Returning Home to Southern Dharma Retreat Center

Doug Kallman
July 25, 2026

I’ve been blessed to find refuge at Southern Dharma Retreat Center both as a retreatant and volunteer periodically over the last 10 years. I just returned to Atlanta following a nourishing and humbling five night retreat led by teachers Rupert Marques and Kerstin Deibert.

I’m still awed by the exuberant flourishing of the mountain land and the abundance of what Rupert termed its “more than human” inhabitants: the light show of fireflies at dusk, a parade of daddy long legs on the meadow, butterflies drying their wings in the morning sun before beginning their tour of the paintbox of flowers, bats twisting and swerving around the lodge eves as I drank morning coffee in the predawn light, the serenade of birdsong, mamma deer lovingly caring for their suckling fawns, and was that a groundhog or a woodchuck I saw one evening? The land itself was alive: the roaring, cooling creek cascading over the boulders and down through the steep forest slopes, the multiple, blue-tinged mountain ridgelines viewed from the knoll, booming thunder, flashes of lighting, soaking rain, cool morning mist and the sometimes oppressive afternoon heat and humidity of July in the Smokies.

Most retreatants choose a bed either in the lodge or one of the small private kutis at the edge of the meadow. I’m a lifetime backpacker and often prefer being closer to nature, returning at night to sleep in my tent on the platform by the soothing waterfall. I feel restored resting under the sheltering limbs of the “Bodhi” trees.

Rupert and Kerstin intentionally crafted the retreat schedule with hours of unstructured time outside of the meditation hall listed as “aimless wandering” for experiencing and connecting with the land. We were encouraged to slowly, mindfully explore the natural world around us. It was fascinating to experiment with maintaining continuity of awareness in the concentration of traditional back and forth walking meditation versus the relaxed effort of spontaneous wandering in nature.

One day the teachers instructed us on practicing with paying attention to neutral feeling tone and all the experience we usually ignore because it doesn’t stand out from the pleasant and unpleasant. I struggled that afternoon attempting to direct my attention to the least interesting things around me: the grasses rather than the flowers, the blue sky rather than the cloud formations, the quiet between the melody of birdsong. My senses naturally sought out the pleasurable. I felt the twitch to reach for a camera to document the beauty and to turn on the Merlin app to identify the bird calls. My eyes were not drawn to the neutral background. I found no urge to photograph a lawn or the blank blue sky, no urge to identify the quiet. I joke that my whole life I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m good at and that it turns out I’m best at doing nothing. That's why I excel at retirement. The practice with attending to the neutral led to the humbling realization that I’m not as good at doing nothing as I say. Here I was abiding in a beautiful slice of heaven, one of my favorite places anywhere, and I was getting bored!

Sylvia Boorstein teaches that we should pay careful attention to the entirety of our experience, including all we avoid. She says, “It’s your life, don’t miss it!” So I was motivated to explore neutral feeling tone more fully. I had a bit more luck practicing with a bowl of oatmeal the next morning. Unlike lunch and dinner when delicious, varied vegetarian dishes are served at Southern Dharma, oatmeal and toppings are served for breakfast every day after morning meditation. For me, oatmeal is the epitome of neutral vedena; only the toppings hold interest. So I took the opportunity to play with my food, deliberately heaping oatmeal in the center of the bowl and positioning almonds, walnuts, pecans, raisins and fresh blueberries at the periphery. I didn’t mix them in to cover up the bland oatmeal as is my habit. I mindfully ate the oatmeal plain, bringing attention to the pasty texture and bland flavor. Even though there was no appeal, could I bring interest? From time to time I’d reward myself and freshen up my palate with the yummy goodies at the outer margin, and then back to the bland oatmeal. I think I may have been able to maintain the same level of interest on a few spoonfuls of oatmeal, but mostly not. I look forward to more mornings of oatmeal practice when I return in December for a ten day retreat led by Mary Aubry.

And finally, let me tell you about working meditation. At many Buddhist retreat centers, mindful service such as helping prepare meals, wash dishes, clean shared spaces, or tend to the grounds is traditionally part of the practice. Years ago, on my first retreat at Southern Dharma, I signed up for grounds maintenance imagining that I’d be gardening. Little did I know that I’d spend the 45 minute working meditation periods, day after day, spreading gravel and clearing drainage ditches along the long, narrow, steep mountain road leading up from the paved road. I noticed that there was an elderly woman retreatant who came to the tool shed at the same time we were getting our shovels and rakes to do road work. She’d take some tools and head off in a different direction than the rest of us. My mind had a lot of time to wander while my body worked silently and I developed an intense curiosity about what this woman was doing instead. So the last morning of the retreat, I played hooky from the road crew and followed as she climbed up the stairs past the meditation hall. I watched in amazement as she began to energetically clear the leaves and branches from the drainage ditches on the side of the practice community road. There was debris flying around, strewn all over the road. All I could think to do was help, so I grabbed a rake and cleaned up behind her. I was 30 years younger but could barely keep up! I was happy when the bell rang for the next meditation period so the hard work would end. At the retreat closing circle later that morning, the teacher told us that we had been honored to share the retreat with a celebrity. He introduced Elizabeth Kent who founded Southern Dharma some 40 years previously. You guessed it. She was the ditch clearing powerhouse! Elizabeth shared some of the history of Southern Dharma, but one thing she said has stayed with me clearly: “When I opened a retreat center I thought it would be all about meditation, but it turns out, it is all about road maintenance!” Ever since, I have recalled Elizabeth’s wisdom and happily spread gravel, cleared ditches and dug out blocked culverts at Southern Dharma with no resistance whatsoever, increasingly realizing that it is all mindfulness practice, whether sitting in meditation, wandering aimlessly in nature, eating oatmeal, maintaining the road, or even writing a blog entry.

I wish you all the opportunity to retreat at Southern Dharma. May you benefit from the experience as much as I have.