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International Family Retreat
July 28, 2020 - August 2, 2020
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Join monks and nuns from Plum Village, Deer Park, Blue Cliff and Magnolia Grove Monasteries for an online family retreat
Tuesday 28 July to Sunday 2 August, 2020
What if we could bring the nuns and monks of the Plum Village tradition right into our homes? This is the invitation of this online family retreat: to turn our home into Plum Village, Deer Park, Blue Cliff, and Magnolia Grove for six days, so that, as a family, we can sing practice songs together, play games, listen to the Dharma (for kids and parents), practice Dharma sharing, and enjoy tea meditation and Beginning Anew, right where we are at home.
This is an experimental retreat—we’re only just learning how to offer the essence of our family retreats online. Senior Dharma teachers Brother Pháp Dung, Sister Thệ Nghiêm, Sister Đẳng Nghiêm, Brother Pháp Không, Brother Pháp Lưu, Sister Bội Nghiêm and other monks and nuns will offer teachings to parents, teens and children on how to practice mindfulness with our loved ones, how to reconcile conflict, and how to create conditions for happiness and peace in our family. Monks and nuns from centers in North America, Europe and Asia will facilitate sessions for children, with circle songs, games, and central Plum Village practices like mindful breathing, how to become a bell master, pebble meditation, and the Two Promises. We will also have hangout sessions for teens with games and informal sharing.
For more information and to sign up, click here: https://online.plumvillage.org/p/summer-family-retreat
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In his 2013 Dharma talk offered to teachers in Brock University, Ontario, Thich Nhat Hanh set out the first steps for teachers to learn and share the practice of mindful living.
Step one is to embody the practice for ourselves. The second step is to practice with our families:
“The school teacher also has members of their family; a partner or children. So after he has done it for himself, he can help the other person to do the same. It’s much easier. When you have not changed yourself, it’s very difficult to help change the other person, to help him or her suffer less.
With loving speech and deep listening, with more peace and gentleness in yourself, you become more pleasant, and that is why you can help the other person much more easily, and she or he will be able to do the same thing.
We become co-practitioners. We share the same values, we share the same spiritual practice, because we know that each day the situation improves: there’s more peace, less suffering, more joy, more happiness. The children will profit from that, because the children can practice very well also.
And when you have a united harmonious family, then you can bring that into your workplace.”
We at Wake Up Schools are very happy that teachers can enjoy this precious opportunity to practice with their family together with monks and nuns from North America, Europe and Asia.