Boundless Refuge
Dispatch
September 2023
Dear friends,
We have exciting news to share with you!
After over a year of searching, Boundless Refuge has a new home for our 2024 retreat! We have been generously offered a 40-acre property for our use next Spring. It is a 2.5 hour drive north of San Francisco, near the town of Willits. The land is on a mountain surrounded by miles of wilderness sprawling down to the Pacific Ocean. There are two large hand-built brick houses which provide wonderful conditions for retreat practice. There is space for many more yogis than we’ve been able to host the past two years.
This new property resonates with many of the qualities that made our place in the San Juan Islands special: the natural beauty, the seclusion and remoteness, and the intimacy of participating in the ecosystem of beloved land. We aspire to care for the property as an expression of our wholehearted practice, which flows through our retreats and work periods. We extend our deep gratitude to the Bruder family for offering us this space on a pay-what-we-can basis. A portion of all donations we receive will go to them at the end of the retreat.
October 23rd - 29th we will be hosting a Caretaking Retreat on the land. This will be a joyful time of community building as we come together in a shared schedule which combines work on the property with intentional community building, light formal practice, dharma offerings from North, and delicious food. Come and join our makeshift monastery for a week! If you are interested in joining for a shorter period, please consider coming on the final weekend (27th-29th). Let us know by email if you are interested.
We are delighted to announce that we have recently been granted fiscal sponsorship from Off-Grid Retreats, a non-profit founded by David Garcia. We are extraordinarily grateful for the work David has done for Boundless Refuge, including connecting us with the landowners of the new space. Fiscal sponsorship gives us many of the benefits of non-profit status. Now, donations to Boundless Refuge are tax-deductible!
Off-Grid Retreats is a non-profit organization whose mission is to “create a future where individuals from all walks of life can seamlessly integrate nature into their practices.” Boundless Refuge and Off-Grid Retreats both believe that intimacy with nature is a vital component to our spiritual practice individually and collectively. You can learn more about Off-Grid Retreats here.
Donations for Boundless Refuge will now go to Off-Grid Retreats. Please make sure to write “for Boundless Refuge” in the memo.
Both the fiscal sponsorship and the new space, with increased capacity to host up to 20 yogis, represent a major step in the evolution of our dream of offering deep practice to many people. What began as a tiny offering taught in a family cabin is undergoing an organic transformation into what is now Boundless Refuge. The vision is simple: to support people to realize profound peace, freedom, and compassion through the power of deep meditation and to foster warmhearted community along the way.
Applications for the 2024 three-month retreat are open! We have already received a handful of sincere applications. Help us get the word out by sharing this opportunity with your friends and click here to apply. We also offer exploratory calls with North or a past retreatant if you’d like to learn more about the retreat before applying.
In response to our growing community, Boundless Refuge has decided to host a Virtual Sangha on the first Sunday of every month at 10 AM PST/1 PM EST, beginning in October. It will be a chance for the extended family of BR to come together. North will offer some Dharma reflections before responding to practice questions and offerings. The session will close with a short period of meditation, community discussion and offering blessings together. You are warmly invited to join. We will send a Zoom invitation to this a week beforehand.
Finally, Deep Bows to Ned Grenfell, yogi with us in both 2022 and 2023, for working hard all summer to create a stronger foundation for Boundless Refuge. Best wishes to Ned as he heads into a three-month retreat at the Insight Meditation Society and then on to Amaravati Monastery!
We invite you to reach out to us personally at any time by emailing team@boundlessness.org or by simply replying to this email.
Love,
North + The Boundless Refuge Team
