Eli Susman was a fairly experienced meditator when he attended a month-long retreat at Plum Village, a Buddhist monastery in Southern France in 2017.
The UC Berkeley PhD candidate in clinical science had been on other retreats where participants spent most of their time meditating. So he was surprised when he saw that the daily Plum Village retreat schedule included only 30 minutes of formal seated meditation a day.
Midway through the retreat he decided to extend one of his sessions, sitting beneath a tree for three hours. Later, he ran into a monk named Brother Treasure and told him about his practice. The monk’s response was not what he expected.
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.