Hi Friends,

I'd love your support in attending a week-long meditation retreat in the Hudson Valley next month.

Each year around my birthday in September I choose something to mark the occasion, usually an intensive or ceremony of one sort or another. This year I've decided to join some friends on a week-long silent meditation retreat in the Hudson Valley.

If you don't know already, I'm currently living and training at a Buddhist monastery in Vermont. So you might ask yourself: why another retreat? The short answer: because it's fun. The longer answer: It's always great to mix it up, to study with another teacher; and it's also a rare opportunity to practice and study with friends.

To attend this retreat, I've decided to ask friends and family to support my practice. Part of this is simply practical. As a monastic, I have no income and I get by on a modest living stipend, so this retreat would be out of reach without some form of outside financial support.

There's another important part though: there's significance in asking others to support your meditation practice, to support your spiritual path. It means something to take that support on and into the retreat, to know, while you're sitting on the cushion, that people have got your back, and that you are practicing for a wider web of relationships. We're always practicing for a wider web of relationships, whether we realize it or not, but there's something mysterious at play when you make that web of inter-being explicit, direct, tangible.

May All Beings Be Happy,

Matthew