MAPLE Fundamentals is an introduction to the practices and frameworks that make up the underlying training structure at the Monastic Academy. We use a synthesis of ancient contemplative practices and modern methods of personal growth and collective exploration. Most fundamentally, we are creating a modern, integrated approach to spirituality founded in a deep sense of responsibility as stewards of the earth.

The Training

MAPLE Fundamentals is a 6 week cohort-based, online course where you will learn from expert teachers, engage in facilitated group exercises, build leadership skills through peer to peer practice, and enjoy talks from MAPLE's head teacher, Soryu Forall.

The course contains both shared and individual practice components: 12 hours of live teacher-facilitated training, small group peer support, and audio lessons from the MAPLE campus. The personal practice portion will be tailored to your goals and schedule and at a minimum requires 30 minutes a day of meditation practice.

In a small cohort and with customized support, you will:

• Learn meditation practices that help you integrate mindfulness into each aspect of your life and lead to a joy beyond circumstances through recorded talks and guided meditations from Soryu Forall
• Release emotional blockages and learn to experience your feelings without inhibition with the Bio-Emotive Emotional processing framework, a powerful approach to cleaning up your psycho-emotional baggage
• Deepen intimacy and amplify truth in your relationships through the practice of Circling
• Empower your sovereignty and decision making with an elegant and potent peer coaching method
• Invigorate your response to the planetary crisis by grounding your practice in our updated expression of the Buddhist eightfold path
• Strengthen meaning by clarifying your vow and making practical commitments to hold yourself in integrity with it
• Connect with a network of practitioners dedicated to a life of personal transformation and service to the world.

Curriculum

0. Awakened Leadership

We will open the course by deepening our relationship with the planetary crisis as the context in which we engage in our transformative work. Whether it’s the threat of social inequality, nuclear warfare, the mental health crisis, or global warming, it's clear that business as usual is unsustainable.

Although many are putting forth great efforts to reform these broken systems, we will focus on the root of these issues - the human mind. By shifting our focus to the mind that is unknowingly participating in the destruction of life on earth, we face the horrifying prospect that the very thing that is burning down the world is the exact same thing that is running our lives.

The purpose of MAPLE is to help us discover a new mind that resolves this fundamental issue. This is a path that enables us to become leaders in a time of crisis and to receive the greatest joy life has to offer. By engaging in the MAPLE ecology of practices we can realize this potential and offer our gifts to the world from a place of wisdom, love, and power. This is a momentous undertaking that not only requires courage and humility, but also deep friendship and community. In this first module, we will establish this context and companionship in which we practice for the preservation and flourishing of life on Earth.

In this week we will explore:

• The need for awakened leaders to address our collapsing social and environmental systems
• How the integration of wisdom, love, and power creates the basis for trustworthy individuals and cultures
• Clarifying your vow, purpose, or soul's calling and understanding the power it holds over your life
• Making practical commitments that enable you to align your day-to-day activities with your vow