* What is the path of courses offered at Shambhala?
* What does it mean to be a member of Shambhala?
* What does the Center have to offer to you and the wider Boston community?

Newcomers’ Night is being offered to answer such questions!

Join us on Wednesday, September 1st from 7-9PM. Senior teachers, the Director of the center, and current members will be present to share their thoughts and experiences. We look forward to seeing you there!

The Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo have said that they would like the Shambhala community to share this exciting time with them. You can visit the “Mukpo Baby News” page on the Shambhala Times for any news or updates: http://shambhalatimes.org/tag/mukpo-baby-news/

This new addition to the royal family is a blessing worthy of celebration!

Jetsun Drukmo with royal beeming parents

All members of the Shambhala Community, Families, Children and Friends, are warmly invited to attend a Royal Baby Celebration in honor of the first child of the Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo, Friday August 13th, 7-9pm at The Shambhala Meditation Center of Boston.

The celebration will include a lhasang, offerings, 
toasts and an opportunity to support the new family by giving a donation for an item from the baby registry.

Please bring
 a flower or khata to offer.

Ki Ki So So!

To learn more about Jetsun Drukmo’s birth, follow the news on the Shambhala Times here.

Warm Summer Greetings! The Director’s Updates (formerly the Director’s Blog on a separate part of the website) are now fully incorporated into our blog “Wake up Boston.” When you click on the “Director Updates” tag on the left it will give you a listing of all of my previous updates. Using this online blog as a way to communicate should be easier and more enjoyable for all of us. Below is a snapshot of what’s been happening the last few months – which is a lot! In the future, I will be updating via this blog more frequently.

Also, don’t forget to click the “Expansion News” link in the tags section to see updates about the expansion process.

Councils & Committee’s Updates:

The Shambhala Center has been busy!

We’ve completed a number of facilities projects including:

• For health and possible mold issues, tore out the carpet from the stairway and one of the offices
• Brought in an indoor air specialist to test our air quality and fixed problem areas – the center is now mold free!
• Added brighter lighting to the stairway
• The Vajrayana (Small) shrine room was painted by volunteers Michael McLellan, Glenn Proteus, Simon Spiller and Bill Wooding.
• Pine Street Inn was coming through-out the winter to check under our front stair for homeless persons. The area has now been enclosed.
• The stairway ceiling will need to be replaced in the coming months – we are currently collecting quotes

Thank you to Alyssa Marino (facilities coordinator), Simon Spiller and other volunteers for all of your hard work in this area!

Practice & Education Committees have also been very busy as well

• A newly formed Visiting Teacher Support Cmte will be supporting all upcoming Acharya, Rinpoche and other visiting teacher visits by finding coordinators and staff and helping to train them.
• Tom Ericsson and Mary Lang officially stepped down as Warriors of the center, but are still chairing the Kalapa Council until new chairs take over. The Kalapa Council will continue to put on events and Werma feasts.

Community Updates

• The Care and Conduct Policy has been reintroduced and is posted in the community room of the center
• The Health and Well Being Group are working together to support the community. Please contact them at healthandwellbeing@shambhalaboston.org if you want to request support.

Finance Updates

• See our past Financial updates on this webpage, including 2008 & 2009 Year end documents
• Caitlin Cianflone was hired as a short term, part time paid Finance Coordinator to help me with a backlog of financial projects.
• Our finances are very steady. On average our gross income per month balances with our expenses – so we break even.

Acharya Emily Bower

Acharya Emily Bower: Acharya is a Sanskrit word that is translated in Tibetan as loppon. Loppon means “master of learning.” In Sanskrit, acharya means “someone who knows and/or teaches the achara,” which are the “rules of conduct, practice, and precepts.” In the time in ancient India when the Vedas were studied, acharya meant “spiritual guide or teacher of the Vedic rules and codes, especially the appropriate way to make offerings.” In modern India, the title is used the way we use “doctor” and it comes with a certain level of study and accomplishment at a university, like the equivalent of a PhD. I found a reference to the word, acharika, meaning, “agreeing with what is taught by the teacher,” which I found interesting!

