The Buddha’s first teaching is often phrased as: “Life is suffering.” Have you ever questioned this teaching or felt confused about how to implement it on your path? Buddhist practitioner, scholar, and writer, Steven Batchelor, shifts this phrase to: “Suffering is to be embraced.” While in the depths of your own suffering, have you ever asked yourself: how can this experience heal and liberate me? How can my own suffering make me whole? If so, this weeklong retreat is for you.

Lama Liz Monson, and special guest Robert Heffernan, engage the healing power and potential of our own darkness. Discover how, when we encounter suffering (our own and others) deeply and lovingly, our troubling emotions, experiences, and pains become portals not only to personal freedom, but also to a recognition of the truth of suffering, not as a condition of despair, but as a vital, living process of healing, joy, and freedom. Plumb the darkness to discover the diamonds of insight, compassion, and awakening that lies dormant within us, awaiting our attention and gentle presence.

As part of this retreat, engage with Buddhist rituals of reconnection, love, and healing, as well as with freshly envisioned, creative practices, to honor and harness the energies of suffering as openings through which the light of joy and possibility can shine. Learning to walk through the valley of our own shadow, with the support of engaged actions of renewal, can help us reconnect to the world of light, beauty, and joy without denying, suppressing, or othering the fullness of our emotional life. The diamonds shining in our darkness are always sparkling, calling us home. This is the ultimate “shadow practice” retreat!