Throughout our lives, often without noticing, the Five Elements shape our experience both within us as inner states, and around us as sky, ocean, sun, breeze, and ground. In this autumn retreat, we will explore each element both through outer ritual and inner practice.

Together we will offer a Buddhist sang (fire puja), walk to Grandmother Spring for purification and healing, and engage in meditation practices that invite awareness and transformation.

As we sit with the elements, they reveal different aspects of how we practice and how we experience reality:

• Earth invites us into relationship with the body, posture, and a sense of being grounded and present. We cultivate this through shamatha, or concentration and focused attention.

• Air is the breath and the mind, expressing itself as movement and change. In vipassana practice, we meet either distraction or clarity and peace. Air is pervasive, the mental component of awareness that observes how our mind works.

• Fire is the heat of our passion and intention.

• Water is the cooling energy of lovingkindness and generosity, calming anger and hot emotions.

• Space is awareness itself, open, free, and expansive.

We need all of the elements in balance to stay aligned with our joy and with the good intentions that guide our lives.

In many ancient traditions, the Five Elements are living energies that support our awakening and wholeness. By attuning to them, praying with them, and visualizing them within the pranic, or energy body, we learn to loosen our attachment to fixed versions of self. This opens a path of non-attachment and a spiritual vision of humanness that helps us release what no longer serves us and nourish what we truly wish to grow.

In Buddhism, we are guided by bodhichitta, the awakened heart within every being. This teaching points to our buddhanature, a view that all beings have an infinitely pure and loving essence. From this perspective, our practice is to relinquish whatever keeps us from seeing life through this pure, unconditional presence within us. In retreat, we can touch the elements as living principles that open us to our full potential and invite a non-dual way of being.

Our retreat will include periods of silence, sitting meditation, walking practice, and direct exploration of the elements in nature. We welcome anyone who wishes to explore spiritual practice rooted in Tibetan Buddhism and Indigenous Tsalagi lineages, and those who feel called to experience the magical display of the Five Wisdom Energies.

(Rev.) Andrew is a psychotherapist and Buddhist chaplain, as well as the cofounder and leading teacher at Sarana Institute. He has been teaching spiritual awareness and mindfulness skills for over 40 years, and has trained in depth in Tsalagi (Cherokee) philosophy and practice, along with Tibetan and Zen Buddhist traditions. His greatest joy is teaching the dharma and being in community practice at Sarana Springs with his beloved partner, Angie.