Meditation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
It’s true, I’ve been slacking on my meditations, since the summer really. \u00a0I went to a wonderful place in Portland a few times called Maitripa<\/a>, where you can actually get a Degree in Meditation. \u00a0But barely every other week. \u00a0I’ve been wanting to do a longer meditation for some time now, and was looking at the Green Gulch Zen Center<\/a> out in California about a year ago. \u00a0they do great three month farming \/ meditation retreats. \u00a0I did a shorter Zen retreat in Cambridge, and man, Zen is tough. \u00a0So maybe it’s good I never did the program at Green Gulch. \u00a0(As an aside, Tassajara, a sister center to Green Gulch, has has one of the best cookcooks I’ve ever used, Tassajara Cooking<\/a>. \u00a0If you live on the West Coast, it’s usually pretty easy to find in used bookstores.) \u00a0I really wanted to do the November Course at Kopan Monastery <\/a>in Nepal, which would be a perfect continuation of my experience at Tushita<\/a>. \u00a0Unfortunately, getting to Nepal can be tricky, and very very costly.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n So then I was thinking maybe I can turn hiking the Appalachian Trail into an extended meditation retreat. \u00a0Walking is often performed as a type of meditation in both the Tibetan and Zen traditions, and I will be hiking mostly in isolation. \u00a0The purpose of any meditation is to simply be aware of what you are doing and your surroundings. \u00a0I think it would be amazing to be aware of every step along that trail.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n I realize there is a certain inherent conflict between wanting to finish the hike and meditating; meditation is not about accomplishing anything, while hiking is. \u00a0Well kind of, hiking is also about hiking, so maybe it will work out.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Meditation. \u00a0 It’s true, I’ve been slacking on my meditations, since the summer really. \u00a0I went to a wonderful place in Portland a few times called Maitripa, where you can actually get a Degree in Meditation. \u00a0But barely every other week. \u00a0I’ve been wanting to do a longer meditation for some time now, and was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[18,33],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intent","tag-cooking","tag-meditation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.matthewmosher.com\/appalachia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}