Home Retreat is when we stop the silent often untenable compromise of trying to fit our spiritual practices into our everyday lives and instead choose to consciously train ourselves toward making our everyday lives just another part of our spiritual life.
Should we commit to that change of perspective Home Retreat is one of the most accessible and useful trainings towards improving that quality of life.
If a householdingyogi aspires to deeper meditative Wisdom, home practice where meditative continuity can occur during everyday life must be seen as a vital part of a spiritual life. Activities at home are not just segments of time when we try to hold our practice together amidst a busy life or seen as just a holding pattern between retreats. Life at home doing our activities of daily living in the context of Home Practiceand the support of Home Retreat offer us the opportunity to cultivate a skillful lifestyle which will deepen our understanding of our meditative Wisdom. Like on retreat, our everyday life molds our mental attitudes and provides opportunities for insight to be realized and strengthened or weakened depending on our intention and follow-through. Home life is a time to give greater attention to the development of various types of skillful means (upāya) to be investigated, developed and mastered. It is a time to learn new techniques and a time to explore new ways of applying and testing meditative wisdom in complex real life situations.
[1]Householding Yogi: One who is not a monastic, lives a lay life and seeks to train the mind towards enlightenment. allan cooper
[2]Yogi: 1. Theravada: The one who trains in the development of concentration. Person who practices satipatthana or samatha meditation. Source: Dhamma Dana: Pali English Glossary. 2. Synonym for meditator. allan cooper
[3] Home Practice: whatever the practice a meditator might have at home. It could be very focused or loose. The criteria for having a Home Practice is how we hold our meditative life. If we hold our spiritual life as our core we can consider our life as having a Home Practice. One who has a Home Practice is inclined to try and improve themselves with attention to virtue, concentration and wisdom. allan cooper
[4] Meditative wisdom: Intuitive insights into the Three Characteristics: impermanence, suffering/unsatisfactoriness, and non-self which leads to freedom from unwholesome patterns of mind, speech and action. allan cooper
