The Fierce Heart of Now
Dharma, Interconnection & Spiritual Abundance
A weeklong in-person retreat in partnership between Clear Sky Center and Awaken in Toronto.
This retreat is designed for a time when many feel overwhelmed, disconnected, or unsure how to respond and are ready to meet life with greater clarity and courage.
Retreat Description:
In a time of global uncertainty, choosing to remain present, connected, and responsive is a radical act of practice. This is what we mean by the fierce heart of now: the willingness to stay open, grounded, and engaged with life as it is, meeting this moment with clarity, compassion, and courage.
As we deepen into interconnection, we begin to sense that awakening is not separate from how we live, but expressed through our relationships, our actions, and our engagement with money and resources. This retreat invites you into that lived experience of dharma: where inner transformation naturally unfolds into wise, compassionate participation in the world.
This weeklong retreat brings together The Work That Reconnects, Vajrayana Buddhist practice, and the lived path of spiritual abundance, inviting you into a direct experience of interconnection, resilience, and courageous participation in the world.
A Shared Lineage, A Living Collaboration
Co-led by dharma teacher Lama Linda Hochstetler and dharma teacher Karen McAllister, this retreat arises from a shared ground of practice and decades of lived dharma.
Both teachers stand in the living lineage of Namgyal Rinpoche. Lama Linda engaged deeply with his teachings, attending retreats and courses with both Rinpoche and later with Qapel Doug Duncan.
Karen undertook over two decades of close, one-to-one and sustained training with Qapel Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei, working in-depth with the path of surrender and the integration of awakening into lived life. She continues her dharma path under the guidance of Catherine Sensei.
In the early years of Clear Sky Meditation Centre, Karen and Lama Linda served together on its first board.
Karen continued in a long-term leadership role for over a decade, helping to steward and stabilize the organization and community through its formative years. Their connection reflects a shared lineage, respect for one another’s path, and moments of collaboration over time.
They come together in this retreat as two established dharma teachers, each grounded in their own depth of practice and lived experience, meeting in a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration.
Together, their shared lineage, long-standing connection, and complementary ways of teaching create a uniquely integrated field where deep inner transformation and its expression in everyday life are held as a single path.
What We Will Explore
Lama Linda will guide participants through The Work That Reconnects by Joanna Macy, leading the group through its four phases as a powerful collective process of transformation, supported by Vajrayana teachings, daily meditation, and the Vajrasattva Wongkur empowerment.
Through this arc, grief and overwhelm are gently transformed into clarity, resilience, and compassionate action.
As a dharma teacher, Karen supports how this unfolding process naturally expresses itself in the relational and material dimensions of life. Her work brings dharma directly into our relationship with money, energy, and resources, not as an abstract idea, but as a lived and often emotionally charged experience.
Rather than bypassing the emotional reality of money, Karen creates a grounded and compassionate space where people can move from a transactional mindset into a relational one. This includes gently facing the often complex and emotionally charged experiences people carry, patterns of scarcity, fear, self-worth, as well as feelings of betrayal, disconnection, or distrust in relation to money, others, and the systems we live within.
Working in a group field allows these patterns to be seen more clearly, not just as individual struggles, but as part of a shared human experience. Together, participants begin to uncover how money has come to hold collective projections that can separate and isolate us, and how, through awareness and connection, these patterns can be unraveled. What has felt stuck, confusing, or painful can begin to soften, opening the possibility for a more honest, connected, and life-affirming relationship with money and with one another.
In this way, money becomes a powerful vehicle for dharma, a place where awakening is practiced, where the heart is invited to open, and where our relationship to giving, receiving, and value can come into alignment with who we truly are.
The Spiral of the Retreat
Guided by the spiral of The Work That Reconnects, we will move through four phases:
Gratitude
Grounding in what sustains us and opening to connection.
Honoring Our Pain for the World
Allowing grief and overwhelm to move and transform.
Seeing with New Eyes
Recognizing interdependence and reorienting toward wise relationship with self, others, and resources.
Going Forth
Bringing this awareness into how we live, serve, and participate in the world.
What to Expect
Each day will include:
meditation practice and teachings
guided group process through The Work That Reconnects
time for reflection, integration, and rest
opportunities to explore how practice expresses in daily life
Who This Retreat Is For
This retreat is for spiritual practitioners, Buddhists, change-makers, caregivers, therapists, healers, leaders, and anyone longing to meet this moment with greater clarity, courage, and compassion.
It may be especially supportive if you are:
feeling the weight of the world and longing for a grounded, compassionate response
seeking to deepen and live your dharma practice more fully
wanting to align your inner life with how you relate, work, serve, and engage with resources
exploring your relationship with money, energy, purpose, and contribution
ready to participate in the world with more steadiness, generosity, and wise action
You Will Leave With
a steadier capacity to remain present and connected in uncertain times
tools to meet and gently unravel emotional patterns around money, fear, and self-worth
a more easeful and embodied relationship with money, energy, and resources
greater alignment between your values, your actions, and how you direct your life energy
a felt sense of connection and support that allows new ways of relating to emerge
renewed confidence to participate in the world with courage, care, and a sense of purpose
A Whole Path of Awakening
This retreat is an invitation to live awakening as a whole path, one that moves from presence into participation, from interconnection into action.
