The aim of this course is to help runners connect with their bodies and surroundings, through meditation, yoga and contemplative running. Benefits of such mindfulness include injury prevention and improved performance through increased awareness and thought control.

As Pratt told Running Times: runners “are more inclined than most people to be contemplative, to want to explore their inner experience as you do when you meditate. And to engage in an activity that is as repetitive as running takes discipline and focus. These qualities are also essential to the meditator. So runners seem to have both the natural inclination and skills to be meditators.”

Cech and Pratt’s teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche – a three-hour marathoner – is the author of “Turning the Mind into an Ally” and “Ruling Your World”, and is one of the world’s foremost meditation teachers. He is head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage.

This popular program has been so successful that it has been scheduled again for September 3 – 6th. Click on the link below for more info.

http://www.shambhalamountain.org/programs/1299

Click on these links to see what past participants had to say:

http://www.runnersworld.com/article/1,7124,s6-243-297–13481-0,00.html

http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_15607862?source=most_viewed

The heart that is broken has been broken open.

- Susan Piver

Practically everyone has an opinion about the healthcare debate currently raging in Congress. Undeniably, it’s a heated issue. But despite all the discussion, it seems that one critical element is consistently overlooked: compassion.

Dr. David R. Shlim, who will be teaching our upcoming Medicine & Compassion retreat, has devoted his life’s work to making compassion a more prevalent focus of Western medicine. In the introduction to Medicine & Compassion: A Tibetan Lama’s Guidance for Caregivers, Dr. Shlim explains:

“It’s ironic that this lack of overt compassion in medicine comes at a time when medicine can do more for a patient than at any time in history. Despite…remarkable achievements, few people seem as happy as they should be with the way medicine is practiced…A piece of the puzzle is missing, and that missing piece may be compassion.”

As a society, we have the technology to perform open-heart surgery but we lack the guidance to open our hearts with strength and empathy. 

Compassion literally means “to suffer with,” implying that we actually extend our experience of ourselves to include the suffering of others. Faced with the immense suffering going on all over the planet, it’s a daunting concept. For most of us, the idea of opening to suffering conjures up fears of overwhelm and emotional exhaustion. But here’s another irony: Studies show that bringing compassion into our daily lives actually makes us more competent, focused, and present.

Millions of years of evolution have taught us to shut down to pain and suffering. Perhaps it’s a necessary defense mechanism but, at a certain point, this defense begins to harm us more than it protects us. And at a time when compassion is crucial, we need support to transcend these habitual responses. As New York Times bestselling author Susan Piver, who will lead our upcoming Wisdom of a Broken Heart retreat, reminds us, it’s a truly courageous step to embrace the dark power of heartbreak as a means to open the heart of compassion.

At Shambhala Mountain Center, this support is available to you. Whichever of our programs feels right for you, we invite you to take advantage of this support – because the world needs us to bring compassion back into the discussion now more than ever.

Last week a friend sent me a Wall Street Journal article by John Freeman entitled “Not So Fast,” an excerpt from his book The Tyranny of E-mail. Freeman’s article points out the bitter irony of today’s media: the faster we communicate, the less we understand; our incessant interconnectivity has actually done little to connect us.  Instead, as Freeman explains, social media has “isolated us from the people with whom we live” and has encouraged “flotillas of unnecessary jabbering, making it difficult to tell signal from noise.”  Living in a “constant state of digital jet lag,” he concludes, we have become largely unaware of our bodies and minds.

This article is a reminder of the need to slow down and remember what’s really important. Freeman sees the frantic speed at which we text, chat, and type as a way to stave off the specter of our own mortality, a temporary relief from the reality that our lives are finite. “Busyness,” he says, “numbs the pain of this awareness.” But both body-based practices and mindfulness disciplines teach us that in the heart of this pain is the possibility of freedom, the opportunity to face the fact of our impermanence, and to live our lives accordingly.

With society increasingly wired for instant communication and remote networking, it can be difficult to remember to slow down. At Shambhala Mountain Center we offer you refuge from the speediness of modern society. Our programs provide opportunities to transform busyness to mindfulness — a chance to rest and renew your mind, body, and spirit.

Consider this blog post a beautifully-wrapped paradox: delivered via its speedy efficient medium, it is an invitation to stop, turn the laptop off, take a breath, and rest — truly rest.

Best,

Brian Spielmann

The Sangha Retreat, hosted by Shambhala Mountain Center during the third week of July, was a rare and powerful opportunity to receive those instructions directly from Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, see the effects of these instructions on one of our community’s greatest practitioners, Ani Pema Chodron, and practice the instructions with the guidance one of our community’s most dedicated young teachers, the Kalapa Acharya Adam Lobel.

“It will take ten years,” said Ani Pema Chodron to a participant who described his difficulties with following the instructions for dropping the habitual storylines created by thoughts while he practiced. It didn’t sound very reassuring at the time, but in retrospect, no one ever said the path to enlightenment would be easy, let alone the deceptively simple-sounding instructions of labeling thoughts and following the breath.

