MAITRI RETREATS AND HAMID EBADI – AN EXTRAORDINARY JOURNEY OF ‘COMING HOME’ “Meditation is a bodily practice.” I will never ever forget these words from Hamid as we prepared to start our meditation practice in Monchique, Portugal in a region called the Algarve. I had never been to Portugal and there I excitedly found myself with nine other practitioners (ahem…students…most of us hugely interested dabblers who had not yet developed a consistent practice). Also with us was Miri

Less than a month to our silent meditation retreat in the Serra de Monchique, Portugal. Some of you are making the journey from other parts of the planet just to come and share this week of intense practice with me. I feel gratitude and am humbled for your showing up. To sit still in silence for a week is a rare occasion to recollect body-mind and gather oneself in the presence of greater forces and to sense, at moments when the ripples on the mind calm down, the posture beco

sitting that mirror where we see ourselves and the many worlds as reflections passing . ripples endlessly fading into circles of infinity infinity #ripple #zen #zenpoetry #inity #mirror #retreat

early morning sitting on the edge of a cliff a sea of clouds to watch blooming mountains endlessly drift away #monchique #retreat #sesshin #meditationretreat #clouds

preparing sesshin inside trees there was i born there each time i die that moment when the owl's last call with songs of waking birds entwines quelfes, algarve #zenpoetry #zenpoem #sesshin #retreat #owl #quelfes

your sojourn in silence and stillness the path is a mirror reflects things as they are thathata thusness you as you are now coming here now going nowhere to be on the nowhere path is to be pathless to be pathless is to be in this world but not of this world pria de faro, far, algarve #sesshi #zenpeoms #path #silencepriadefaro #far #algarve #retreat #meditation

one of the more impactful and profound experiences given to us to live is to recollect heart and mind in an intensive period of silent and still sitting. this is a moment when, while attending and caring for whatever unfolds outside, we begin to turn our light inwards, as the buddha encouraged us to do in his last recorded words. to turn our light inwards is another way of speaking of intamacy and homecoming. intimacy means, no one other than you, can take the steps, often st

Sitting through a sesshin is something you need to come and experience for yourself as this is as personal an experience as it gets and no one can tell you beforehand what to expect or not to expect. It's above all about deepening your sense of intimacy with yourself, with the breath that fills your lungs, with the thoughts and emotions that disturb and unsettle you at times, with the walls surrounding you, with those sitting in silence next to you, with the roof that shelter

we passed this gate to reach our place of practice, a towering ganesha greeting us. we sat through an intensive period of meditation knowing little of the tumult unfolding in the world outside. when we ended our retreat and broke silence we found out about the intensified activities of mount agung and its imminent eruption. when you meet the world, your mind quiet and still, you see events in their unfolding, favorable or unfavourable, as they just are: manifestations of impe

Thank you Jennifer Stretton for posting your blog entry about our Bali retreat here below. Five years have passed and we have all become older. Some of us have felt the aging process more acutely though, imagine hitting the sixty-year old point. As we can't run away from impermanence lets hold our nose and warm up to it; a good way of doing that is intense meditation. For those of you who wish to attend our October sesshin Jen's description will give you a feel of the retreat