For the past year, Devin Maroney and I have been a teaching team. We're very temperamentally different, and we trained with radically different teachers. Sometimes, when someone asks us a question in a Q&A session, we will each give opposite answers!
Practitioners seem to appreciate this. It's so important to hold polarity and paradox with a light heart -- to recognize that there's never one dogmatic answer when it comes to practice.
We're leaning into one of our favorite polarities -- effort and effortlessness -- at an upcoming retreat, The Path of the Restful Warrior, March 12-15 at Seven Oaks Retreat in Madison, Virginia. Registration is here.
People are sometimes surprised to learn that there's room for a warrior-like approach to meditation. Buddhist literature is full of metaphors about vanquishing enemies. Sometimes in practice, I have imagined myself like someone trying to make my way through a thick and unforgiving jungle: machete in hand, clearing a path with each swing of the blade.
Of course, meditation can also offer us the clarity that there is absolutely nothing we need to do. There's no thick jungle; there's only open sky. Practice can be the place where we drop all our effort and discover the clear, luminous, undisturbed nature of this moment.
We'll be savoring this territory together in the beautiful foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. We hope you'll consider joining us, and even bringing a friend along -- whether they're a seasoned or new meditator. Scholarships are available.
Love,
Ellen + Devin
Ellen + Devin
https://www.downtowndharmadc.org/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "IMCW Downtown Dharma social/volunteer listserv" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to downtowndharma+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/downtowndharma/34918f10-5a73-4ddd-856f-f922e904800an%40googlegroups.com.
0 comments:
Post a Comment