New years Retreat 2012

Just came home from our 2012 New Years retreat!! WOOO! Feeling so tired right now haha but yea, back to this post- This retreat was a lot different from the other ones we had before which were a lot more basic/standard and "fun" based (?). Our retreat was fully based on the theme of "Mindfulness".
When I first heard this, I posed the question in my mind: what is mindfulness(?)- It is when you are attentive, aware, or careful. Like being mindful of your responsibilities or your surroundings, etc.

One of my favourite activities we did was the blindfold... "challenge". We basically got blindfolded and had our sense of sight removed. They created three environments in 3 different rooms. These were environments of places where we were familiar with and go to on a regular basis: the supermarket, the cafe, and the movie theatre. We had to go through these three environments (to buy our specifically assigned produce, to order food and eat it and to ... listen to a movie) blindfolded. It really made us challenge our other senses. We really had to rely on our other senses (mainly touch and hearing) to get around things, but not being able to see made us a lot more aware and careful (mindful) of our surroundings. It really shows how much we take our sense of sight for granted. This activity really opened up a whole new perspective. What we went through was nothing compared to what a visually impaired person would have to go through on a daily basis.

We also talked about intentions. For instance, one of the 5 precepts is not to kill. But for a fisherman, they have to kill because it's their jobs! But it is not... "wrong" even if they violate this precept, because their intentions are not bad. They kill fishes, but not for the sake of killing, but for the sake of survival and to feed their family and to support others. Therefore this is not "wrong". You violate a precept when your intentions are wrong, for instance, drinking for the fun of partying and getting drunk; which violets the precept of no intoxication.

This retreat really gave me more knowledge about dharma and buddism. But besides all those serious talks and learning... It was still SUPA FUN. Trolled Anthony with his pizza boxeption, and messing with his iPhone settings, setting really ugly background and lock screen pictures and locking it for an hour. Also got smacked in the face by Zemil and his spinach and bitten by Anthony whlie trying to feed him popcorn blindfolded. Stupid but fun times... and as usual, serious girl talkzzzz at night till 2 o'clock in the mouunin ~ ♪
HAha, well it was a nice kick off to 2012! Hoping the rest of year goes just as well as this weekend.
New years resolution: To become more mindful, compassionate and to relate Dharma more to everyday life... and to exercise and not procrastinate- but really, who am I kidding with those two resolutions... LOL not happening.