True Refuge Week: Self-Directed Intensive Practice for MRO Students

True Refuge Week is structured around autonomy within a container—a different model from traditional sesshin. Rather than a fixed schedule of sitting periods and service, you design your own practice rhythm while the monastery provides the infrastructure: morning zazen, liturgy, communal meals, and the presence of other practitioners. This works best for students with some sitting experience and a clear sense of what their practice needs in a given moment.

The Mountains and Rivers Order is the Soto Zen lineage of John Daido Loori, known for integrating intensive practice with artistic and contemplative work. Zen Mountain Monastery, in the Catskills, has been the order's primary training center since the 1980s. The setting itself—a working monastery in the mountains—is part of the container.

With nine people maximum, the retreat stays intimate. You're not anonymous in the zendo; the people around you matter. Morning practice is communal and required. Everything else—how many hours you sit, whether you work in the gardens, how you spend afternoons—is yours to decide. Some people use this for deepening a specific practice; others use it to rest and observe. The structure holds; the content is self-directed.