Rabbi Tirzah Firestone: Kabbalah Journey for Women

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Rabbi Tirzah Firestone: Kabbalah Journey for Women

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Rabbi Tirzah FirestoneRabbi Tirzah Firestone is an author, psychotherapist, and founding rabbi of Congregation Nevei Kodesh in Boulder, Colorado. She is widely known for her groundbreaking work on Kabbalah and the re-integration of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism. She will be joining us at SMC this May 3–5, 2013 to lead: Kabbalah Journey for Women: Communing with the Radical Feminine Presence. We recently asked Rabbi Tirzah some questions about Kabbalah and her upcoming program:

SMC: How does your work with Kabbalah intersect with your work on depth psychology?
RTF: Kabbalah is a wisdom system that is universal. It works with archetypal energies running through the macro (cosmos, world) and the micro (each of our us) and helps us understand how to align our body-mind-spirits with these energies that live within and beyond ourselves.

SMC: What most excites you about this program?
RTF: Women in nature together seeking divine guidance, depth, community, and friendship…What could be better?  Together we create a field to receive…and receiving is the translation of the term Kabbalah…the sacred. We need one another to do this, and the medium of nature is the magic.

SMC: How does the text of the Kabbalah apply to our contemporary lives?
RTF: Kabbalah is an entire corpus of work, including many texts from hundreds of years. We will work with some of the juiciest ones, that were originally written by and for men, but which are filled with astonishing teachings and apply amazingly well to women’s journeys.

SMC: Who could benefit from attending this workshop/who is it for?
RTF: Any woman 18 or older who feels a need to expand her bandwidth to new frequencies will benefit from this weekend.

Click here for more information on: Kabbalah Journey for Women: Communing with the Radical Feminine Presence.

The Solace of the Stupa

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ft. collins magazine stupaIn the Fort Collins Magazine article, “Solace of the Stupa: Neurobiology, the science of pain and the Buddhist retreat,” Laura Pritchett writes about dealing with chronic pain through meditation, among other things. A central theme in this piece is how she finds peace and the ability to be present with her pain in the “flat-out funky, magical, and free to visit…” Great Stupa at Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC). She discusses the science behind Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), a technique she learned at a MBSR retreat at SMC, and how she uses that technique while meditating at the Great Stupa.

“It’s more than about ‘stress reduction,’” she says, “it’s about how to face life when all hell breaks loose…” She learns that she can, in fact, change her attitude toward pain. The gist of the practice, she explains, is “…the mind can be taught to pay attention to the present in a particular way, purposefully, without judgment, and, most important, without worrying about the future.” This, she adds, reduces the experience of pain.

In conclusion, she brings the reader back to the “magic” of the Stupa as a place where people can bridge the gap between the mind and the body to heal themselves. “If healing pain-or coping with anything life throws at us—is mostly up to oneself,” she says, “then the Stupa is part of that for me.”

Read the full article in Fort Collins Magazine. It starts on page 42.

The Strength to Sit Still

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Jen Sinkler 2Fitness buff, Experience Life Magazine writer, and first-time meditator Jen Sinkler joined us for a Simplicity Retreat this past fall. She decided to come to the retreat a after receiving results of a blood test with high levels of Cortisol ( an indicator for elevated stress levels). By coincidence her editor asked for volunteers to attend a beginning meditation workshop and report back on their experience. Below is an excerpt of her article. To read the full article, click here.

“I signed up for a three-day “Simplicity Retreat” at the Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC) in Red Feather Lakes, Colo. — a beginning meditation course open to all levels. Though I intended to arrive early and settle in, once I landed in Denver I was lured by the promise of a kettlebell workout in a park and a tour of the rugby megaplex in nearby Glendale.

I am inclined to shirk stillness, it seems, even when I claim to want it.

