My First Month at a Monastery
What is a modern monastery like? Well, my first month at the Monastic Academy was intense. The residents were friendly, and warm and seemed to be natural in a way I hadn’t experienced from many people. They weren’t afraid to be weird, and they seemed less affected by...
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From Academic to Mindful
Here’s a story about when I flew around the world to Vermont and joined a “modern monastery”. Before getting on the plane from Germany to Vermont, USA, I had spent my time studying for a PhD, doing highbrow and needlessly heady stuff. Ironically, while being in the...
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Hair as Practice
Hair. We’ve all got it. For most of us, it’s a fashion accessory at best and a nuisance at worst. But with the right outlook, hair can be turned into a powerful opportunity for spiritual development. Both close shaves and lengthy manes have been used by a wide range...
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The Choiceless Choice
For almost two years, I lived at the Center for Mindful Learning, now located in Johnson, Vermont. It is true that, if given the choice, I would have never gone. But sometimes life is so gracious as to offer us this choiceless opportunity, to step into and out of...
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You Can Do It
"You can do it.” [su_dropcap style="flat" size="4"]T[/su_dropcap]hat’s the mantra that Center for Mindful Learning Founder and Director Soryu Forall gave us residents before embarking for one-and-a-half months of retreat at the Sogen-ji temple in Japan. The phrase...
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Do Contemplative Communities have Room for Social Issues?: Toby’s Conference Hopping Extravaganza
“Engineering Enlightenment & Applied Contemplative Science”: This was the title of one of my favorite talks at the Buddhist Geeks conference that I attended in Boulder, CO this past October. The talk discussed various gadgets that support meditative practice (from...
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Resolution for the New Year
Transcription of New Year's Eve Talk: We come to the end of another year. For many of us, we've spent this entire year together. We began this program just under two years ago, so this was the first complete calendar year that we have functioned as a residential...
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CML is expanding and looking for new residents!
We are building a modern monastery that is socially engaged and economically sustainable. Want to join? On March 1st the Center for Mindful Learning will be moving to beautiful Johnson, VT and expanding our residential program. There we will spend the next year in an...
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What’s really going on here?
[su_dropcap style="flat"]T[/su_dropcap]aking a strictly materialist-scientific point of view, one might come to the conclusion that all that really “exists” is physical matter. [su_quote]Things have independent proprieties and are there if we are looking at them or...
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Six Ways to Enhance Your Mindfulness Practice
Meditation is hard. Sometimes it can be really, really hard. Here are six things you can do to increase the liklihood of practicing every day, or to increase the efficacy of the practice you already do. 1. Resolutions Resolutions are extremely powerful ways to...
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