In the Shambhala community, the title means “senior teacher,” and our main jobs are to follow Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s instructions in our personal practice and study, and to teach the curriculum and other teachings that he directs us to share with the community. In some cases, we serve as his representatives of his lineage. We also serve as preceptors for vows and oaths, such as the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows, or the upcoming oath of service that the new shastris will be taking as they begin their new roles. Beyond this general description, our roles vary, because we are all quite different from one another. We bring a lot of different skills, experiences, and viewpoints to the ways that we serve in the role of acharya.

As for how one becomes an acharya, we were asked by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. If you looked at the past service of each acharya, you’d see that each has served this community and its leaders - the Druk Sakyong, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche; the Druk Sakyong Wangmo, Lady Diana Mukpo; and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche - in many different areas before Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche asked them to serve as acharyas. Some have made significant contributions to creating the curriculum that we study in our Shambhala Centers around the world. Some have held important administrative and other leadership positions, while others have served as personal guards and attendants to the lineage holders. What all the acharyas have in common is that they have devoted their lives to understanding and embodying the Buddhist and Shambhala teachings through intensive practice and study.

Our worldwide sangha is tremendously rich with human wisdom and that wisdom has been gained largely by giving, and a willingness to help and to work with our minds on the cushion. The acharyas represent only a small number of the many brilliant spiritual friends and teachers who share their experience and their wisdom every day in our community and the world.

As a new feature article on Wake up Boston!, Acharya Emily Bower will answer a question each month that pertains to meditation practice and the Shambhala path. If you have a question you’d like her to answer on the blog, feel free to suggest them to the editor: jadetweston@gmail.com

Before my first trip to Karme Choling, our retreat center in Vermont, I didn’t know what to expect. Of course, that didn’t stop me from having expectations. As a newcomer to the community, I was idealistic. I imagined I’d have enlightening exchanges with long-time practitioners, followed by blissed-out, meditative hikes in the woods. I expected a kind of utopia, or at least a relaxing break.

I did not expect that frustration and skepticism would be central to my experience. And furthermore, I had no idea that being disappointed would also turn out to be a tremendous blessing.

It started with the Sadhana of Mahamudra. My first night at Karme Choling, over 200 people gathered in the main hall to share a meal and recite the Sadhana, which is an intense practice that Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche received when he was on retreat in Bhutan. Unfortunately, the chant came before the feast, and my stomach was already grumbling. As a new practitioner I had also never chanted, and the Sadhana was a potent introduction to the practice.

I looked over the words and saw many fierce, bizarrre images that were both wonderful and bewildering. I didn’t know what to make of them, because I hadn’t learned their significance. I had many questions. My hope was that I could just recite with the group and see what happened. I wanted to let it strike me how it would, because I had heard of what a powerful practice it was.

There is a portion of the Sadhana when the practitioners repeat the mantra “HUM HUM HUM,” filling the environment with the murmur of it. During this recitation, some chanted it forcefully, like football players getting ready to take the field. I was happily HUMing along when suddenly I felt something was amiss. People around me giggled and exchanged knowing glances. I started to feel defensive, full of questions. What was so funny? Were some people doing it wrong? Was I doing it wrong? What was it supposed to sound like?

I became quiet. The gruffness of the HUMing, the sense of some inside joke, and my own ignorance sent up a red flag of skepticism. I felt annoyed that we hadn’t been given much explanation about what we were doing. It made me wonder how many of us actually knew what the practice was about, and how many were just going with the group. Were most of us just ignorantly reading along? The room felt hotter. My thoughts turned extreme. Had I unwittingly joined a cult?

After dinner, I returned to my tent agitated. Adjusting my headlamp, I managed to smack myself in the face with it, bruising my nose. What a miserable time I was having! I fell asleep to the sound of hundreds of frogs chanting in the night.