The SMC (www.shambhalamountain.org), which has been hosting retreats since 1971, sits on 600 gorgeous acres of Rocky Mountain ridgeline near Fort Collins, Colo. It’s one of 140 Shambhala meditation centers worldwide. Also on the property is the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya, the 108-foot-tall structure that houses the aforementioned Buddha. Stupas are pilgrimage sites built to honor Buddha or certain saintly teachers’ life works, but are often so stunning they attract visitors of all walks. “A stupa is a place to be still and experience the sacredness of the world,” says Joshua Mulder, director of art and design for the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya.

Make Your Mark with Barbara Bash

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Barbara Bash 4One of the community’s most well-known and talented artists, Barbara Bash is bringing her artistic skills and teaching talent to the Shambhala Mountain Center April 19-21. She will be teaching, “Brush Spirit: The Expressive Art of Calligraphy.” Bash studied Dharma Art with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Chinese pictograms with Ed Young. She also recently wrote and illustrated the True Nature: An Illustrated Journal of Four Seasons in Solitude.

Of her chosen art form, Bash says: “Calligraphy is an inherently sacred activity because it synchronizes mind and body. It is a contemplative practice because it reveals who we are and brings the deep principles of meditation into action and manifestation in the world.” Furthermore, she adds, the practice of writing has been intertwined with religion, including her chosen practice, Buddhism.

“The Medieval monks wrote out texts in their scriptoriums, Buddhist monks copied sutras, Arabic calligraphers created elaborate ornamental designs for the name of Allah,” she explains.

#1 Barbara BashAt this workshop, students will learn three key things, including the strengthening the sense of embodiment in the making of a mark, says Bash. They will work first with the Chinese straight line discipline, which is actually a Tai chi practice, sitting at tables. Then Bash will guide them in bringing this settled and flexible body experience into the creation of large brush strokes while working on the floor.

“Using the whole body brings stability and relaxation into the practice of brush calligraphy,” she says.
As well, students will be illuminating the experience of mind, Bash adds. “’Calligraphy is a picture of the mind,’ according to the Chinese. Working with large brushes opens us to seeing where we are at each moment.”

Finally, students will be using the ancient principles of heaven, earth, and human as the bones of their abstract strokes. “This gives us a way to be held by the process, showing us how to begin, how to follow through, how to resolve and let go–in mark making and in life,” Bash explains.

Bash is looking forward to the workshop. “Being part of the community of a workshop brings me delight,” she says. “Everyone’s strokes are inherently interesting, imperfect and beautiful.  I never get tired of seeing what unfolds in the conversation between humans and brushes!”

Barbara Bash 3

The Shamatha Project, Part IV: Background & Far Reaching Implications

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Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the Post I and Post II of this four-part series we offered people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In Post III we discussed the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in this final post we are taking a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron, and the history behind the project.

By Sarah Sutherland

Clifford Saron

Clifford Saron

In 1992 Clifford Saron embarked on Fetzer Institute-funded study of Buddhist monks in Dharamsala with three other researchers. Struck by the monks’ calmness and peacefulness, they wondered whether the monks were simply extraordinary people or whether their extraordinary qualities resulted from their meditation training. Eleven years later, one of those researchers, Alan Wallace, contacted Saron about another project. Why not measure the effects of meditation on people in an intensive retreat setting in the West? The Shamatha Project was born.

Saron, interested in meditation since his undergraduate days at Harvard University, first learned of similar research by Joseph Goldstein at The Naropa Institute during its inaugural summer of 1974. “At that time my understanding of the mind from neuroscience, introspection and now Buddhism came together,” explained Saron in a TEDx UC Davis talk last May. “I was hooked.” He went on to do a number of meditation retreats and was an early researcher at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, a new university center with the ambitious long-term goal of understanding the nature of the human mind from interdisciplinary perspectives.

With sponsorship from Shambhala Mountain Center and the Mind and Life Institute, the Fetzer Institute, and other organizations and individual donors, Saron gathered a stellar team from a variety of disciplines to harness methods and views from cognitive and affective neuroscience, scientific psychology, molecular biology and anthropology. In 2007, they embarked on the Shamatha Project, which we outlined in The Shamatha Project Part I (link). Since then, Saron and his colleagues have presented results of the project to audiences around the world. Saron has also shared the findings on several occasions with the Dalai Lama, who has endorsed the project.

