True Refuge Week: Self-Directed Intensive Practice for MRO Students

True Refuge Week is designed for practitioners already committed to formal training with the Mountains and Rivers Order—not an open retreat, but a structured intensive for students already embedded in the lineage. The nine-person cap keeps the group intimate and allows for genuine self-direction: you're not following a prescribed daily arc, but rather shaping your week around what your practice needs at that moment.

Self-directed doesn't mean unstructured. You're practicing within the container of the center—zazen periods, chanting, communal meals (likely oryoki, the formal eating practice)—but you choose what else happens: deepening koan work with a teacher, studying a sutra, pursuing art practice, sitting extra periods. This format assumes you know how to sit and what you're working on. It's for students past the basics.

Mountains and Rivers Order traces to John Daido Loori and the Zen Mountain Monastery tradition in Soto Zen. If you're already part of that formal training community, this retreat is a chance to work intensively within the lineage's practice structures without the prescribed schedule of a standard sesshin.