During the first full weekend of the program, August 8-9, we’ll host an open Community Weekend. All are welcome, including kids and families! 

Activities during this weekend will include: 

• An intro to Village Dharma talk by Lama Lekshe 

• Community meals + group projects on the house and garden

• This weekend will also offer a traditional Buddhist blessing ceremony for new babies and families. 

There will be no cost to participate during the day. Overnight stays require booking a room - kids stay free.

This three-day silent retreat begins with a single question: What happens when we stop working so hard to hold ourselves together?

Buddhist practice points toward something most of us have glimpsed, but rarely trusted; that the presence of other beings, the natural environment, the elements, and the ground and sky are a river of energy that we can embody if we decide to. When we settle enough to notice this, the body relaxes. The mind opens into its natural state. The exhausting effort to strive and perform begins very slowly to ease.

Over three days of silence, meditation, dharma teachings and discussion, we’ll cultivate the capacity to rest inside interconnectedness rather than struggle with its apparent complexity. This is a practice for a lifetime, but it begins just like this, with a simple intention to awaken. 

This retreat welcomes both new and experienced practitioners.

• Part 1: Space of Becoming (Aug 14–16) — Standard $250 / Supporter $500 / Sustainer $750

• Part 1 + Part 2: Alchemy of Interconnectedness (Aug 14–20) — Standard $500 / Supporter $750 / Sustainer $1,000

• Note: Part 1 is required to attend Part 2

In Tibetan, a ‘bardo’ is the space between: no longer this, not yet that. We move through bardos constantly:  between sleep and waking, between one chapter of life and the next, between a breath and the one that follows. Most of us move through them unaware.

Without practice, these thresholds can be disorienting. There is nothing in the world that lasts forever, and nothing in this world that is, on its own, ultimately reliable. And yet inside that same groundlessness is something else: possibility, vitality, and the actual experience that things are not as fixed as we think.

In this four-day retreat, we’ll work with the bardos as a living practice; learning to meet these thresholds without flinching, and to find in them not fear, but ease. This retreat  draws on classical Tibetan Buddhist frameworks and is designed for practitioners who want to explore in more depth.

This retreat is a continuation of August 14–16. Full attendance at that retreat is required to join this one.

• Part 1: Space of Becoming (Aug 14–16) — Standard $250 / Supporter $500 / Sustainer $750

• Part 1 + Part 2: Alchemy of Interconnectedness (Aug 14–20) — Standard $500 / Supporter $750 / Sustainer $1,000

• Note: Part 1 is required to attend Part 2