The Wild Edge of Love

Buddhist Rituals of Reconnection to Nature

A BCBS Path Program with Lama Liz Monson

The Wild Edge of Love

Lama Liz Monson

Program Dates: April 4 - August 31, 2025
Application Deadline: January 5, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

In this five-month program, through the creation and enactment of time-honored Buddhist rituals of care and love, we will directly engage the healing power and potential of the troubling emotions many of us experience through daily exposure to the decline and destabilization of the natural world.

Together, we will explore contemplative practices and rituals of renewal and reconnection that have been enacted for many hundreds of years in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. We will also discover the joy and empowerment of creating rituals that honor our emotional being in its bereavement and fear, while also celebrating the dance of life and nature constantly unfurling within us through art, writing, movement, and expression.

Program Overview

Application Timeframe

Applications Close:
January 5, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

Prerequisites

None. Some prior exposure to Buddhist meditation and the healing arts will be helpful.

Experience Level

This program is suitable for beginning and experienced practitioners.

In-Person Program Dates

Retreat I: April 4-9, 2025
Retreat II: August 26-31, 2025

Zoom Gatherings

First Tuesday of Each Month
5:30 - 7:00 PM EST

Small Groups

Participants will meet in monthly small, peer-led groups at a convenient time for group members.

Program Information

Program Context

These days, there is no denying how deeply interwoven we are in the processes of loss and change unfolding around us. Many of us can sense the changes in our natural environments, the loss of biodiversity and healthy patterns of growth that used to unfold organically. Many of us feel these losses every day on a personal and profoundly uprooting and painful level. The emotional fallout of these shifts in the stability of our grounded sense of being can be dramatic, overwhelming, and paralyzing.

This program offers a return to embodied actions of reconnection, love, and healing that honor and harness the powerful energies of grief, sorrow, and anxiety as openings through which the light of joy, love, and possibility can shine. Through both ancient Buddhist ceremonial activities as well as through freshly envisioned, creative ritual practices designed to remind us of our potential to reknit the fraying threads of our experience into wholeness, health, and rejuvenation, we will practice dancing with the powerful energies of impermanence that mark this existence. Walking through the valley of our own shadow, with the support of engaged actions of renewal, remembrance, and beauty can help us return to the world of light without denying, suppressing, or othering the fullness of our emotional life.

As Oscar Wilde reminds us, “where there is grief, there is holy ground.” These words address the call to refashion our relationship to loss into a relationship of sacredness and humility to all that is. To touch the sacred in our lives is to remember our true being, our deep source of interconnectedness to all the presences and elements of the human and non-human worlds. Ritual, which sometimes receives a negative valuation in our culture, provides us with powerful means of reforging bonds of integration that have always been present. The very term “ritual” means “to bind” or “to connect.” Rituals function to connect us to the essence of who we are and how we co-exist with all that is. Rituals can also be constitutive – they have the power to enact or establish ways of being, acting, and relating within sacred view, the vision of all things as alive, essential, and connected.

Program Format

Participants will be supported by:

Two residential programs at BCBS
Monthly Full Group Zoom Gatherings

Monthly Peer-Led Small Group Zoom Gatherings

Reading Assignments and Reflection Questions

Meditation Instructions and Texts

Participation Expectations

In order to create an experience that is inclusive and healing for all, participants are encouraged to bring a sense of friendly curiosity and respect to the material we explore, and to the divergent responses from fellow participants. In this way, we will mutually support an environment for learning, self-reflection, and generative engagement.

Time Commitment

Participants are encouraged to develop an ongoing meditation practice that may include mindfulness, breathwork, prayer and mantra recitation, or visualizations. This practice can accommodate all work schedules so that it becomes something easily incorporated into daily life. During the program, instruction and texts will be provided to support this practice. There is also a moderate time commitment for readings to be explored during monthly Zoom meetings.

Retreat Expectations

The retreats will include dedicated periods of both wise speech and noble silence. Some contemplative exercises may involve mindful speaking and listening. Noble silence will be observed at all other times.

