Coming up at The Buddhist Center 

Monday, December 9, 2024

6:30 pm (MT)

In Person and Online

Weekly Zoom Link

On Monday, we'll continue our exploration of the beautiful teaching, Shabkars's, A Song of Joy. The 19th century Dzogchen yogin, Shabkar Tsokdruk Rangdrol is a beloved poet and yogin famous for his life example and remarkable realization. This is a beautiful and profound teaching from one of Tibet's most renowned yogins, so please come along.

All are welcome to come at 6:15 for tea and conversation.

Last week's discussion recording

Finding Freedom: A Weekend Retreat on the Seven Points of Mind Training with Tim - Madison, WI – Dec. 31-Jan. 2. – In-Person and Livestreamed – For those of you who may have missed our October “7 Points” retreat, or if you would like to review it, Tim will be leading this retreat again over the New Year in Madison.

2025 Meditation Challenge starts January 6th! This is a great way to enhance your meditation practice or give it a kick start by joining others in our sangha who also want to make a deeper commitment to meditation practice. Practicing as a shared commitment, even at a distance, is a powerful way to develop enthusiasm and consistency in your meditation practice. Sign-up!

Whatever you experience in your life—pain, pleasure, heat, cold, or anything else—is like something happening in a dream. Although you might think things are very solid, they are like passing memory. You can experience this open, unfixated quality in sitting meditation; all that arises in your mind—hate, love, and all the rest—is not solid. Although the experience can get extremely vivid, it is just a product of your mind. Nothing solid is really happening.

                                                                                                            Pema Chödrön 

Contemplation of the Week - Creating the World

As Anais Nin said, “we don’t see the world as it is, we see the world as we are.” With this in mind, in the days ahead as you go about your day, see if you can notice that your experience of the world is an expression of the state of your heart and mind at any given time. When you find yourself agitated, the whole world and the people we meet feel irritating and somewhat threatening. But, when your mind and heart are relaxed and open, we perceive a friendly world, a world, that we understand and feel warmly connected to. Simply, noticing the ways in which we create a world helps us to cut the chain of reactivity allows us to look again and to reconnect.