Cloud Refuge was founded by Joyce Kornblatt. Painfully, our beloved Joyce died on January 1, 2025 – from the cancer she had fended off for the preceding eight years. We are continuing her teaching legacy. The spirit of the group is cooperative, while being led by a senior teacher in the lineage of Buddhadasa: Christopher Ash. Christopher was married to Joyce for more than twenty years, sharing the early days of Cloud Refuge and teaching retreats with her.
Note that we have chosen to continue the ‘A Year to Live‘ program. It will be guided by Susan Armstrong and Christopher. We will work from the book ‘A Year to Live’ by Stephen Levine. It’s not compulsory reading, but it is a very helpful for your practice to read the whole of Stephens book during the year. There’s a condensed audio version on audible.com.
We will explore each of the monthly contemplations which he details in the back of the book.
A note from Christopher: As webmaster, I will leave the welcome up for now, beneath this intro, just as Joyce wrote it, so that you can get the sense of the style which we will do our best to honour in Cloud Refuge’s new incarnation. I’ll add a little about myself at the end.
– Christopher.
Who We Are
Cloud Refuge is a Buddhist community in the Western Insight tradition located
in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia. The teacher is Joyce Kornblatt.
How We Practice
We meditate for 40 minutes.
Then we have a shared inquiry facilitated by Joyce.
On the first Thursday each month, Joyce facilitates Year to Live practice, based on the book of that name by the late teacher, Stephen Levine: What wants our attention and surrender, if we had a year to live?
Other weekly gatherings will include contemplative writing practice, Council passing the virtual stone practice, and other ways of deepening into the teachings of the Buddhadharma.
All our inquiries engage deep listening to our own bodies and to one another.
Each time we speak, we are practicing mindful speech.
The Teacher
Joyce Kornblatt is a teacher in the Western Insight tradition, a Hakomi-trained psychotherapist, and a novelist/essayist/writing teacher (see joycekornblatt.com). She is particularly interested in the integration of Buddhist teachings with Western psychotherapy and creativity practice.
Addendum: Christopher has practiced Buddhism since 1969. In 2002, he was appointed a teacher in the lineage of Buddhadasa by Subhana Barzaghi and Christopher Titmuss. In his teaching Christopher focusses upon the process-oriented nature of the Buddha’s original teachings. He studies the teachings through Pali, one of the early languages of Buddhism, and he emphasizes the Buddha’s instructions on mindfulness of the body. He is also a psychotherapist, and trainer of Eugene T. Gendlin’s Focusing.