thirties, I began, again, to meditate. My return to meditation practice, as for many of us, was precipitated by a long period of suffering. My life was in a downward spiral, and I perceived that meditation might help me find a way out of my pain and despair. I began to practice in the insight meditation form that at the time (1990) was becoming somewhat well-known. Meditation and the dharma - the teachings of the Buddha - became an integral part of my life, as I attempted to put my life together, as I sought to make the most of this precious life.
In 1997, I founded New York Insight, along with four dear friends, Tamara Engel, Joseph Schmidt, Gina Sharpe, and Sandra Weinberg. Eventually, I started teaching beginners' courses, mostly because there wasn't anybody else available to teach them. I never had any intention of being a dharma teacher. But that, it seemed, was where my path led. I participated in the Community Dharma Leaders program at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where I met many wonderful dharma friends. In 2002, I founded Downtown Meditation Community. My vision was to establish a small community of students to whom I could teach the dharma within the confines of a close, intimate relationship, based on the apprenticeship model that the Buddha suggested.
Over the years, my own meditation practice developed. But at a certain point, after I'd been practicing for ten years or so, I realized I'd reached a plateau. My experience was not different than what's reported by many meditators. There had been times when I was on retreat when I'd felt sublimely awake, but in my day-to-day life I found it difficult to maintain present moment awareness. On retreat, I was able to develop strong concentration. I was able to connect to my heart. But in my daily life meditation practice, back in New York City, I wasn't able to cultivate very strong concentration. And there was still a sizable amount of suffering in my life. I was still plagued by various forms of aversion and desire. I wasn't able to take the sorts of actions I wanted to take, to move ahead in my life. I wasn't able to express my truth. I decided at that point that I needed to strengthen my meditation practice. I needed, all told, to learn to develop stronger concentration. I needed to develop a concentration that I would be able to maintain, to some extent, as I moved through my days and nights, as I met the circumstances of my life. Essentially, I needed to learn a more advanced methodology, a way to practice, in my daily sitting, as a householder in NYC, in which I could establish strong, maintainable concentration.
Around this time, I began to study the Buddha's suttas - interestingly, the suttas had not been easily available in readable English-language translations when I began my insight meditation practice - and as I read the suttas I came to realize that the Buddha's teaching on mindfulness of breathing (anapanasati) was significantly more advanced than the practice I'd been following. It was a practice, I came to see, by which I could develop the strong, maintainable concentration that I needed to develop. I began to study with teachers who showed me this path of breath meditation, taught me how to practice mindfulness of breathing in the manner in which the Buddha taught and practiced. And the results were profound. My practice took a quantum leap forward. I found myself at another level in terms of my concentration and, in turn, my discernment. In my day-to-day life, in the world, I was able, to a much greater degree, to maintain present moment awareness. I was able to take action in a way that I hadn't been able to before; more and more, I was able to take action in support of my wish to know the happiness of heart.
Eventually I began to teach what I'd learned, the Buddha's practice of mindfulness of breathing, to the students in Downtown Meditation Community. I found that, by following the steps and making wholehearted effort, dharma students, living in the contemporary world, with myriad responsibilities (students who generally weren't able attend more than one residential retreat per year), were able to excel at this practice; they were able to develop strong, maintainable concentration. Over the years, I've had the good fortune to be able to pass on this practice to many dharma students. I've been blessed to witness the profound effect that the practice has had on people's lives. Most importantly, I've seen how, by developing advanced skill in breath meditation, students are able to live more skillfully, with ease and grace, wisdom, love, and compassion.
I have, indeed, been blessed. The dharma has been the heart of my life; I've been blessed to be able to follow this beautiful path. I'm very grateful to the teachers who've shown me the path, including Christina Feldman, Eugene Cash, Michele McDonald, and Thanissaro Bhikkhu. And I'm very grateful to the dharma students I've been able to offer the teachings to, the beings with whom I've had the great privilege of taking this journey.
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The Skill of Living Peter Doobinin's book, The Skill of Living, offers a practical map for developing the skillful qualities of generosity, ethical conduct, renunciation, truthfulness, effort, determination, discernment, lovingkindness, patience, and equanimity. To buy a copy of The Skill of Living, please click here. |
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Peter Doobinin's Retreat Schedule
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Eight-Day Retreat April 8 to April 16, 2021 Powell House, Old Chatham, NY For information about retreats visit the retreats page. |
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"Sunday Dharma Talk" weekly podcast with Peter Doobinin |
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