WEST BATH — “Working with Emotions,” a public talk and workshop with Bill Karelis, is planned Dec. 6 to 8 at Dzogchen Mediation Center.

People often have a conflicted and confused relationship with their emotions, say retreat organizers. “For instance, when they fall in love, then all kinds of internal complications can arise — we wonder whether we are too much in love, or if we express our love fully, and how can we synchronize our feelings with our actions altogether. The same kind of confusion applies to our relationship with our anger, our jealousy, our pride or poverty mentality, and our ignorance.”

In this talk and workshop, Karelis will describe how the sitting practice of meditation may help to clarify one’s relationship with emotions. “When we better understand the workings of our mind and heart, then we can learn from each life situation. Emotions are workable, and we can make a good and fruitful life path by working properly and fully with our emotional experience.”

An open house and free talk will kick off the weekend on Friday, Dec. 6, at 7 p.m.

The cost for the weekend is $165, which includes lodging. Commuters pay $100.

Scholarship and work study available on request.

The Dzogchen Meditation Center is located at 4 Armstrong Way.

For more information or to register, visit www.dzogchenmeditation.com or call 607- 3392.

Karelis was born in Boston in 1947 and graduated from Harvard in 1969. He worked in business for many years while training in Buddhist meditation and studied with several meditation masters from Tibet. He was asked to present the Buddhadharma by his root teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, for the first time in 1977. In the 1990s Karelis began traveling the world in that capacity, helping to establish meditation programs in more than 100 prisons. His book, “Living Life Fully — Finding Sanity and Goodness in the Unpredictable,” is available at www.Shambhala.com.