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Qapel’s One Year Anniversary Celebration 2025
October 4 - October 5
Qapel's One Year Anniversary Celebration
Online or In-Person | October 4 - 5, 2025As the one year anniversary of Qapel’s passing approaches, it’s a special time to come together with Sensei and the Sangha to celebrate and honor our incredible teacher.
It’s also a time to step back and reflect on how the last year has been for us, what has shifted, and how we each see ourselves growing and contributing to Dharma.
We will mark this occasion with a series of online meditations, teachings, Sangha reflections and celebrations over the weekend of October 4th and 5th.
Along with all of this, there will be an exciting further unveiling of a chapter of Psynaut, Qapel’s autobiographical, science fiction, Dharma novel series!
Register and come to join with us online, onsite at Clear Sky, or gather with your local Sangha.
Participation is by dāna.
Qapel’s One Year Anniversary
What greater act of generosity is there than dedicating one’s life to the welfare of all sentient beings? The group survives, not the individual. We know we are all going to die. Life goes on. Amazing.
– Qapel
How to Attend
If you are in the region of Clear Sky, we warmly invite you to attend in person.
If you are based internationally, we’d love to see you at the online portions of the weekend. We also encourage you to take this opportunity to come together in person with your local Sangha and celebrate this special weekend together with them.
For online participants, while we’d love to see you at all the weekend events, you are also welcome to solely attend the sessions that you can.
Schedule
Below is the approximate schedule. This is evolving and is subject to change. All times are in Mountain Time.
| Sat 4th, 7am-8am | Namgyal Meditation |
|---|---|
| Sat 4th, 11am-12:15pm | Teaching and sharing from Sensei |
| Sat 4th, 2:30pm-3:30pm | Sangha-led reflection sessions (or local Sangha time) |
| Sat 4th, 5pm-5:45pm | Namgyal Meditation |
| Sat 4th, 7:30pm | Qapel Karaoke playlist – onsite at Clear Sky only, or get together with your local Sangha for your own event! |
| Sun 5th, 7am-8am | Namgyal Meditation |
| Sun 5th, 11am-12:15pm | Psynaut chapter unveil! |
| Sun 5th, 2:30pm-3:30pm | Livestream of a Qapel Dharma trip video |
| Sun 5th, 7pm-8pm | Namgyal Meditation and closing dedication from Sensei |
Questions?
If you have questions about the retreat, please contact the Clear Sky Retreat Manager at 250-429-3929 (phone) or at [email protected] (email).
Ways To Celebrate Qapel
This is an important and poignant time for us all to take a step back, and reflect on the many lessons and gifts we’ve received from our dear teacher Qapel. There are lots of ways to do this and to share your reflections with others. Here are just a few:
- Post to Qapel’s Facebook tribute page here: https://www.facebook.com/doug.duncan.587. This can be anything from words from your heart, stories of teachings you received, precious photos with Qapel, a video, a poem, a song!
- Now that we’re a year since Qapel passed, what’s landed for you? How are you applying and living teachings and trainings that Qapel gave you? Take time to reflect and share with Sangha.
- Reflect and share on this question: What do you imagine is your role in the Dharma of the future
- Come up with your own ideas and ways to honor what you received from Qapel!
The dharma has been built on generosity. No-one is excluded for lack of funds but it is also extremely beneficial to give as much as you are able
Typically people give in a range of $120-$500 USD for a course.
As we’re committed to ensuring everyone has access to the Dharma, please feel comfortable to give less if you are not financially secure. Another form of giving dāna is to offer service, and if you are interested in providing support in a non-financial way, we invite you to contact us.
Conversely, if you are financially secure, we invite you to generate merit by providing more financial support to the Triple Gem. Contributions like these make the difference in supporting our teachers, teachings, and center.
Learn more about the practice of dāna here.
We’ve tried to recreate this approach online. The teachers’ time and the teaching themselves are offered on the basis of dāna, separate to the admin fee. With our dāna offering we are making a direct gift of generosity to the teachers to support their teachings and livelihood.
The admin fee* goes to support the infrastructure and organization necessary to support them to teach. As anyone with an online business will know, it can be surprising the costs of setting up a good infrastructure to support effective teaching and connection online. The admin fee changes based on date of registration.
*We also do not wish to exclude anyone from the Teachings, so if you are not currently in a financial position to afford the admin fee, please contact the course Registrar via [email protected] so we can support you to attend.
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Below are a few of the work and benefits that your admin fee payment is supporting:
- high speed internet (to allow interviews and classes on-line)
- online class systems (Zoom)
- registration / admin systems (Eventbrite, Basecamp)
- communication systems to keep everyone informed, share connection details, teachings and other resources (Mailchimp)
- online storage (for example, Dropbox, to allow us to let students watch recordings, and to store and share selected teachings in other forms such as podcasts and video later, and Amazon cloud)
- quality sound, video and editing equipment (both for live teachings and to provide good enough quality for later sharing as podcasts and video). We are regularly updating our equipment to improve your user experience.
- online calendar booking system to allow students to book interviews
- website hosting and maintenance for sharing upcoming courses, teachings, blogs and other resources.
We welcome any questions. May all our efforts be sustainable, abundant and for the benefit of all beings!
Why Retreat In-Person?
- You can’t beat live interaction with the course Teachers. Being in the same space with clear beings ‘tunes’ you to more wholesome states.
- We create a welcoming environment and follow a supportive retreat schedule, based on decades of hosting successful retreats worldwide.
- Wholesome and delicious food is provided so you don’t have to spend time cooking for yourself.
- Breath-taking and restful, natural environment puts your body and mind at ease and resets your nervous system.
- Retreating at our center gets you out of your usual home environment and routines – they can be distracting.
- Retreating with others (your co-retreatants) is incredibly supportive and energy building.
We work hard to support the online learning experience.
- We have been delivering online offerings since 2012 and are always looking for new ways to optimize your experience.
- Classes are live-streamed and some recordings are available for a certain time.
- HD cameras and professional audio equipment provide high quality video streaming.
What Do Previous Retreatants Say?
