Dharma Rain - Dharma School Manual

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Overnights

There are monthly overnights for both the high school and middle school groups. (The age groups meet separately.) Overnights take place on a Saturday night before a dharma school Sunday, so the evening and morning flow right into a regular dharma school meeting. This gives the kids an opportunity to spend time together in a relaxed setting for a much longer stretch of time than a dharma school morning. Because there is ample time, the evening can also contain structured and unstructured activities, time with and without the adults participating directly, frenetic excitement and mellow hang-out time, and long hours spent talking with peers. Kids bond with each other and their teachers in a much deeper way than is possible during dharma school.

The evening starts with a vegetarian meal followed by kitchen clean-up. Then the groups usually do something active: go for a long walk or hike, go rock-climbing at a gym, play miniature golf, do a craft project, suspend a trapeze from the zendo ceiling, or have a massive pillow fight. At some point each group will usually do something of a more serious nature, like Fusatsu (see “Kid-friendly Ceremonies”). On occasion the groups have devised their own small ceremonies, done a group process activity, or invited someone from outside to lead a training or workshop. After the serious time, the kids are released, more or less, into whatever they want to do. They may listen to music and dance, watch movies (which can provide a platform for discussion of issues, depending on the movie), drift off to sleep or just hang out and talk.

Generally, the high schoolers are given more unsupervised time than are the middle schoolers. Middle school teachers monitor conversations and behavior more closely in order to gently guide the kids into using right speech, being kind to one another and not excluding anyone. High school teachers put themselves just out of earshot in order to give the youth some much appreciated privacy, often allowing them to talk quietly into the wee hours of the morning. At the same time, one of the reasons the kids are able to relax is because of the safety of the container they are in, and the relatively limited choices available to them: they have to stay on the property, as a group, and obviously there is no driving around the city or any drug or alcohol use. Staying within these limits has rarely been an issue for the students. Teachers protect the precious safety of the overnight environment by checking in frequently, keeping out intuitive feelers, and sleeping where they can keep the sexes appropriately separated after lights out.

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