Additional Logistics of the Home Retreat_2

Planning your meals before starting your retreat will help support sense restraint by limiting this arena of choice each and every time you need to eat. Shop for your food before the retreat begins. Cook and freeze ahead of time. Try to eat at the same time each day. Reflect on and/or chant your gratitude for the food you are about to eat. In all respects, limit choice. Keep it simple. Just cook what is scheduled, eat with careful sati, and clean up with as much continuous sati-sampajañña as possible. You might choose to take the Sixth Precept. Try not to admonish or criticize yourself or others if agreements aren’t holding. Adapt and move on. Keep it simple and try to stay focused.

Work is challenging in a different way and could be more difficult than at home. Unless you work in a very special place and with very special people the fact that you are doing a Home Retreat will not mean anything to your boss or your work team. Telling them might, in fact, make you appear strange and suspect and could affect their ability to see you skillfully in the future. It will be best to do your work as you normally would. And, as often as possible, commit to five minutes of practice every hour. How? You could make your commute or the walking to your work station an opportunity of starting and ending your workday mindfully. During the day leave your work situation and go to the bathroom mindfully, take a flight of stairs or a walk to the tool shed as an opportunity of walking meditation during a break. Turn your chair away from your desk or put your tool down and sit or stand quietly. To take a break walk mindfully to the refrigerator or water cooler, make your lunch an exercise in eating meditation. In other words, there are many ways a

Munindra

person on Home Retreat can subtly and silently make room for practice during the workday. What is important to try and create is a field where you visit your practice and your commitment to the Home Retreat as often as possible while sustaining an integrity to your work. Remember that while at work, we are fitting in our Home Retreat with work.

Planning your meals before starting your retreat will help support sense restraint by limiting this arena of choice each and every time you need to eat. Shop for your food before the retreat begins. Cook and freeze ahead of time. Try to eat at the same time each day. Reflect on and/or chant your gratitude for the food you are about to eat. In all respects, limit choice. Keep it simple. Just cook what is scheduled, eat with careful sati, and clean up with as much continuous sati-sampajañña as possible. You might choose to take the Sixth Precept. Try not to admonish or criticize yourself or others if agreements aren’t holding. Adapt and move on. Keep it simple and try to stay focused.

Work is challenging in a different way and could be more difficult than at home. Unless you work in a very special place and with very special people the fact that you are doing a Home Retreat will not mean anything to your boss or your work team. Telling them might, in fact, make you appear strange and suspect and could affect their ability to see you skillfully in the future. It will be best to do your work as you normally would. And, as often as possible, commit to five minutes of practice every hour. How? You could make your commute or the walking to your work station an opportunity of starting and ending your workday mindfully. During the day leave your work situation and go to the bathroom mindfully, take a flight of stairs or a walk to the tool shed as an opportunity of walking meditation during a break. Turn your chair away from your desk or put your tool down and sit or stand quietly. To take a break walk mindfully to the refrigerator or water cooler, make your lunch an exercise in eating

meditation. In other words, there are many ways a person on Home Retreat can subtly and silently make room for practice during the workday. What is important to try and create is a field where you visit your practice and your commitment to the Home Retreat as often as possible while sustaining an integrity to your work. Remember that while at work, we are fitting in our Home Retreat with work.

Munindra

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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. Samapajañña 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