Values, Trainings & Commitments
At CS we live in community guided by our Values, Mindfulness Trainings, and Community Commitments. These are drawn from Buddhist ethics and other wisdom traditions, student feedback, and our staff’s combined decades of experience living in contemplative communities.
Our Values
Our values are a guiding force that help us bridge the gap between the world we live in and the world our hearts long for. While there are many more values we care about, these are ones we feel most inspire and drive the ethos of Contemplative Semester:
Inherent goodness: We practice seeing the good in each of us, choosing the most generous interpretation of each other's actions, seeing even harm as a tragic expression of unmet needs.
Both/and: We aim to hold multiple truths at once, fostering both unconditional love and ethical accountability, agency and surrender, gentleness and fierce courage, devoted effort and rest
Interdependence: Our lives are intertwined with all beings, our suffering and freedom bound together.
Agency: We honor our power and choice in service of unbinding ourselves from the conditioning of blame, shame and helplessness that perpetuate the delusion of separation.
Integrity: We support one another in discovering and embodying what is true and most important to each of us, and welcome loving, honest feedback to help us live our deepest values and aspirations in the world.
Vulnerability: We speak from our direct experience, naming our feelings and needs, and in so doing build trust that we matter to each other.
Wonder: We celebrate a sense of awe at the unfathomable beauty and vastness of ourselves, each other and this cosmos that can never be fully known.
Embodiment: We prioritize our body’s wisdom, and celebrate consent, movement and nonverbal communication as vital tools for self-expression and connection.
Joy: Collective liberation is serious work and we also suspect it is impossible without lightness, laughter, and play.
Mindfulness Trainings
The Mindfulness Trainings, drawn from 2600-year-old Buddhist ethical precepts, are how we aspire to live our values on a daily basis. They are called “trainings” because they are a deep and life-long practice. In participating in the Contemplative Semester, we consent to taking on these trainings as a daily practice. Throughout the semester we inquire into what these trainings mean for each of us, and support each other to keep coming back to them as a “north star.”
Please note the variation in our “off-retreat” and “on-retreat” trainings. During retreat weeks, we will all practice with the on-retreat trainings. During off-retreat weeks, we each choose between continuing to practice with the on-retreat trainings, or adopting the modified off-retreat trainings.
Off-Retreat Trainings
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to protect life.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to take only what is offered to me.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to use my sexuality wisely and to protect relationships.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to speak truthfully and kindly.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment not harm myself or others through the use of intoxicants.
On-Retreat Trainings
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to protect life.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to take only what is offered to me.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to be celibate while on retreat.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to speak truthfully and kindly.
Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to not use intoxicants while on retreat.
Community Commitments
On CS, showing up for our personal growth and showing up for the community are inextricably linked. To co-create a special, sacred environment that supports both our personal and collective learning and wellbeing, we make the following commitments to ourselves and one another:
Sobriety
While fully respecting the range of relationships we may have to alcohol and drugs in our lives, we commit to support our mindfulness practice and protect the community container by not using intoxicants, or being under the influence of intoxicants, while on campus for the duration of the semester.
Attendance
The program at CS was designed over years of experiential learning and reflection on how to support young people’s growth, freedom and inner-peace. Each class period, meditation, small group, and community meeting matter, and build on each other to create the uniquely integrated community learning experience that CS is. We commit to attend as much of the CS program as we can, barring illness or unforeseen emergencies.
Technology
At CS we have an extraordinary opportunity to free ourselves from the grip of addictive technology and prioritize deep relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth. To embrace this opportunity, we commit to be device-free for the first two weeks of the program, and during all retreat weeks. Off retreat we use devices only in designated “tech areas,” which do not include the dorms, and we leave devices in the tech areas when not using them. Tech areas include media & computer-based art creation space, private “call rooms” for zoom calls, and the gym. We can take our phone from the designated tech area to go on a walk to talk with friends and family.
Yogi Jobs
At CS we all have a yogi job. This is an opportunity to practice mindfulness in action. Examples of yogi jobs: Dust Buster (floor sweeping), Vegetable Ninja (veggie chopping), or Dish Diva (dish washer). We commit to do our yogi job for the duration of the program. If we don’t like our job, we can switch jobs throughout the program.
Communication & Conflict
We commit to be courageous in how we address the inevitable tensions, triggers and conflict that arise living in community. While CS has no space for deliberate violence or manipulation, we welcome other kinds of conflict as precious opportunities to grow and deepen connection.
With any relational conflict, we seek to let go of the impulse to blame, shame, or disconnect from others or ourselves, recognizing we are all learning. We commit to explore our own role in contributing to the conflict, knowing the other person is doing the same. And we commit to work towards reconciliation and forgiveness, including by speaking directly with the other person, using conflict transformation tools offered in the curriculum, and talking about the conflict with others only to support our reconciliation process.
Click here for our Policies: Justice & Inclusion, Essential Eligibility Criteria, Risk Management.
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