{"id":829,"date":"2016-02-08T08:00:46","date_gmt":"2016-02-08T16:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/?p=829"},"modified":"2016-02-01T12:07:47","modified_gmt":"2016-02-01T20:07:47","slug":"urban-hermit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/2016\/02\/08\/urban-hermit\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Hermit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Most of us have imagined what it would be like to live in a completely different way.&#8221; This is the vision that underlies the article, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bcbsdharma.org\/article\/urban-hermit-a-different-way-of-being-in-the-world\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Urban Hermit: A Different Way of Being in the World&#8221;<\/a> by <strong>Mu Soeng<\/strong> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bcbsdharma.org\/insight-journal-home\/\" target=\"_blank\">Insight Journal<\/a>, 2016). <!--more-->Soeng is\u00a0Program Director and Resident Scholar at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bcbsdharma.org\/\" target=\"_blank\">Barre Center for Buddhist Studies<\/a>. He trained in the (Korean) Zen tradition and was a monk for eleven years. In this article he writes about several types of urban hermits, from a modern-day Thoreau living in the New England woods, to a couple sharing a 350-square foot &#8220;micro-apartment&#8221; in Greenwich Village, to a wandering scholar of language &amp; science-turned-Catholic priest. The archetypes are diverse, but all seem motivated by a common ethic: &#8220;the need to create some distance between their inner lives and the fragmentation produced by a chaotic social setting and work culture in a post-industrial society.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I find inspiration in these lives. Nothing about my 5 computers, 3 bicycles, blogging every week-lifestyle marks me as a hermit, but I know that my meditation practice is founded on &#8220;the need to create some distance between &#8230; inner lives and &#8230; fragmentation produced by a chaotic social setting and work culture.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Most of us have imagined what it would be like to live in a completely different way.&#8221; This is the vision that underlies the article, &#8220;Urban Hermit: A Different Way of Being in the World&#8221; by Mu Soeng (Insight Journal, 2016).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,31],"class_list":["post-829","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-retreats","tag-solitude"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=829"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":832,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/829\/revisions\/832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=829"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=829"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.reed.edu\/meditation\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=829"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}