Sat, August 29, 10am - 1pm
Spirit Rock Meditation Center
Online

The Buddha's teachings are populated with subtle non-humans: nāgas who guard sacred waters, devas inhabiting ancient trees, and spirit beings of many forms dwelling throughout the human and animal worlds and beyond. These were not metaphors to the early Buddhists. They were neighbors. With deep listening and "don't know mind," we can recover this animist worldview that suffuses our tradition. Offering respect to subtle beings cultivates relational intelligence, humility, and the wisdom of interbeing. Drawing directly from sutta sources, we explore how the Buddha engaged a living, responsive cosmos, and what it means to meet that cosmos again in our own practice. Through meditation and teachings on nature practice, we'll develop a felt sense of the ecosystem as a web of conscious presences that interpenetrate our lives in ways both subtle and significant. We are a forest tradition, and the forest is still listening. Are we?