As both a scientist and a practitioner, Saron believes the Shamatha Project has far-reaching implications. “There are multiple domains of society that can benefit from slowing down and ramping up introspection,” he says. “With the Shamatha Project and other studies pointing to the benefits of meditation, there is potential for contemporary society to recognize the need for a refuge that’s accessible to people so they can bear the conditions of their experience in skillful ways, whether their experiences involve caring for the dying, parenting children with autism, or working at Google—all examples of areas where mindfulness practice is taking hold and proving helpful.”

And with more data on the horizon, new findings on the benefits of meditation on our mental, physical and possibly societal health are likely to be unveiled for years to come. Just remember to breathe deeply while you wait. For more information on the project and research publications visit this website.

Ringu Tulku on His Upcoming Retreat: Confusion Arising as Wisdom

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Ringu TulkuWorld traveler and renown Tibetan Buddhist Master of the Kagyu Order, Ringu Tulku Rinpoche is bringing his wisdom to the Shambhala Mountain Center April 19-21. He will be teaching from his new book, “Confusion Arises as Wisdom,” a commentary on Gampopa’s, “Great Teachings to the Assembly.” Ringu Tulku recently answered a few questions for us about the retreat.

SMC: How has confusion arisen as wisdom in your own life?
RT: Well, I do not claim that confusion has arisen as wisdom in my life. I was just trying to explain the teachings of the great master Gampopa. These are a collection of his pith instructions that he gave to his disciples on many occasions. Therefore these are called his teachings to the assembly of his students. These teachings were recommended by the 16th Karmapa and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche to be translated when the text will be found. I found the text and started to teach from them and found them to be very useful.

SMC: What inspired you to write this book?
RT: Actually I taught this book because of the instruction by Karmapa and Trungpa Rinpoche and then I was asked to teach at several places. This particular book is, I think, a transcript of teachings that I gave in Spain.

SMC: And now, what is inspiring you to teach from this book?
RT: I find the instructions very clear, precise, and inclusive. I was also asked to teach it here.

SMC: Are there certain things you will focus on during this retreat?
RT: I am not sure yet whether I will start from the beginning or choose some sections. I will first meet the people who have come and then decide.

SMC: Is there anything I’m not asking you that you want to share with us about yourself, the retreat, or Shambhala Mountain Center?
RT: I am sure there are countless questions one can ask, but I think it does not really matter.

Ringu Tulku was born in East Tibet and fled to India in 1959. He studied with many outstanding masters, including Dilgo Khyentsé Rinpoche and the Gyalwang Karmapa, and was awarded the titles of Khenpo and Lopön Chenpo. Since 1990, Ringu Tulku has traveled worldwide. Rinpoche is extremely knowledgeable, and with his excellent command of English, he is able to transmit the most complex teachings in a remarkably accessible way, infused with his characteristic warmth and sense of humor. Read more on their website, or sign up for the retreat on SMC’s website.

The Shamatha Project, Part III: Forging Ahead

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By Sarah Sutherland

Editors note: Thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, researchers are revisiting the results gleaned from Shamatha Project and further analyzing those results. In the first two posts of this four-part series we offered people unfamiliar with the project the chance to learn more about the project and its researchers. In this third post we are discussing the next stage of this project funded by the Templeton Prize Research Grant. And in our final post we’ll take a closer look at the lead researcher, Clifford Saron, and the history behind the project.

In Part I and Part II we discussed the inception of the Shamatha Project and the results of the project. Now, thanks to a recent $2.3 million Templeton Prize Research Grant from the John Templeton Foundation, lead researcher Clifford Saron and his colleagues will be taking the Shamatha Project to the next level, further analyzing and expanding the mountains of data they collected in labs they built in the basement of Shambhala Mountain Center’s Rigden Lodge six years ago.

