sand 2015

Well just got back from SaND 2015 and found it pretty interesting. There were some people from this forum there who I would rather not have seen and disrupted parts of my experience, which was interesting albeit no less unacceptable to me how that happened. I find it interesting that there was no apology given towards me when the situation is that a person (myself) spent thousands of hours of their life arduously attempting to be successful on the cushion, have this as the only potentially meaningful thing in their life, look for a modicum of motivation and affirmation, and are turned away for shallow and inaccurate approximations of what their intentions must be. This is pretty interesting to me given that the problems encountered by these people are in most likelihood downright mild, and were able to be solved/digested through a practice that has been relatively fluent. For me this is a sharp, obvious contrast with the people who have had no hope, fellowship or even company alongside a rigid structure of difficulty built into their body. But what would the former group do without their retreats and conferences that are retreats - not. I wonder how does that question even come up? draw your own conclusions

Other than that the conference was pretty positive and filled with a lot of friendly people