As insight deepens, it begins to shape how we relate, how we serve, and how we engage with the world, including our relationship with money and resources.
You are invited to return to your life with a fierce heart, a clear mind, and a grounded capacity to meet this moment with wisdom, compassion, and courage.
If you feel called to this work, we warmly welcome you to join us.
Lama Linda (Linda Hochstetler) has explored consciousness and awakening for more than 30 years. She trained with Namgyal Rinpoche—the first Canadian-born Rinpoche—from 1995 until his passing in 2003, grounding herself in Theravada and Vajrayana Buddhist practices. She later continued her studies with Qapel (Doug Duncan), a successor in the Namgyal lineage, and received permission to teach under his guidance. She is the co-founder and leader of the Awaken in Toronto Sangha, where she teaches weekly online classes on consciousness and awakening principles, and leads retreats 4 times a year.
A registered social worker specializing in illness, dying, and death, Lama Linda also maintains a thriving private psychotherapy practice, has presented widely at conferences, and has been interviewed extensively on end-of-life topics. In 2021 she published her first book, 21 Days to Die: The Canadian Guide to End of Life. A mother, wife, and friend to many, she encourages her students to use their relationships as gateways to love more deeply and explore dharma more fully. She is devoted to weaving Buddhist teachings with Western psychotherapeutic approaches to support transformative change. www.lindahochstetler.com
Karen McAllister
Karen McAllister is a dharma teacher, co-executive director of Clear Sky Meditation Centre, and long-time student of Qapel Doug Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei in the lineage of Namgyal Rinpoche.
For over 25 years, Karen has followed a path of deep practice, including close, one-to-one and sustained training, extensive retreat experience, and over 100 Vajrayana empowerments. Her training has not been abstract, but lived, integrating meditation, community life, leadership, and service as a continuous field of awakening.
Karen’s teaching is rooted in a simple and powerful understanding: nothing is outside the path of dharma. The places that feel most charged: money, relationship, power, and purpose are not obstacles to awakening, but gateways into it.
Her work brings dharma directly into our relationship with money, energy, and resources, inviting a shift from a transactional way of relating into a deeply relational one. She supports people to gently face and unravel the emotional complexity that often lives beneath money: patterns of fear, scarcity, self-worth, and disconnection so that what has been hidden or avoided can become part of the path.
Working both individually and in groups, Karen is known for creating spaces of honesty, warmth, and depth, where people can reconnect with themselves and one another. In this shared field, money becomes more than a practical concern. It becomes a powerful vehicle for awareness, generosity, and transformation.
Alongside her teaching, Karen has played a central role in building Clear Sky Meditation Centre from its early days, helping to find its land, stewarding its growth, and serving for over a decade in leadership, including as Board Chair and Director of Fund Development. Her work bridges inner practice with the realities of building, sustaining, and funding a living community dedicated to awakening.
At heart, Karen is a spiritual seeker who spent years living and practicing across Japan, Europe, Brazil, and North America. Having searched deeply, she found a path that brought clarity, groundedness, and genuine joy and she is devoted to helping others discover how that same awakening can be lived fully in the midst of everyday life.
Important Details
When: Please plan to arrive between 3-5pm on the first day. The retreat will begin with a property orientation at 5:30pm followed by a light supper and the first evening class and will finish after lunch on the final day.
Rate: $996 - non-members $905- members (includes $30 going to Awaken in Toronto - AIT)
(To find out how to become a member please visit our membership page)
Rates include: Single accommodation and all meals. They do not include instructor fees. The teacher is sharing his/her experience within the traditional Buddhist understanding of Dana. To understand more about Dana, please read the following:
What is Dana? Teachers give the teachings of awakening (Dharma) freely so that anyone, no matter their financial means can attend classes. Each time one receives teachings, it is an opportunity to consciously practice generosity. Giving money and other means of support expresses gratitude and support to the teacher and helps to ensure that these teachings continue. Each person receiving Dharma teachings determines the kind and amount of Dāna according to one’s heart and one’s financial means. When deciding how much to offer, one should think about what these teachings mean to you and try to give accordingly. It is recommended that students make an offering of dāna at the beginning of a class or retreat to establish the intention to make the most of this opportunity for one’s own progression and for the benefit of all others.
Deposit: A 50% deposit is required to hold your space upon registration.
Cancellation Policy
All cancellations are subject to a $100 fee, which will support other low-income practitioners through our Practitioner Support Fund.
If cancellation occurs within 14 days of the retreat start date, 50% of the deposit (equivalent to 25% of the total retreat cost) will be forfeited. These funds will be directed to the Uplifted Property Fund to support the Renewal Project.