Additional Logistics of the Home Retreat

The first things to determine are when best to do your retreat, how long you can commit and whether or not you can find others to do a parallel retreat with you. Much can be accomplished in a week or a ten day Home Retreat. However, shorter periods of time, even just one day, can also be extremely valuable.

Not everybody has the luxury of living alone and having the free time to easily go on a formal residential retreat or to plan and do a Home Retreat. Most of us have domestic partners, children, roommates, and/or aging parents living with us, not to mention pets, guests, and any number of obligatory social responsibilities that create functional difficulties in planning and following through with a Home Retreat. And, there are also those of us who work and can’t take time off which adds another layer of complications and planning. Yet, it is precisely these life factors that if addressed with skill and follow through will provide the opportunities for Wisdom and wholesome habit to become second nature.

In fact, in many ways this Guide is written for you.

Munindraji, while staying with a senior and very committed yogi who fit

the above description, wisely taught her how to make her domestic life a segment of her practice. He taught her that while caring for her three children as a single parent, she could use the time while washing the dishes, or walking to the laundry room, etc. as periods of active walking or dishwashing meditation. Meditation in motion. Meditation as life presents itself.

Additional Logistics of the Home Retreat

The first things to determine are when best to do your retreat, how long you can commit and whether or not you can find others to do a parallel retreat with you. Much can be accomplished in a week or a ten day Home Retreat. However, shorter periods of time, even just one day, can 2also be extremely valuable.

Not everybody has the luxury of living alone and having the free time to easily go on a formal residential retreat or to plan and do a Home Retreat. Most of us have domestic partners, children, roommates, and/or aging parents living with us, not to mention pets, guests, and any number of obligatory social responsibilities that create functional difficulties in planning and following through with a Home Retreat. And, there are also those of us who work and can’t take time off which adds another layer of complications and planning. Yet, it is precisely these life factors that if addressed with skill and follow through will provide the opportunities for Wisdom and wholesome habit to become second nature.

In fact, in many ways this Guide is written for you.

Munindraji, while staying with a senior and very committed yogi who fit the above description, wisely taught her how to make her domestic life a segment of her practice. He taught her that while caring for her three children as a single parent, she could use the time while washing the dishes, or walking to the laundry room, etc. as periods of active walking or dishwashing meditation. Meditation in motion. Meditation as life presents itself.

Home

Glossary

Right Intention (sammā-sankappa): The Noble Eightfold Path. Bhikkhu Bodhi. Chapter Three.

Munindraji: 1. Was an Indian lay teacher most often associated in the West as being Joseph Goldstein’s and Dipama’s teacher. His impact on how Theravada Buddhism is understood in the West cannot be overstated. In the book Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra, 2010, by Mirka Knaster the reader is given a most extraordinary example of how to live a Home Retreat as a layperson. allan cooper.

Vikāla-bhojanā veramanī sikkhāpadam samādhiyāmi’, I undertake the Precept to refrain from eating at the forbidden time (i.e., afternoon till the sun rises the next day). I will eat with an attention towards sustenance with applied mindfulness and clear comprehension during all drinking and eating.

See template in index.

Sati-sampajañña: 1. Sati and sampajañña are two terms combined to mean one thing. Sati is the function of the mind that can bring meditative focus on any conscious object and get to know it without self-referencing or preference. Sampajañña is the wholesome attempt to understand what an object is. Without sampajañña sati is simply a function of the mind without understanding. Sampajañña without sati is speculation. Combined these mental functions can de-condition and reorient the mind towards freedom from unwholesome patterns of mind, speech and action. allan cooper 2. Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. MN:10.

Sampajañña: Clear Comprehension: 1. Attending to four categories of attention: Purpose, Suitability, Domain, and Reality. allan cooper. 2. The Heart of Buddhist Meditation, Nyanaponika Thera. 3. Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. MN:10.

Spiritual friend (kalyānamitta): 1. SN 45:2 Upaddha Sutta. 2. Access to Insight, Admirable Friendship: kalyanamitta. 3. In common usage ‘a spiritual friend.’ In a traditional sense it means a teacher or a knower of the way. allan cooper

Right View (sammā-ditthi): 1. The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering, Chapter Two. Bhikkhu Bodhi.

Abbreviations in footnotes: AN: Aṅguttara Nikāya, DN: Dingha Nikāya, MN: Majjhima Nikāya, SN: Saṃyutta Nikāya