Wed, Sep 16 · 6:00 PM EDT
For five days at Camp Ocoee, we set aside the demands of daily life and give ourselves fully to practice — sitting, walking, chanting, and silence — together with fellow practitioners.
Silent retreat is different from a single day of sitting. A day can offer a taste of stillness; five days allow that stillness to settle and deepen.
As the schedule holds you and the mind's usual busyness has time to quiet, habitual patterns become visible — and workable. Concentration gathers. Insight arises less as an idea and more as something felt directly in the body. What returns home with you is not just rest, but a subtler and steadier relationship with your own mind.
The teachings offered during the retreat draw from the Pali canon and the Chan tradition, with methods for building concentration, cultivating loving-kindness (metta), and inquiring into the nature of experience. The daily form includes multiple periods of sitting and walking meditation, chanting services, dharma talks, and individual meetings with the teacher. Meals are vegetarian; accommodation is comfortable; the forested lakeside setting supports the practice without becoming its focus.
Gareth Young, Red Clay Sangha's Guiding Teacher, leads the retreat. Gareth holds teaching authority in the Vipassana tradition and has trained extensively in Chan and Zen; his teaching integrates the three, with the Pali suttas and Chan sources as its primary ground.
This retreat is open to both experienced practitioners and those coming to a multi-day silent retreat for the first time. Some prior meditation practice is helpful but not required — clear guidance is offered throughout, and the container of silence itself does much of the teaching. If you've been wanting to give your practice the time and space it deserves, this is the place to do it.