Program Schedule

April 4-9, 2025

In-Person Program

Retreat I − Finding Holy Ground: Sorrow, Shadow Practices & Surrendering to the Sacred

In this module, we will explore the intersection between grief and the sacred. We will work to come into direct relationship with feelings of emotional upheaval that arise in response to the breakdown of ecosystems and their inhabitants. We will investigate the relationship between sorrow, grief, and loss and the experience of the holy. How is a deep dive into the fullness of our sorrow simultaneously an invitation to the sacred? How can we recognize that every moment of this existence is imbued with a luminous, transformative energy? How can a conscious surrender to the powerful energy of loss become a ritual of healing, wholeness, and renewed presence? To answer these questions, we will work with ritual practices, ancient and new, to re-connect us to our indigenous selves – the parts of us that have always been knit into the fabric of existence and that naturally recognize our place in the interconnectedness of all things. We will read Buddhist and indigenous texts on the critical role of ritual and ceremony to remind us of our agency and healing capacity, even in the midst of dissolution.

Zoom Group Sessions

Tuesday, May 6, 2025 (5:30 - 7:00 PM EST)
Tuesday, June 3, 2025 (5:30 - 7:00 PM EST)
Tuesday, July 1, 2025 (5:30 - 7:00 PM EST)
Tuesday, August 5, 2025 (5:30 - 7:00 PM EST)

August 26-31, 2025

In-Person Program

Retreat II − Dancing on Communal Ground: Connecting with All Beings through Ceremony

In this module, we invite our personal process to dance within the communal space of all beings, human and non-human, within which we are deeply and primordially interwoven. In order to move into a new way of being that honors our environments and each other, we need to cultivate and invite modes of communing that establish us in communities of care and love. No one person can take on the sorrows and griefs of our changing world alone. Much extra pain and sorrow arise when we feel isolated and “othered” from connection due to our fears of being seen as one who cares and grieves. Through forging a strong sense of community over the previous months’ work, this retreat will dive deeper into cultivating restorative group processes, invoking beauty and connection through ceremony and ritual. Through the powerful presence of the communal, we can learn how to relax the sense of urgency that we must carry the weight of our suffering alone.

Application Information

Residential Pricing:

Includes lodging and meals at BCBS during the in-person programs. Click the Pricing Notes tab to learn about Tier Pricing and Financial Assistance.

Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3	Benefactor
$2,240	$1,840	$1,440	$3,040

Commuter Pricing:

Includes meals without lodging during the in-person programs.

Standard

$950

Program Fees: Program fees include both residential and online components of the program. The first half is due upon registration, and the second half is due three weeks before the first retreat.

Accessibility: BCBS keeps prices as affordable as possible and offers Tier Pricing and Financial Assistance options to keep programs accessible:

Tier Pricing: You may choose a tier and pay according to your means. Tier 1 covers the actual cost of the program. Tiers 2 and 3 are subsidized rates made possible through the generosity of donors. The Benefactor rate enables you to offer additional, tax-deductible support to BCBS and fellow program participants. Please select the highest tier that fits your budget to help keep BCBS programs accessible.

Financial Assistance: If needed, you may request additional financial assistance on the registration page.

Teacher Dāna/Generosity: Program fees do not include payments to teachers. Please consider supporting Liz with dāna (generosity) during your program.

Cancellation Policy: We understand that personal circumstances may require you to cancel your registration. In these cases, please contact us right away. If you cancel more than eight weeks before the program starts, you are eligible for a full refund minus a $100 administrative fee. If you cancel between three and eight weeks before the program starts, you are eligible for a 50% refund of the deposit. Registration fees are nonrefundable less than three weeks before the program starts.

Applications Open: Currently Open

Applications Close: January 5, 2025 (5:00 PM EST)

Initial Accepted Applicants Notified: February 7, 2025

Payment Due: First half of the course fee is due within two weeks of the date of acceptance. The second half is due three weeks before the first retreat.

Program Starts: April 4, 2025

Guiding Teacher

Lama Liz Monson

Elizabeth Monson, Ph.D., is the Spiritual Co-Director of Natural Dharma Fellowship and the Managing Teacher at Wonderwell Mountain Refuge in Springfield, NH.

Liz was authorized as a dharma teacher and lineage holder in the Kagyu Lineage of Tibetan Buddhism after over 30 years of studying, practicing, and teaching Tibetan Buddhism in the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages. In 2015, Liz completed a doctorate at Harvard University in Religion and was a Visiting Lecturer there in the Study of Religion in 2015-16.

View Full Bio

Deepening Practice,
Building Community.

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