Manhattan Pilgrimage
with nico + devon hase
Saturday, September 18
10 am to 5 pm
freely offered
In this 13.5 mile pilgrimage devon + nico will guide participants in a meditation walk from the southern tip of Manhattan to the northern tip.
The group will gather at 9:45 at the Statue of Liberty View Point in Battery Park. After a guided meditation, dialogue, and intention setting ritual, the group will walk in silence until lunch.
(For more about nico click here. For more about devon click here.)
During lunch there will be time for casual conversation, followed by a brief meditation, before resuming the silent meditation walk. The pilgrimage will end at Inwood Hill Park, where there will be time for reflections, dialogue, and a brief closing ceremony.
(See below for a map of our route.)
This pilgrimage is open to anyone who can walk thirteen and a half miles at a brisk pace with infrequent stops. No prior meditation experience is necessary.
The day is offered free of charge. In keeping with current New York City guidelines, we ask that participants be fully vaccinated before joining the group. We will maintain social distancing throughout the day. Please click below to register so that we can be in touch about further details.
The world can feel dark these days: unstable, shaky, sometimes horrifying.
So how do we live with all this? And is meditation even a worthwhile response to a world in crisis?
What are we actually doing with this racehorse of a mind every time we sit down and take a look?
I started hearing about the future impacts of climate change when I was in high school in the mid-90s: predictions of fires, floods, heat waves, droughts, rising seas, mass migrations, and the rest.
Fast forward 30 years: the conversation is no longer about what might happen.
Everything is big. Cities are big, highways are big--and emotions? They blow through like a category four typhoon.
what's struck me lately is not so much what we're doing but the raw fact that we're doing it.
Put simply, meditation is an audacious act.
It doesn't really matter what the question is.
The answer is metta,
lovingkindness,
this cultivation of the boundless warmth of the heart.
I think this life is precious beyond measure,
not only because of ponderosas and songbirds,
but because we have this opportunity, this precious opportunity,
to wake up from the dream of suffering,
right here, right now.
Coming out of this yearlong retreat, our maxim has been: do less, slower.
As in, put less on the calendar.
Also, try to accomplish less in a day.
Finally, do less in meditation—less effort, less striving, less accomplishing.
When I was living in a Zen monastery years ago, the phrase I practiced with most often was, "just this."
Only two words. But as I held them in mind, day after day, and then over years, they revealed a world to me.
Since we finished our yearlong retreat a few weeks ago, some friends have been asking what we’re up to.
As in: it looks like we’re still kind of in retreat.
But not.
The confusion is understandable. Maybe I can explain.
It has been over a year since I last posted to this blog. As many of you know, we've spent most of that time in retreat.