• Date: Sunday 5th July 2020
• Partial attendance is fine – Come and go as you like.
• This retreat is suitable for beginner meditators, but primarily oriented towards intermediate meditators.
• Cost: Free – Donations are happily accepted but not expected.
• Email with Zoom link will be sent out day before retreat. 
• We’ll meet using the online video-call software Zoom.

Time

• In the US:
  • 9am to 7:30pm EDT
  • 8am to 7:30pm CDT
  • 7am to 5:30pm MDT
  • 6am to 4:30pm PDT

• In Europe:
  • 2pm to 00:30am London
  • 3pm to 1:30am Paris

Overview

We will be opening up to resting into open awareness.

Practice Technique

The suggested practice is the inquiry “What is rest?”. What is rest is a way of inquiring and resting into experience as it is. You are totally free to practice a different technique if you prefer.

Second Lecture plus guided meditation

Lecture on emptiness, and resting into open awareness.

Walking Meditation

Brief walking meditation instruction will be offered. Most hours will consist of a 20 minute walking meditation session and a 40 minute seated meditation session. Also self-guided yoga can be done in lieu of walking meditation during those 20 minute periods.

Yoga (optional)

Cedric will guide an hour long Yoga session. The Yoga routine will be made up of two sequences. The first is based on the “how to grow a lotus” sequence which is specifically designed to help with long meditation sitting. The second sequence is Tibetan Sun Moon Yoga which supports deep meditative experience.

This retreat is suitable for beginners.

Inquiry can be weird at first. People get it more quickly once they have a background of meditation. So for that reason it is a bit better suited for intermediate meditators with 100 hours of meditation. However Shinzen’s “feel rest” technique will be taught as a way of contextualizing the “what is rest?” inquiry. “Feel rest” is suitable for beginners. This can be the default practice if the inquiry practice doesn’t work.

Partial attendance, coming and going, etc.

You can come and go whenever you like based on your availability and interest. (The Europeans likely can’t attend the full retreat.) Full participation will yield the most powerful result, however.

Misc:

The schedule is similar to a Zen retreat schedule.

We’ll chant the Hakuin’s Song of Zazen at the beginning and end of the day. https://www.thezensite.com/ZenTeachings/Translations/Song_of_Zazen.htm

At the beginning of each sit we’ll chant the Mantra “gate gate para gate para sam gate bodhi svaha!”. This means “Gone, gone, gone totally gone, enlightenment, svaha!” Chanting is very powerful and strongly recommended.

To sign up:

Please fill out this google form with you email. I will email you the day before the class starts with the Zoom links for the two time slot options. You’ll be able to choose which ever one is most convenient.

Sign-up for “What is Rest?” retreat

It’s recommended to come to all classes. But, it’s no big deal if you miss one and then pick up the next class.

Feel free to forward this to friends who might find this class beneficial.