Touching the Earth (April 13-15, 2012)

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• dorm accommodation
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At this retreat during the month of Buddha's Birthday, Easter, Passover, and Earth Day, we honor and share with each other our multi-rooted inheritance. We identify and heal unwholesome seeds that we have received from our ancestors, and identify and nourish wholesome seeds for the benefit of ourselves, our ancestors and descendants, and the Earth. We inquire into the joys and challenges of multi-rooted practice in our families and our daily lives.

We are the continuation of our ancestors, and our descendants are our continuation. As we water seeds of joy, loving kindness, compassion, and inclusiveness in us, the heart opens, suffering transforms, and we nourish the experience of beloved community embracing and protecting many faith traditions and species on Earth.

During this retreat, we practice with Earth Touchings offered in the  Plum Village Chanting Book and Thich Nhat Hanh's Together We Are One. We also practice with metta/loving kindness meditation, sitting and walking meditation, chi qong, dharma study (sharing and inquiry in small groups), artistic and musical expression, mindfulness in daily life,  and individual and collective beginning anew.

Recommended Texts:

1. Thich Nhat Hanh, Together We Are One

See especially the appendix with Earth-Touching adaptation developed at Deer Park People of Color Retreats, relating Touching the Earth practice specifically to to several traditions)

2. Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ

3. Thich Nhat Hanh, "Peace Begins Here: Israelis and Palestinians

Listening to Each Other"

4. Larry Yang,  "Eight Mindfulness Trainings for Diversity", in

Friends on the Path, edited by Jack Lawlor

Lyn Fine smiles with gratitude to the many wholesome seeds she has inherited from her German-Latvian-Russian Jewish heritage and her Buddhist practice with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and the Plum Village community. She received Lamp Transmission from Thay in August, 1994, in Plum Village, France. Born and raised in New York City, Lyn currently lives in Berkeley, CA., where she enjoys music, nature, her family and friends, and contributing to engaged and applied mindfulness practice through her work with a new nonprofit, Mindful Peacebuilding. Lyn offers retreats and consultation with the Order of Interbeing community and serves on the North American Dharma Teacher Caretaking Council. Her Dharma teaching is informed by her experience teaching English to speakers of other languages, her training in peer counseling (Re-Evaluation Counseling), and her work in New York City coaching teachers and students in resolving conflict creatively, video-documenting the Children of War international youth leadership development program, and developing peace education curricula for Jewish educators. Lyn’s lifetime aspiration to contribute to peacebuilding has been inspired and in part shaped by her experience living in South India in her early 20s, her teaching in Nepal at an Asia Girl Child Peace Camp, and by her friends in Israel-Palestine who practice with Thay’s teachings.

Chau Yoder born in Hanoi, Vietnam, has a deep aspiration to share specific methods of mindful living, emphasizing self awareness in body and mind. An engineer by profession, Chau retired after 25 years as a manager of Information Technology and as an Applied Behavioral Science consultant. Chau received training in mindfulness from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. She is a Dharma Teacher, ordained by Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh in 2003.  Since 1989 she has been offering workshops and classes on Mindful Leadership, Mindful Living and Chi Gung to promote healthy and happy living.  Chau has presented her programs in youth, corporate and retreat environments and the Cancer Support Group in Walnut Creek, CA.  In 2009, Chau completed the training program of Master Ce Hang Truong to be an Integral Taichi Trainer. Chau also coordinates La Boi Press which publishes Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh’s books in Vietnamese, and gives mindful tours to Vietnam with her husband. Chau lives in Walnut Creek, California with her husband Jim to whom she has been married since 1971. They have two adult daughters. Website: www.high-spirits.com

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