About
Gregory Mengel is an educator and writer focused on social and ecological healing. He holds a PhD and cofounded Beyond Separation, which offers classes and workshops on racism and whiteness for white-identified people. He teaches Untraining White Liberal Racism with the Untraining organization and is part of the teaching team for White and Awakening in Sangha at East Bay Meditation Center in the San Francisco Bay Area. His writing appears on his blog Cosmology of Whiteness, as well as Medium and Huffington Post.
Teaching focus
Gregory Mengel's teaching focus, drawn from the source profile, sits in the Insight tradition. Several threads come up: dharma applied to social and collective suffering;. On talks, the style is closer to thinking-along than presenting. Gregory Mengel works with whatever shows up in the room rather than reading from notes, which is part of why these talks land as conversational instead of scripted. Short pauses, longer sits, and questions that come back to direct experience are usual. The bigger move Gregory Mengel keeps making is back toward attention itself: what's happening, how it's being held, and what gets in the way. That keeps the teaching close to practice rather than drifting into commentary about practice. For talks, schedules, and longer essays, the affiliated organization's page is where the live material lives. Gregory Mengel's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on. Gregory Mengel's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on. Gregory Mengel's sessions tend to keep returning to the body, to breath, and to the felt quality of attention as the steady ground that the rest rests on.
Background
Gregory Mengel teaches in the Insight tradition. The teaching home is East Bay Meditation Center. From the teacher's own profile: Gregory Mengel PhD is an educator and writer working on social and ecological healing. Gregory cofounded Beyond Separation, which offers classes and workshops on racism and the culture of whiteness for white-identified people. He also teaches Untraining White Liberal Racism with the Untraining and is part of the teaching team for White and Awakening in Sangha at EBMC. Gregory's writing can be found at cosmologyofwhiteness.blogspot.com as well as Medium and Huffington Post. In the Insight stream Gregory Mengel works inside, the emphasis is on direct attention to body, feeling tone, and mind, alongside the brahmaviharas and an ongoing investigation of how clinging and aversion arise. Talks tend to be conversational rather than scripted, and there's room for sila and ethics to be talked about as part of practice rather than as a separate topic. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography. Gregory Mengel's page on OMP collects the publicly available bio, the listed affiliations, and any talks tracked through the source archive, and is meant as a directory entry rather than an authorized biography.
Lineage
Gregory Mengel teaches as a lay teacher in the Insight tradition. The institutional home, per the source listing, is East Bay Meditation Center, and that's where most of the public teaching schedule and any retreat offerings will be posted. The Insight lineage in the West runs through teachers like Mahasi Sayadaw, U Ba Khin, Anagarika Munindra, and Dipa Ma into the founders of IMS, Spirit Rock, and the regional centers, and most contemporary Insight teachers position themselves somewhere in that broad family.
What to expect
On a class or retreat with Gregory Mengel, the basic shape is short instruction, longer sittings, and some Q&A. The container is shaped by East Bay Meditation Center, so format details, fees, and access policies follow that organization's norms. Expect plenty of silence, less talking-at-you than you might think, and an emphasis on letting the practice do its work rather than chasing experiences. For exact dates, registration, and any sliding-scale or scholarship information, There's usually a short Q&A window and, on retreats, optional teacher interviews where students can bring specific questions about their practice.
