Saturday, 2-5pm March 28th 2020
Practicing touch we will experience big mind or boundless non-duality —connection between two people. Most touch, as most moments of consciousness, embodies directives and judgments, expressed as, “Go over there.” or “Come over here;” “Calm down,” “Straighten up,” or “Love me.”
We will learn to touch with mindfulness—receiving sensation rather than dispensing directives; sensing rather than judging—as a basis to connect with what is. In the course of this we will discover experientially how helping, fixing, diagnosing, correcting (though at times useful and important) all get in the way of true connection through touch.
In the end we will touch what is Divine in one another.
Please Note: this is a course about conscious touch; participants remain fully dressed and are invited to voice any concerns about inappropriate touching or touch that is disconcerting.
This course most often provides participants with an awesome experience. Though not necessarily a popular course (as is cooking), the actual experience is profound: important for relationship, connection, consciousness studies, meditation, hands-on healing, shifting from your head to your heart and hands.
This Workshop is by donation to both the Austin Zen Center & to Edward Brown
About Edward Espe Brown: Edward has been practicing Zen since 1965 and also has done extensive vipassana practice, yoga, and chi gung. He leads regular sitting groups and meditation retreats in Northern California and offers workshops in the U.S. and internationally on a variety of subjects, including cooking, handwriting change, and Mindfulness Touch. Edward is an accomplished chef, who helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco and worked with Deborah Madison in writing The Greens Cookbook. Edward’s other books include The Tassajara Bread Book, Tassajara Cooking, The Tassajara Recipe Book, and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He also edited Not Always So, a collection of Suzuki Roshi’s lectures. In 2007, Edward was the subject of a critically acclaimed feature-length documentary film entitled How to Cook Your Life