“Sixty percent of the new funding provided by the Templeton Prize Research Grant will help our team wrest meaning from the original data,” said Saron. “We’re taking a very broad view of human experience as seen through multiple lenses because two people who received the exact same meditation training might have entirely different responses to it.” Subsequently, the team is not necessarily looking at the effects of the retreat itself, but rather on how individual differences—including participants’ worldviews, motivation, stages of life, and relationships—affected their training and, ultimately, their personal growth. With these analyses, the researchers can better understand which physiological and psychological measures recorded during the retreats are linked to beneficial long-term growth, and which ones aren’t.

“The beauty of this project,” Saron said, “is having leaders in statistical techniques aggregate the data to predict a trajectory of change in participants’ lives.” Such findings could help explain why some people change for the better, while underscoring what aspects of a person’s spiritual profile are requisites for meaningful change.

With the new funding, allocated over three years, the researchers will also interview the participants again as well as their family members, friends and colleagues to further explore whether the meditation retreat impacted the participants’ daily lives and how those changes, if any, continue to affect them.

“We’re relating how things that we measure in the laboratory reflect meaningful changes in people’s lives,” explained Saron in a UC Davis press release announcing the research grant.

The Templeton Prize Research Grant, which debuted this year, honors each year’s Templeton Prize laureate by funding research related to the laureate’s life’s work. Templeton Prize winners are individuals who have made “exceptional contributions to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama won the 2012 Templeton Prize in May for his ongoing work in bringing relevant scientific research to bear on the question of compassion and its potential to alleviate the world’s fundamental problems. The grant that Saron, co-director Baljinder Sahdra of the University of Western Sydney, and their colleagues won was announced in November at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion during a special session in honor of the Dalai Lama.

Read the final part in our series on the Shamatha Project: Part IV: Background & Far-Reaching Implications

Meditation & Creativity

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flower bigNew York Times bestselling author Susan Piver will be teaching an Open Heart Retreat April 5-8 at the Shambhala Mountain Center. Susan discovered the dharma in 1995 after reading books by Chogyam Trungpa and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, who is now her teacher. According to her website, she practices a formal sitting meditation, acting right, being nice, digging deep, and forgiving herself when she screws up. Susan writes for the Huffington Post and has written five books, including her most recent, “The Wisdom of a Broken Heart.” Susan has generously allowed us to reprint this article. For more information on her retreat, visit our website.

Yesterday I read a tweet from someone looking for advice about taking up meditation for creative reasons. I don’t know this person and I’m not sure what they were looking for, but it started me thinking on what I would say if he asked me directly.

Some of you may know that I lead meditation and writing retreats that are about reconnecting with our own creativity and, beyond that, with the moment of inspiration. And after all, what is creativity exactly, besides a continuous series of moments of inspiration? Which begs the questions: what is inspiration and where does it come from? Can my meditation practice help?

When it comes to the latter question, the answer is “absolutely” and “of course not.”

To get to the reason for this interesting dichotomy, let’s look at the former question: what is inspiration and where does it come from?

Begin by asking yourself: “If I had to come up with one word that was a euphemism for inspiration, what would it be?”

Perhaps you’ll come up with something like “motivated” or “connected” or “awed.”

Fascinatingly, wiktionary offers us this definition: To infuse into the mind; to communicate to the spirit; to convey, as by a divine or supernatural influence; to disclose preternaturally; to produce in, as by inspiration. And this: To draw in by the operation of breathing; to inhale.

At no point is the definition offered: “to be clever” or “to impress.” Rather, the definitions allude to something far more simple, receptive, and intimate.

When I think of inspiration, the word that comes to me is “clarity.” Suddenly I see something that I hadn’t seen before—not because it wasn’t there, but because I simply hadn’t noticed it before. To me, this means that inspiration comes, not from conquering new horizons of thought or acquiring skills I had been lacking, but from relaxing into a more spacious view. This is why our most interesting inspirations almost always happen when we do not expect them, while showering, or dreaming, or driving. When we stop striving—even to be more creative, relaxed, or intelligent—moments of clear seeing are more likely.

