#37 Shaila Catherine on Jhanas and Awakening

Shaila Catherine is the founder of Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation group in Silicon Valley, and also Bodhi Courses, an online Buddhist classroom. She has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than nine years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally. Shaila studied with several Asian masters in India, Thailand, and Nepal, including H. W. L. Poonja, Nyoshul Khen Rinpoche, and Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, in addition to the founders of several western meditation centers including Christopher Titmuss and Joseph Goldstein. She completed a one-year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. Shaila practiced under the guidance of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw from 2006-2015, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana to help make this traditional approach to meditative training accessible to western practitioners.

In 2014, Shaila founded Bodhi Courses to develop and offer teachings in an online classroom.