Buddhist Insights Meditation, Inc.
504 Beach 68th Street
Arverne, NY 11692
Website: buddhistinsights.com
Description of Organization
Buddhist Insights Meditation, Inc. connects people with Buddhist monks and nuns. Its mission is to make monastic teachings more accessible and culturally relevant in NYC, while granting affordable high-quality meditation options to the general public. Since its inception in January 2016, the organization has offered tuition-free meditation classes, retreats, and workshops on a daily basis to the people of New York. Buddhist Insights provides Dharma teachings freely to people in urban centers. As a non-sectarian organization, they periodically invite monks, nuns, and priests from a variety of different Buddhist traditions to teach in NYC for designated periods of time. Classes and workshops are offered in locations ranging from more conventional wellness and spiritual centers to unusual settings in public and cultural spaces (previous locations in NYC included places like Google, The New York Botanical Garden, Green-Wood Cemetery, etc.). The focus is to foster a better understanding of meditation’s benefits, therapeutic applications, life transforming effects and wisdom traditions, while presenting these as part of a more comprehensive Buddhist path.
Grant(s) Awarded
In 2021, a COVID-19 Operational Grant of $3,500 was awarded to Buddhist Insights Meditation to support the expenses to maintain their facility. The COVID-19 Impact: Prior to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Buddhist Insights Meditation began the New Year by offering a 30-day meditation retreat. They proceeded with regular weekly meditation classes, Dharma talks, and weekend programs, drawing 80-100 participants for each event. However, in March, they had to cancel all in-person retreats. They were able to generate donations from viewers of their online Dharma livestreams.
In 2018, a grant in the amount of $7,500 was awarded to Buddhist Insights Meditation to support general operations to expand and fulfill the mission of their organization. Funds from this grant were utilized to invest in back-end infrastructure by customizing pre-existing apps that were being used while investing in a software integration option that supports customized fields to automate hundreds of hours of work across the organization. The goal of this project was to free resources to focus on its core mission, and for developing partnerships to help finance growth.
In 2017, a Women in Buddhism Grant was awarded to Buddhists Insights Meditation to offset the cost of bringing female monastics to teach in New York.