Of course our meditation practice teaches this exact skill: that of relaxing our minds by resting attention on breath without agenda. The moment we apply an agenda to our meditation practice, even a great one like practicing in order to be more creative, its energy is drained. When we practice in a way that is both free and disciplined (the discipline of not applying an agenda), our innate brilliance is unleashed and in this way, mental and emotional innovations (aka inspiration) arise spontaneously.

One of the greatest teachers ever of the Enneagram (about which I am passionate), Chilean psychiatrist and brilliant thinker Claudio Naranjo, said about music, “Only repetition invites spontaneous innovation” and of course this is true of all the arts. You can’t sit down at your computer or pick up your guitar or paintbrush and command yourself to innovate. Much sloppiness results from such an approach, unless you just happen to get lucky. But we can do better than hoping to get lucky in art by learning to work with our minds skillfully and openly. Meditation is a very powerful way to do so—but only if it is practiced free from any and all agendas. At this point, one’s vision expands.

So, can meditation help you become more creative: Definitely. And no way.

SMC 2013 I Ching Reading

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watersnakeBy Steven Whitacre, Image by Sarah Lipton

I Ching (aka the Book of Changes): An ancient Chinese book of divination and a source of Confucian and Taoist philosophy. Answers to questions and advice may be obtained by referring to the text accompanying one of 64 hexagrams, selected at random.

-Dictionary.com

At the evening feast on Shambhala Day, the beginning of the Year of the (always female) Water Snake, February 11, 2013, we cast the I Ching for Shambhala Mountain Center for the Year.  The result obtained was hexagram #3 Difficulty, with three changing lines, resulting in the second hexagram #7 the Army.  The first hexagram may represent either the recent past or the first part of the year, whereas the second may represent the future or the second part of the year.  Overall, this result suggests that the Shambhala Mountain Center is either experiencing difficult new growth as we return to normal following the High Park fire last summer, or perhaps it’s experiencing difficult growth in new directions with the new director and other changes to the staff, governance, and programs.

#3 Difficulty:Text: Difficulty followed by sublime success!  Persistence in a righteous course brings reward, but do not seek some (new) goal (or destination); it is highly advantageous to consolidate the present position.

Symbol: This hexagram symbolizes lightning spewed forth by the clouds- difficulty prevails!  The Superior Man busies himself setting things in order.

The commentary on the first changing line is fairly clear:

But, despite prevailing uncertainty, the way of righteousness must be pursued with firm determination. Men in high places, by cooperating with those under their care, will thereby win the support of their people.

The second changing line suggests that if we wait patiently for a gradual return to normal conditions, we will be able to make progress. Alternatively, perhaps there are persons or groups whose help or investment could help us move forward with our goals, but they are reluctant to commit, and we must be patient with them.

The third of the changing lines presents more concern:

Persistence in small things will bring good fortune; in greater matters it will bring disaster. This passage indicates that we have wrought insufficiently for the public good.

Some combination of seeking more modest goals and doing more work for the public good, seem likely to avert the misfortune this line warns against.

Via the three changing lines, the second hexagram is obtained:

#7 The Army: Text: The Army.  Persistence in a righteous course brings to those in authority good fortune and freedom from error.

Symbol: The hexagram symbolizes water surrounded by land.  The Superior Man nourishes the people and treats them with leniency.

Depending on the interpretations, it might seem that we are heading towards a situation either where the proper employment and governance of the Shambhala version of the Army, the Dorje Kasung, will be important, or where very large numbers of people will be on the land and need to be nourished and governed well. The latter would seem to dovetail with the very large numbers expected for the Three Pillar Leadership Training and the Scorpion Seal Assembly Years 3-4-5 Garchen, as well as the multitude of other large major dharma programs to be held here in the summer. Then again, being that the I Ching is in some sense an oracle, it is possible that both interpretations have some relevance.  However, it is important to keep in mind that the changing lines are often the most specific response and guide to action for the particular inquiry.