Over Labor Day weekend I went on a retreat with the SPUDS led by Tucker Peck, similar to past years. It was awesome. I meditated on the breath and also on the “bouncy zen”/zen spontaneity pointed to by the expansion & contraction paradigm Shinzen Young talks about. I also looked at mixing awareness with all levels of being and also having those levels seen as expressions of awareness. I found that I was able to sit more still than I have in past retreats. Post retreat, I felt inspired to go back & look at aspects of traditional dharma I may have ignored. For instance, I had never previously considered taking the precepts or trying to practice right lifestyle in ways that would inconvenience me. Instead, I had considered that there must be modernized & pragmatic versions of all these traditional methods but somehow these interpretations have always ended up being what feels good & what is most convenient (go figure). With the returned...
At the intersection of deep meditation, growing up, and mood disorder.