Images Of The YA Summer Internship Adventure

This week marks the end of the YA Summer Internship. It's been a wonderful month full of deep spiritual practice, as well as plain old-fashioned YA shenanigans. Events have included (but were not limited to!): a weeklong passage meditation retreat, a hike in the famous Muir Woods, service work on an erosion project, a back yard picnic, and even cooking lessons! During all of this fun were conversations both deep and light-hearted, covering topics from how to memorize more passages, best recipes for quick home-made meals, Gandhi as a spiritual figure (more on this soon!), and countless discussions on how to strengthen use of each of the eight points. 

There's obviously lots we could tell you, and we'll share more about the internship in the upcoming months, but for now we'd like to SHOW you through the images below!

The weeklong retreat ended with a visit (above) to Christine Easwaran, Eknath Easwaran's wife, at the spiritual community of the BMCM in Tomales, California. During both the retreat and the internship YAs stayed in the retreat house (below) a restored B&B in rural Northern California. 

A long hike in Muir Woods (pictures below) was the perfect outing after the retreat!

The service component of the internship included plenty of outdoor projects ranging from garden work (1st row below) as well as work in the hills hauling debris and laying pieces of broken concrete for an erosion-control project (2nd row below).  

A local YA hosted a backyard picnic where interns and local YAs spent a satsang day hanging out together under the fruit trees (below). There were great discussions (some serious, some not): choosing a career (serious), making homemade bread (mostly serious), and the purpose of backyard fountains (definitely not serious).

Part of the YA shenanigans included cooking lessons where YAs learned to make fried wontons. Though it was hard to get a handle on the folding technique, the effort just made the results more delicious!

YAs bid farewell to Dillon Beach (below), the site of a great deal of mantram walking and running over the summer.