The Garrison Institute is a non-profit, non-sectarian organization located in

Garrison, New York Garrison is a Hamlet (New York), hamlet in Putnam County, New York, Putnam County, New York (state), New York, United States. It is part of the town of Philipstown, New York, Philipstown, on the east side of the Hudson River, across from the U ...

. Working collaboratively with practitioners in different fields, the Institute develops and hosts retreats and

symposia ''Symposia'' is a genus of South American araneomorph spiders in the family Cybaeidae, and was first described by Eugène Simon in 1898. Species it contains six species in Venezuela and Colombia: *'' Symposia bifurca'' Roth, 1967 – Venezuel ...

, produces research and publications, and provides a hub for ongoing learning networks.

History

The institute's founders bought what was then a Capuchin monastery set for destruction, to make way for a proposed large-scale real estate development. The site was formerly known as Glenclyffe, when it was the 19th century estate of New York Governor and U.S. Secretary of State

Hamilton Fish Hamilton Fish (August 3, 1808September 7, 1893) was an American statesman who served as the sixteenth governor of New York from 1849 to 1850, a United States senator from New York from 1851 to 1857, and the 26th U.S. secretary of state from ...

, and it has changed little since it was solely inhabited by the

Wappinger The Wappinger ( ) were an Eastern Algonquian Munsee-speaking Native American people from what is now southern New York and western Connecticut. At the time of first contact in the 17th century they were primarily based in what is now Dutc ...

Nation of Native Americans. In 2001, the property was acquired by the Open Space Institute, which donated it to The Garrison Institute, which renovated the building, and opened its doors to the public in 2003. The Garrison Institute's current building is a renovated version of the 77,000 square foot stone and brick monastery and seminary built by the Capuchin Franciscan Province of St. Mary in 1923. Much of the architectural restoration is notable for what wasn't changed. The Institute celebrated its beginning with newly appointed spiritual advisors—Gelek Rimpoche, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi and Father Thomas Keating. The opening ceremonies included music by Pete Seeger, Philip Glass and Christine McCall. The Dalai Lama visited the Institute in the fall of 2003 and blessed it. Since 2003, over 60,000 people have participated in the Garrison Institute's retreats and programs. In 2004, the Institute created the Initiative on Contemplation and Education (ICE), later renamed the Contemplative Teaching and Learning Initiative and now named CARE for Teachers. In 2004, the Hudson River Project was launched to discuss social science and the humanities relating to environmental issues. The Hudson River Project became the Initiative on Transformation Ecology (ITE), now Climate, Mind and Behavior (CMB). In 2005, the Women's Wellness Project was created, a five-year pilot program conducting contemplative-based training for women working to end domestic violence. This was the basis of what became the Initiative on Transforming Trauma (ITT), which is now the institute's Signature Program on Contemplative-Based Resilience (CBR).

Garrison, New York

The Garrison Institute is located an hour north of

Manhattan Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...

, on the east bank of the

Hudson River The Hudson River, historically the North River, is a river that flows from north to south largely through eastern New York (state), New York state. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains at Henderson Lake (New York), Henderson Lake in the ...

in the Hudson Highlands, across from West Point.

Purpose

The Garrison Institute provides shelter for a diverse array of spiritual teachers, students, organizations, and communities of practice globally. The Institute brings together a mix of constituents: contemplative and spiritual teachers, academic scientists, and those working on new forms of social and environmental engagement. Together, they seek to better understand the mind and the many systems it inhabits.

Staff and teachers

The Garrison Institute is led by executive director Johnathan Weisner. Teachers and presenters at the Garrison Institute have included Adyashanti,

the Dalai Lama The Dalai Lama (, ; ) is the head of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism. The term is part of the full title "Holiness Knowing Everything Vajradhara Dalai Lama" (圣识一切瓦齐尔达喇达赖喇嘛) given by Altan Khan, the first Shu ...

Rajmohan Gandhi Rajmohan Gandhi (born 7 August 1935) is an Indian biographer, historian, politician and research professor at the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, US. His paternal grandfather is Maha ...

Philip Glass Philip Glass (born January 31, 1937) is an American composer and pianist. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Glass's work has been associated with minimal music, minimalism, being built up fr ...

Daniel Goleman Daniel Goleman (born March 7, 1946) is an American psychologist, author, and science journalist. For twelve years, he wrote for ''The New York Times'', reporting on the brain and behavioral sciences. His 1995 book '' Emotional Intelligence'' wa ...

Mikhail Gorbachev Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev (2 March 1931 – 30 August 2022) was a Soviet and Russian politician who served as the last leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 to dissolution of the Soviet Union, the country's dissolution in 1991. He served a ...

Paul Hawken Paul Gerard Hawken (born February 8, 1946) is an American environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, economist, and activist. Biography Hawken was born in San Mateo, California, and grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where his father worked at ...

, Father Thomas Keating,

Sharon Salzberg Sharon Salzberg (born August 5, 1952) is an author and teacher of Buddhist meditation practice in the West. In 1974, she co-founded the Insight Meditation Society at Barre, Massachusetts, with Jack Kornfield and Joseph Goldstein. Her emphasi ...

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weav ...

, Roshi Enkyo O’Hara,

Peter Senge Peter Michael Senge (born 1947) is an American systems scientist who is a senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, co-faculty at the New England Complex Systems Institute, and the founder of the Society for Organizational Learni ...

, Lama

Surya Das Surya Das (born Jeffrey Miller in 1950) is an American lama in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. He is a poet, chantmaster, spiritual activist, author of many popular works on Buddhism, meditation teacher and spokesperson for Buddhism in the West. ...

Tsoknyi Rinpoche Tsoknyi Rinpoche ( Wylie ''tshogs gnyis rin po che'') or Ngawang Tsoknyi Gyatso (born 13 March 1966) is a Tibetan Buddhist teacher and author, and the founder of the Pundarika Foundation. He is the third Tsoknyi Rinpoche, having been recognized by ...

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (Tibet: ཡོངས་དགེ་མི་འགྱུར་རིན་པོ་ཆེ། Wylie transliteration, Wylie: yongs dge mi 'gyur rin po che) is a Tibetan Nepali teacher and master of the Karma Kagyu and Nying ...

, and many others.

Board of trustees

* Rachel Gutter, Co-chair * Jonathan F. P. Rose, Co-chair * Monica Winsor * Lisette Cooper * Will Rogers, Treasurer * Ruth Cummings *

* Diana Calthorpe Rose *

* Daniel J. Siegel * Susan Davis

External links

Official website

References

{{Use dmy dates, date=April 2017 Education in Putnam County, New York Non-profit organizations based in New York (state) 501(c)(3) organizations