Such is the Boston Shambhala Center - radiating sanity between two car repair shops, one called Transmission, and 
the other, Re-Alignment. It’s been a joke for visiting teachers, for years. And now, I find myself in the same exact place - caught between transmission and re-alignment.
Requested repeatedly to do so, I now sit sipping tea on a gorgeous end-of-summer day to write a missive to you about my experiences this summer attending Warrior Assembly and Vajrayana Seminary.
In some ways, what can I say? It was challenging to take so much time off of work, even if work is here at the Shambhala Center - mostly because of all the extra hours put in before leaving for both retreats to make sure the infrastructure was in place to take care of business while I was away, and because the catching up process upon returning was so challenging (in case you are wondering, I’m still not caught up on emails from August….).
It was also challenging to say goodbye to my sweet pet rattie, MP, the last of three, knowing that I would not see her again in her fuzzy cute form (she died while I was away at Seminary). Riding the heartbreak of my father’s illness and watching from afar as his life has fallen apart inspired me even more to throw myself completely into these spectacularly rare opportunities for deep practice. I take it not for granted how ridiculously fortunate I have been to attend these profound programs.
And so it is with extreme gratitude that I thank you all for supporting me in my pursuance of these retreats. Digging into Warrior Assembly was an experience of tasting a long-held dream of confidence, of fearless proclamation of my sanity - literally crying out from mountain tops. It was an extremely poetic experience for me - see my previous post called: the courage of grass. I was almost literally dripping poetry from my finger tips like rain falls from the leaves of oak trees.
With these tools and connections generated and received at Warrior Assembly, I met the intensity of life during the month of July, and then traveled to France and south from Paris to Dechen Choling. All I can say to those of you that have yet to proceed along the path to Seminary is: GO! And to those of you that have yet to visit Dechen Choling - be forewarned: it is aptly named as the Place of Great Bliss - GO!
This path is a path of love. Sure, it’s hard work, there’s pain and sweat and gobs of tears (I think there was only one day during the entire three weeks of Seminary that I didn’t cry, and I’m thinking of writing a book about the multitudinous varieties of crying), but it’s the heartbreak of it all that is so beautiful. This doesn’t make sense, but it’s the only thing that makes sense. It’s said that “pain and pleasure have become an ornament which it is pleasant to wear.” Peace is in our every moment, we just forget to look at it, directly. It is so simple. We are already awake, we are beings of love, we already have all the tools we need to meet our lives. And then the ego gets in the way, and it gets tricky, and time for practice falls apart and then everything else begins to unravel. But, we knew it once in a moment beneath a tree in France. And so the process of re-alignment begins over again, and we can remember that by extending compassion to other beings, we are reminded of our own soft, tender hearts. So we buck up again, Great Eastern Sun vision intact, and we meet the world as warriors. Caught, as it were, between the continual dance of transmission and re-alignment.
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7:00 PM - 9:30 PM. All members are cordially invited to attend to gather with old friends and meet some new ones. We are celebrating the culmination of a successful membership dues increase drive that has run since Harvest of Peace.