Despite the pain that inevitably arises in peoples’ minds and bodies during intensive practice meditation, the teachers created an environment that felt completely nurturing.

Gentleness and Strength

In an interview after the retreat ended, Kalapa Acharya Adam Lobel explained how the Sakyong laid the foundation of that environment in an initial meeting he held with both Acharya Pema Chodron and himself: “Rinpoche told us that the theme of this retreat was strength manifesting as gentleness, producing non-aggression.”

With this theme in mind, the acharyas, meditation instructors, and staff gave practitioners the opportunity to practice the meditation technique in a setting characterized by its friendliness, kindness, and openness.

Barbara Hirschfeld, Director of the Santa Rosa Shambhala Center, said, “I have been to many programs—large programs with lots of participants. Here, I was struck by the gentleness and by how little people complained. The theme of gentleness really permeated.” Most striking to her was the fact that “enlightened society was really experienced by all. And it was due to the Sakyong, to Pema, and to Acharya Lobel and their teachings.”

Acharya Lobel also was struck by the environment cultivated by the program. In reflecting back on the program, he appeared genuinely pleased to note, “Everyone seemed really genuine and engaged and connected with the practice as well as the global context of Shambhala vision.”

Summer Steeped in Richness

The Sangha Retreat program occurred in the midst of a summer steeped in the richness of the historical introduction of the Scorpion Seal Assembly for advanced-Vajrayana practitioners– teachings that represent a “powerful shift in our inner practices,” in the words of Acharya Lobel.The idea that the Sangha Retreat would be merely “introductory” seemed to place it in sharp contrast with the advanced teachings the Sakyong would present during the rest of the summer.

However, according to Acharya Lobel, the contrast between the two types of programs proved to be less sharp than he would have expected: “Many of us were very excited about this summer because of the opening of the Scorpion Seal Assemblies,” he explained. “But it turns out that the inner shift really has an energetic effect on our whole sangha, and that was very evident here at the Sangha Retreat.”

Role Models for Warriorship

The Sakyong’s talks touched upon matters close to his heart, and no doubt they were influenced by the enormous energy he has put into presenting his father’s Scorpion Seal teachings and by his mandate to help us establish enlightened society by way of the Shambhala teachings.

In his second talk to retreatants, he described the hardships of the teachers and lamas of the previous generation, many of whom “lost their entire families” and suffered untold brutalities as a result of the Chinese invasion of Tibet. In their struggle, the Sakyong explained, and in their continued and unwavering goal of perpetuating the message of compassion and virtue, these teachers embodied the striking power of genuine warriorship when it is infused with gentleness.

His father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was an example of the strength of these past teachers. “He walked to India!” the Sakyong exclaimed during his talk. But what the Sakyong really impressed upon the retreatants was not just the extensive physical and emotional hardship endured by this past generation of refugees, but the fact that when they arrived in safety, despite their suffering, their message was still one of compassion, not aggression.

During the question and answer period that followed the Sakyong’s second talk, he assured SMC staff member Bobby Elbers that, indeed, Shambhalians do not need to hide in caves and suffer deprivations in order to accrue the benefits of practice and attain the discipline and wisdom of the lineage holders of the past. He reaffirmed that we will benefit greatly from their example by simply taking this same view of compassion and training ourselves to apply this view wherever we go when we leave the protective container of the shrine tent.

Meditation: A Magnifying Mirror

Acharya Chodron has been practicing long enough to witness at least one generation to grow up and benefit from these teachings on compassion. What’s more, she made it obvious that these teachings work through her repeated and loving references to the instructions she received from her first teacher, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, her gentleness towards the students who voiced the most personal of questions in front of 380 pairs of eyes, and her humorous candor that can only be the result of having made friends with herself despite the unbearable self-scrutiny of years of practice.

Acharya Chodron did not try to make meditation practice out to be something more pleasant than it is, however. “This is actually sounding like a pep-talk for not practicing,” she laughed when talking to the gathered community. She likened sitting for extensive periods of time and following the instructions faithfully to the act of staring at one’s own face in one of those magnifying-mirrors: things might look interesting, but “it doesn’t look pretty,” she warned. It takes a certain amount of bravery and mettle to sit on the cushion, but the act of mustering that honesty and rousing that bravery is the opportunity for participants to practice that very gentleness that the Sakyong had in mind when he set the tone for the week.

On the concluding day of the program, the Sakyong asked the hundreds of people gathered in the tent if they should “do it again.” The answer from the group was a resounding “Yes!”

Tears Accompany a Gesar Song

In that same spirit of celebration, the Sakyong requested that the Sakyong Wangmo, Khandro Tseyang, treat the participants with a song drawn from her family’s lineage-connection to the Epic of Gesar of Ling. For many, it was the very first time they had heard the Sakyong Wangmo sing. “I cried,” said Ian Bascetta of the New York City sangha. “I literally had not cried during the whole retreat, even though I probably should have. And then she started singing and I finally burst.”

