My First Retreat – Part 3

This is Part 3 of a series of 3 articles.   For Part 1: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-1-of-3-a-zen-sesshin-at-rocky-mountain-ecodharma/ For Part 2: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-2-of-3/ …continued: Morning 3: This was the last day, a short day. And in everything, I “relaxed”… in a “bad way.” I think that one factor was a personal or internal one: all of the praise I got during Dokusan…

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My First Retreat (Part 2 of 3)

This is Part 2 of a series of 3 articles.   For Part 1: https://secularbuddhism.org/2017/10/12/my-first-retreat-part-1-of-3-a-zen-sesshin-at-rocky-mountain-ecodharma/ …continued: Day 2: We woke up at 5AM (successfully!), chanted, and sat (zazen). I couldn’t tell you much about what came up during that specific sit, but I do recall that most other retreat attendees took full advantage of any breaks to…

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Meditating With and For Each Other

While meditation retreats have always been challenging, rewarding, and in some ways, deeply moving experiences for me, I believe that they don’t sufficiently foster two key aspects of our practice: our ethical, socially-conscious engagement in the world and our active participation in sanghas. In a previous blog post I raised concerns about the negative effect…

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