San Juan River Retreat

Spend eight minutes with me on my 10-day journey down the San Juan River in early May, 2010.

There were just seven of us on this meditation / wilderness retreat with two teachers from the Vipassana tradition. For me, it was a truly transformative experience. Except for the necessary speech to be safe on the rapids and manage logistics, this was a silent retreat. But rather than make a silent video, I've added music to reflect both the mood of the river and the feeling of revelation with the outside and inside world.

This is a high resolution video and so it's very large. The best way to view it is to download the file and play it locally, fully expanded on your monitor. On a Windows PC, right click here and save the file to a location you can get to later. Once the download is complete, find, double-click the file and expand to full-screen viewing. You Mac people know your equivalent. Downloading the file can take quite a while, depending on your connection speed.

Alternatively, you can view the still photos below. It will be must faster (you instant-gratification-seeker you!) but you'll miss the soundtrack.


My deepest gratitude to Johann Robbins for organizing and co-teaching this amazing wilderness, whitewater, silent (mostly) retreat, to the sweet sangha of Deborah who is morning light, Alice who is pure goodness, Gary who is one with the river, Nick, my wonderful rowing sensei, and finally to Eric Kolvig for his profound wisdom and life-long dedication to the liberation of all.