Values & Mindfulness Trainings

At CS we live in community guided by our Values and Mindfulness Trainings. These are drawn from Buddhist ethics and other wisdom traditions, student feedback, and our staff’s combined decades of experience living in contemplative communities.

Our Values

  • Inherent goodness: We practice seeing the good in each of us, choosing the most generous interpretation of each other's actions, seeing even harm as a tragic expression of unmet needs.

  • Both/and: We aim to hold multiple truths at once, fostering both unconditional love and ethical accountability, agency and surrender, gentleness and fierce courage, devoted effort and rest

  • Interdependence: Our lives are intertwined with all beings, our suffering and freedom bound together. 

  • Agency: We honor our power and choice in service of unbinding ourselves from the conditioning of blame, shame and helplessness that perpetuate the delusion of separation. 

  • Integrity: We support one another in discovering and embodying what is true and most important to each of us, and welcome loving, honest feedback to help us live our deepest values and aspirations in the world.

  • Vulnerability: We speak from our direct experience, naming our feelings and needs, and in so doing build trust that we matter to each other.

  • Wonder: We celebrate a sense of awe at the unfathomable beauty and vastness of ourselves, each other and this cosmos that can never be fully known.

  • Embodiment: We prioritize our body’s wisdom, and celebrate consent, movement and nonverbal communication as vital tools for self-expression and connection.

  • Joy: Collective liberation is serious work and we also suspect it is impossible without lightness, laughter, and play.

Mindfulness Trainings

The Mindfulness Trainings are how we aspire to live our values on a daily basis. They are called “trainings” because they are a deep and life-long practice. All those participating in the Contemplative Semester consent to trying their best to practice these trainings while on campus.

While most of these agreements are aspirational (ie speaking truthfully and kindly), the bolded agreement on substances, if broken, could result in dismissal from the program.
Please note the variation in our “off-retreat” and “on-retreat” trainings.

Off-Retreat Trainings

  1. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to protect life.

  2. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to take only what is offered to me.

  3. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to use my sexuality wisely and to protect relationships.

  4. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to speak truthfully and kindly.

  5. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment not to use drugs or alcohol, or be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, while on campus.

  6. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to use technology only in the designated “tech-spaces.”

On-Retreat Trainings

The third and sixth trainings that change on retreat are italicized.

  1. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to protect life.

  2. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to take only what is offered to me.

  3. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to be celibate while on retreat.

  4. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to speak truthfully and kindly.

  5. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment not to use drugs or alcohol, or be under the influence of drugs or alcohol, while on campus.

  6. Knowing how deeply our lives intertwine, I undertake the commitment to refrain from using technology (ie computers or smart phones) while on retreat.

More on the Tech Training (#6)

At CS we have an extraordinary opportunity to free ourselves from the grip of addictive technology and prioritize deep relationships with ourselves, each other, and the earth. To embrace this opportunity, participants will be device-free for the first two weeks of the program, and during all retreat weeks. For the rest of the program, participants will use devices only when necessary to support their learning, cultivate relationships with friends and family, or attend to logistics. Devices will be used only in designated “tech areas,” which do not include the dorms, and participants are asked to leave their devices in the tech areas when not using them. (This does not include going on a walk to talk on the phone to friends / family!)

Participation Training

The program at CS was designed over years of experiential learning and reflection on how to support young people’s growth, freedom and inner-peace. Each class period, meditation, small group, and community meeting matter, and build on each other to create the uniquely integrated community learning experience that CS is.

In order to attend CS, we ask you to commit to participate in as much of the CS program as you can, barring illness or unforeseen emergencies.

Yogi Jobs Training

Everyone at CS, included staff, have a yogi job; this is an opportunity to practice mindfulness in action.

Examples of yogi jobs: Dust Buster (floor sweeping), Vegetable Ninja (veggie chopping), or Dish Diva (dish washer). It is an expectation that all students commit to holding a yogi job for the duration of the program. Yogis can switch jobs throughout the program depending on preference.

Interested in living in contemplative community?

Get updates on the Spring ‘26 Contemplative Semester!