The next morning, I did not wake up early to practice sitting. I approached the day as an outsider, full of questions and skepticism, ready to discriminate. Trungpa Rinpoche himself said that the spiritual path “is not something to jump into naively,” and I agreed. Despite the fact that I had many friends from the community, I knew I would have to decide for myself if Shambhala was for me.

To be continued…

We know that these are troubled and dangerous times, and many of our leaders have looked for solutions. Most of these responses to conflicts are “outward” ones: more troops, walls, war, actions that only encourage an atmosphere of fear for the average person.

But for you and me, living our lives amid political and personal crises, how can we respond in an “inward” way to events that destabilize our daily lives?

One answer has been around for many centuries: meditation. “Why meditate?” you may ask. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, spiritual head of the Boston Shambhala Meditation Center gives us this reason: “Meditation is based on the premise that the natural state of the mind is calm and clear. It provides a way to train our mind to settle into this state. Our first reason for meditating might be that we want some freedom from our agitated mind. We want to discover the basic goodness of our natural mind. To do this requires us first to slow down and experience our mind as it is.”

It follows that this slowing down can help us face the problems of life with clarity. When we are clear our relationship to others is clear, and our reaction to conflict, both personal and political, takes on a wider perspective.

Again, Sakyong Mipham tells us, “Meditation is not purely a Buddhist practice; it’s a practice that anyone can do. It doesn’t tie in with a particular spiritual tradition. If we want to undo confusion, we’re going to have to be responsible for learning what our own mind is and how it works, no matter what beliefs we hold.”

Starting this summer and continuing throughout the year, the Boston Shambhala Meditation Center will launch an extended training in the foundation of Shambhala Buddhism for people living in the modern world. This path is for people of any spiritual tradition. The study will provide the tools for meditation, contentment, joy, fearlessness, and wisdom in everyday life. These practical techniques added to our personal experience of insight can aid us in the challenges of our modern society and provide an opportunity for contemplative practice and social action.

The Boston Shambhala Meditation Center in Brookline, MA is open all year with a full schedule of events and meditation practices. See our website: www.shambalaboston.org for further information.
Call us at: 617-734-1498

Why would you be interested in this news? The VTC are one of your key resources for learning how to engage with a visiting teacher program. Several Rinpoches and Acharyas will be visiting Boston in the next year, and we therefore have the rare opportunity to have personal contact with these dharma teachers and experience their joyful, inspiring and rich presence. This contact comes through a combination of service and practice. We will be having multiple service trainings this fall which you are invited to attend, and you can contact any member of the VTC to find out more about how you can get involved with working with a teacher.

The new VTC members are Martina Bouey, Bryan Mendiola, and Cindy Caros. Welcome!

Contact us at info@shambhalaboston.org if you interested in getting more involved!

“It is said that if our intention is to help others–even if we are unable to follow it through–we will never have any regret. Regret is a result of trying to make “me” happy.”
~ Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche

The Sadhana of Mahamudra is an important text composed by the Vidyadhara and a turning point in his presentation of the buddhadharma in the West. The Sadhana is practiced at the Shambhala Center on the new and full moon days.

The Sadhana of Mahamudra is one of the first practices that the Vidyadhara encouraged his students to do, and has a number of important characteristics. This sadhana is a binding factor for our community because students at all levels of practice can participate and receive a true experience or understanding of the spiritual path. Its essential teaching is that the nature of the practice itself undercuts any ideas of spiritual materialism. The practice consists of meditation and chants, and lasts about an hour.

These teachings are precious in many ways. The Tibetan text is itself terma, and the translation was considered by the Vidyadhara to be terma because of the ease with which the English translation happened. Terma are teachings that were concealed by the great Tibetan teacher Padmasambhava for the sake of future generations, and are rediscovered by a terton (a teacher able to find these teachings), at the auspicious time when they are needed. Such is the case of the Sadhana of Mahamudra, a teaching on overcoming obstacles and degraded spiritual practices in our time.

Join us this weekend at the Center to go into an in-depth inquiry about this powerful practice.