Our first retreat this year in Yangmingshan was something for what we were waiting and preparing to for quite some time.
Definitely being in the space of retreat and doing together as a group practice of ”the Noble Silence” (practice of awareness where silence is a tool for calming the mind through no speaking) brought a lot in each one of us – for participants and also for us teachers/organizers.
Spaciousness, peace and nature. Practices of yoga, meditation and sound healing meditation sessions, took us to the place within ourselves where just simply being is discovered as a hidden treasure. In daily city life it is often very hard to slow down the mind activity enough to become aware of unfolding of the life happening in each and every moment. We are taking for granted almost everything- including our precious human life- and we are unable to notice the fact that unique beauty of single breath is manifestation which appears only for single occasion of this moment – and will never happen again in entire infinitude of time.
Life on automatic pilot is a life which is lacking its meaning. It’s like a seed which never came to become a plant. Never shown its flower of full potential. Almost as sad as a beauty hiding itself in the darkness.
On this retreat we did practices of presence from Yoga and also from Buddhist tradition.
Anja Lang was explaining and guiding us through both methods of the Buddhist meditation: shamatha (”calm abiding meditation”) and vipassana (”insight meditation”). We had sitting and walking sessions of meditation, familiarizing ourselves with way of being, which doesn’t depend that much on constant fluctuations of endless thought, emotions and perceptions.
It was a wonderful training to increase quality of our presence and awareness. A necessary step in order to not be any more a ”slave” of those external to our inner being factors. Coming to retreat was a huge act of kindness towards oneself and towards the world. This act required tremendous courage, those who decided to came for this journey with us can be considered as – in words of Trungpa Rinpoche- ”spiritual warriors”.
What was guiding inspiration for this retreat was the teachings from this amazing, great, very unusual and extraordinary Tibetan master – Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. In particular his explanation about meditation from the book – ”Meditation in Action”. Chogyam Trungpa perhaps most famous book is called ”Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” and his term ” Spiritual materialism” has been used very widely. Highly recommended reading.
here you can see video recordings of his teachings – with brilliance of his speech on the topic of meditation:
We will publish here soon some more inspirational materials, links and readings connected with those practices which we did at the retreat.
Now we are working to prepare next retreat in March. If you are interested please Contact us for more details.
Deepest thanks to all of you who were there with us. May we be well.