“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
Mary Oliver
Dharma Wild offers Awakening Practices in Wild Nature
Dharma Wild is based in Southwest USA and offers awakening, meditative practices in wild nature, ranging from 10-day solo retreats to 3-5 day base camping retreats, and backpacking retreats. Individualized retreats, tailored to the specific needs of an individual are available as well.
David also offers spiritual mentoring focusing on providing guidance and support to begin a spiritual practice or to deepen an already existing practice, assisting in overcoming the inevitable challenges that arise along a spiritual journey.
The retreats and programs offered by Dharma Wild are grounded in David’s 50 years of spiritual practice in the Great Wisdom Traditions combined with his decades of guiding and living in the wilderness. He continues to ramble in wild nature, mostly traveling along the backroads of national forests, backpacking, camping, and hiking in the deserts, canyons, and mountains of the Southwest.
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Dharma Wild Core Beliefs
- Every human being has the capacity for realizing his or her inherent pure, spacious, luminous, blissful, natural mind.
- The spiritual path, including meditative practices (fundamentally focusing on awakening to our true nature or natural mind), is the way by which the impediments and obscurations that hinder our awakening, are clearly seen and reduced and minimized, fostering freedom from these hindrances and our habitual patterns that block our path to awakening.
- It takes effort, commitment, skill, dedication, and support to live a spiritual path. While our clear, luminous, unbounded, unfettered mind is our natural state – the realization of who we really are does not come naturally, easily, or haphazardly. We need a strong intention, a road map that will keep us on the trail, and support from others who are familiar with the terrain we are traveling.
- The “natural mind” experiences itself most easily while in the presence of the natural world – wild nature.
- The beauty, peace, and tranquility of nature mirror the beauty, peace, and tranquility of our natural mind.
- The Buddha’s enlightenment or awakening, arose while he was in nature and the development of the Eightfold Path and meditative practices took place, not in temples, but in wild nature.
The mission of Dharma Wild is to offer retreats that facilitate the coming together of the natural mind with the natural world.
Founder of Dharma Wild
Vision Quest Testimonial
Like many who are probably considering embarking on a vision quest, I was an absolute neophyte. I had a rough idea of what the process was about and maybe a slight inkling of what it might entail, but that was it. I stumbled upon David watching a video about him on...
Video Interview by Cheap RV Living
Meet David, a retired Episcopal Priest who now lives in an Isuzu Trooper SUV. He's found peace and harmony by living in nature and continues to serve others by leading them on their own personal Vision Quest.
Interview on the Cosmic Creating Show
“Cosmic Creating Show” 9/1/18 with Jan Shaw and guest David Clark, who is passionate about assisting others to explore their true nature, meditation and the nature of mind in wilderness settings, using traditional meditation practices as well as drawing upon an integral spiritual model.
