Welcome to Two Rivers Insight Meditation Community of Winnipeg
Where Wisdom Meets Compassion
WHO WE ARE
Two Rivers is a community of people from many walks of life who are interested in letting go of self-created suffering by waking up to our deepest selves. Together we support each other in exploring the living dharma through Buddhist teachings and practices grounded in the Theravada tradition. We pay particular attention to developing wisdom, mindfulness, and heart qualities such as kindness, compassion, equanimity and joy. Our intention is to develop skilful means that direct our hearts and minds towards wise and compassionate thought, speech, and action.
““Just as a mother would protect her only child with her life, even so let one cultivate a boundless love towards all beings.”
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WHAT WE OFFER
Weekly meditation sittings
Meditation classes
Retreats
Socially-engaged practice
Fun activities
How we are guided
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Our community is part of the Insight Meditation (vipassana) tradition, which is rooted in forms of Theravada Buddhism that have been adapted by western teachers. We are led by Nelle Oosterom, a longtime dharma practitioner. Nelle is mentored by Sharda Rogell, a senior Insight teacher based in California.
ABOUT OUR NAME
The name Two Rivers is inspired by the historic junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers in the heart of Winnipeg. People have been gathering at this ancient meeting place known as The Forks for at least 6,000 years to engage in peace-making, trade, celebration, and healing. The rivers express the truths of connection and flow. All of us are joined in the currents of life and death. All of us move within the sacred flow of creation.
At Two Rivers we aspire to bring people together to know the truth of the living dharma. Like the junction of two waterways, the dharma has many points of connection — including the mind and the heart, the material and the spiritual, the worldly and the divine, the relative and the absolute, samsara and nirvana…
We are like the water in a river that is not separate from the ocean into which it eventually flows.
““Whatever great rivers there are…on reaching the great ocean they lose their former names and identities and are just called ‘the great ocean.’…Just as the great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and discipline has one taste, the taste of liberation.””