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Young Persons Contemplative Retreat 2004
Conflict
The theme this year was conflict ... heres some of things we did
click here for a left-right brain conflict
Introduction - method of retreat
Introduction to conflict and contemplation
We also did inner journeying using art and drama activities
From Introduction
Method of Retreat
Is not about doing anything, or getting anything - its about understand how things effect you. Notice the way things are. This means paying attention to what your are doing, we are not here to teach you something called Buddhism but to share with you skills that may help you find out for your self what Buddhism is.
The group statement
This is our group. Its success
or failure is up to us. We come together in search of ourselves. What we
have to share is honesty; what we hope to gain is trust. Through expressing
our feelings, hopes and dreams, we can become known to one another. Friendship
and self-understanding are the rewards. We will respect the privacy of each
member by keeping group business within the group. What we see here, what
we say here, what we hear here, let it stay here."
p29 From group exercises for
adolescents by Susan carrell
So its up to you what you want to do, what you
want to attend over this period.
Although I feel excited about the freedom of choice you have this weekend
I need respect for the other people who are willing to attend the session.
So please be quiet around the retreat centre and perhaps ask yourself why
you do not want to attend something. Anyway more about this later.
We played these warm up games
up in the air game and desert island menu game - more info here
jelly baby tree more info here
Introduction to Conflict and Contemplation
What is contemplation?
Contemplation is way of looking at the way things are. Its away of actively investigating what is going on - to be a detective - a explorer. Its like looking into a still pond – you see your reflection yet the pond is still – it reflects everything back to you but its does not change its nature. Your essential nature is unmoving and yet we get caught up in the ripples - contemplating help us to know the ripples and not caught up in them.
What Ajahn Chah says about contemplation
So we can start to contemplate the conflict by looking at where the word comes from and what it means.
what is conflict? any ideas?
I always like looking the etymology of a word - where does that word come
from
click
here to find out
and the dictionary define it as
So what "strikes together" in a conflict?
Bring to mind a situation you
were in recently where there was conflict
what were your feelings then? - click here for some feelings we came up
with
In that situation - what did you need yourself? click here for some needs we came up with
So how does this link into Buddhism?
From my experience conflict arises when we either want something or don't want something and we clinging to a result for that thing to happen.
OR
If on the other hand we are able to let the result of whether we get something or don't want something not concern us then from my experience no conflict arises.
Living with the cobra by Ajahn Chah
the four noble truths by Ajahn Sumedho
Inner Conflict
In order to get some perspective on Inner Conflict we spent the morning in silence - we started off with doing some feldenkrais and then went on to do short periods of meditation, either sitting or walking.
here some question we asked about the meditation session
Conflict Resolution
We had a NVC trainer come in and run a session. We thought up in examples in small groups and then used the NVC technique to see how we could improve our communication. Some of the groups acted out the scenarios to the rest of the group.