Ten Things Not to Say Today: A Half-Day Retreat on Right Speech
with devon hase
Saturday, March 13, 2027 · 10 am to 1 pm Pacific time
We speak all day without watching ourselves do it.
The words are out before you know it. And by then they’re already working in someone else’s nervous system: in a marriage, an email, or a country.
The tradition is exact about it. Right Speech is fourfold: don’t lie, don’t speak in ways that divide people from each other, don’t speak harshly, don’t fill the air with idle talk. Four plain instructions, plainly difficult to live by.
That difficulty is the practice. Speech is where your inner life stops being private and starts landing on everyone within earshot.
What We’ll Explore Together
In this half-day online retreat, devon explores Right Speech across its four classical forms — truthfulness, harmony, kindness, and restraint. We’ll slow speech down to the point where we can feel what’s true before it becomes a sentence, and notice the cost of the words we spend without thinking.
The morning begins with an opening conversation around the theme, followed by lightly guided sitting and walking practice, and closes with a dharma talk and time for questions.
A Full Path of Practice—Rooted in Community
🪴 Monthly Half-Day Retreats – This is the third in an annual series of eight online half-days offered by Refuge of Belonging, a dharma community rooted in presence and open to all.
🪴 The Eightfold Path – The Buddha’s eightfold path is the heart of the practice: eight interwoven factors, from view and intention to mindfulness and concentration, that together form a complete way of living and waking up.
🪴 devon + nico – Refuge of Belonging’s guiding teachers lead the series together, trading off and teaching in pairs across the year, bringing both monastic depth and a grounded, contemporary voice to the path.
What People Are Saying
“devon has been an absolute lifeline for me through times of difficulty and through times of growth. She has a deep, experiential knowledge of meditation, and an incredible knack for finding solutions to issues in practice and in life. I leave every session with her happy and excited about my practice.”
— Justin Ralph, Musician & Project Manager, Toronto, ON
Registration & Payment
Date: March 13, 2027
Time: 10 am to 1 pm Pacific time
Format: Online via Zoom
We offer these half-day retreats on a dana model. The suggested donation is $40 to $120 per session. We gratefully accept contributions of greater or lesser amounts, based on your resources.