embracing mystery

Below is an overview of the second half of my stay in Asia, from January through April, in India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Japan. I spent most of January through March in southern India engaged in a lively mix of teaching, traveling, and introspection, teaming up with Clayton Barker, a good friend whom I met in Auroville and who has a passion for teaching about peace and sustainability. Highlights of those months included: savoring sweet stillness during a week-long silent meditation retreat at a Buddhist zendo high in the cool, banana-tree covered mountains of Kodaikanal in south-central India; practicing daily morning-to-night yoga, chanting, and meditation for two weeks at a yoga ashram in Kerela (as well as the i llicit fun of sneaking out of the ashram with friends to go swimming in a local lake); offering the Awakening the Dreamer Symposium and the first Symposium Facilitator Training in India, to audiences with people from Brazil, South Africa, Australia, Switzerland, the US, ...

At the start of September I left the San Francisco Bay Area for India. For the past four months I have been living and teaching with a U.S. university program in Auroville – a town in south India "dedicated to human unity." In brief, I loved working with the students this past semester, and I am staying in Asia for at least a couple more months of teaching, meditation, yoga, and travel. I have deep gratitude for the gifts and lessons of India, of Auroville, and of teaching. Read on for more detail and photos, which you can click on to enlarge (thanks to Katie, Ciara, and Abigail for sharing these photos from our journey – my camera stopped working in October). Enjoy! Teaching Until about a week ago, the main focus of my life in India was to serve as faculty for, and live in community with, a group of U.S. college students studying in Auroville for the semester. The program is one of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst accredited, ecovillage-based college education progra...