Weeding Your Garden: A Half-Day Retreat on Right Effort
with nico hase
Saturday, June 12, 2027 · 10 am to 1 pm Pacific time
What’s growing in your mind today wasn’t entirely your choice. What grows there tomorrow can be.
Right Effort is the part of the path that takes that seriously. It’s fourfold, and it reads like tending a garden: keep the weeds from taking root, pull the ones already growing, plant what you want there, and protect what’s begun to flourish.
It’s patient work. The gardener doesn’t strain toward a finish line — what you pull and what you feed, day after day, is what eventually grows.
What We’ll Explore Together
In this half-day online retreat, nico explores the Four Right Efforts: the balanced energy that keeps a practice alive across seasons. We’ll look closely at what to weed and what to feed in our own minds, and find the kind of effort you can keep returning to because it sustains rather than depletes.
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 sixth 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
“With his PhD in counseling psychology and his decades-long commitment to meditation and dharma practice, nico brings a unique depth and perspective to his mentoring and teaching. Working with him can help you make real changes, right now, in the midst of your busy life.”
— Judson A. Brewer, MD PhD, Director of Research and Innovation, Brown University Mindfulness Center
Registration & Payment
Date: June 12, 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.