You might be sitting on a hillside in Summer, or tumbling in a car wreck, or being kissed, or hearing a song, when suddenly everything changes. Making yourself available to this awakening depends on the the freedom that comes from knowing who you really are.

The Book of Serenity is collection of 100 koans and poems, which was assembled for Yelu Chucai, a minister of Ghenghis Khan. The book was lost in the wars and rewritten and when it finally arrived out on the steppes, the ministers sat up all night in a yurt reading and discussing it.

Centuries ago, Bodhidharma, the founder of Zen in China, traveled the mysterious journey from India.
Students, for years, would pose the classical question: Why did he come from the West? That question,
fundamentally, is our question. Why are we here?

In this retreat we will invite our Ancestors, in the largest sense, to join us and let us know where they have been traveling this past year. We all have ancestors whom we might want to come to terms with, or forgive or celebrate or ask a blessing of.