Many expressed similar reactions to her performance, proving it to be one of the most moving moments of the week. Her simple act of reminding us of the heroics of Gesar and his fellow warriors became a moment of contextualizing the entire retreat: we are a part of an extensive historical and familial tradition in which the paradoxical contrast between warriorship and gentleness no longer exists; conventional wisdom separates the two, but in skillful combination, these qualities can conquer the obstacles of a dark age.

Power, Relevance, Immediacy

“There was a feeling of the power and relevance and immediacy of the Shamabhala teachings,” said Acharya Lobel, noting that the teachings of that week reached out “way beyond just advanced practitioners towards newer practitioners going forward on the path.”

We can only hope that this Sangha Retreat was the first in what will be a series of opportunities for practitioners to reconnect with the Shambhala teachings and practice establishing enlightened society.

My personal aspiration, I hasten to mention, is that the future dance parties held after the final banquets of these retreats can also live up to the enormously fun precedent set by the participants of this first one. After all, it’s not often that one can dance the night away with a few hundred fellow warriors

By Alexandra Milsom

Photo Credits: Brian Spielmann, Barbara Hirschfeld, and Christoph Schoenherr

Brian Spielmann

Levine lives in Highland Park with his wife, Amy, and his infant daughter, Hazel. He earns a living as a psychologist but travels frequently to lead meditation workshops and retreats around the world. He founded and sits on the board of the Mind Body Awareness Project, an Oakland-based nonprofit that teaches meditation to at-risk youths in juvenile halls, clinics, high schools and group homes.

His twice-weekly meditation sessions at Against the Stream are among the best-attended in Los Angeles, and they attract a diverse crowd not limited to punk rockers.

Levine has found an especially receptive audience in recovering addicts. He speaks about his own relationship with drugs and alcohol, saying meditation helped him learn the impulse control that is crucial to overcoming addiction.

“If you can sit through the itch without scratching it, then you can sit through the craving for drugs and alcohol,” he said.

Members say they come because they like his simple style.

“He doesn’t speak in riddles or parables. He’s straightforward,” said Duane Dinham, 46, who has been coming to the meditation center for the last five months — in part, he says, because he likes how Levine doesn’t seem to take himself too seriously.

“I came here because it’s non-dogmatic,” Dinham said. “He has a certain irreverence that I like.”

Before starting his meditation session on a recent evening, Levine walked into the large, airy meeting room carrying a takeout box from the vegan restaurant across the street. “Hey,” he called to the people straggling in. “Anybody want to try fried pickles?”

After the session, he cracked jokes and talked about sex and drugs.

Levine runs things with a casualness that might make a Tibetan lama cringe, but that’s what attracted Holly Brown, 39, a self-described “goth girl” who has belonged to Against the Stream since it opened.

“We all respect the Dalai Lama, but we’re living a totally different life than him,” she said. “Noah’s living our same life.”

Noah Levine’s Shambhala Mountain Center weekend retreat, The Buddhist Path to Freedom: Breaking the Addiction to the Mind, is open to all levels of experience and will provide an opportunity to learn and practice several different forms of Buddhist meditation oriented specifically toward breaking free of old ways of thinking. People in 12-step recovery programs are especially welcome. Contact the Shambhala Mountain Center to learn more.

Continuing to meditate, he got sober with the help of a 12-step program. He attended his first meditation retreat in 1991 — with Jack Kornfield, an influential Buddhist teacher who trained as a monk in Thailand and Burma.

Levine liked Kornfield’s message — he went on to study with him — but he said he felt a little out of place.

“I was the only 20-year-old there and certainly the only punk rocker,” he writes. “Looking around, I didn’t see anyone even close to my age. This was my father’s scene, not mine.”

After 10 years of studying Buddhism, Levine was certified to teach by Kornfield. But he wanted to create a new scene — for people like himself, the kind who liked to rock out to bands like Suicidal Tendencies and slam-dance in mosh pits. So he began leading meditation groups in Santa Cruz and San Francisco and in 2003 launched a Dharma Punx group on New York City’s Lower East Side. He moved to Los Angeles three and a half years ago and founded Against the Stream last year.

Though he draws inspiration from many strains of Buddhism (including Thai, Sri Lankan and Burmese), he said, he has tried to tear down the hierarchical difference between teacher and student that is common in those forms.

“I tend to present the teachings as a peer, as, ‘We are all in this together seeking happiness,’ ” he said. “We are all the students. Can we take the wisdom and the compassion of the Buddha’s teachings and roots and leave behind some of the other things that I see as corruptions — the dogma, the power, the patriarchy and superstition?”

Read more…

Both punk rock and Buddhism, according to Levine, began as a rebellion against the status quo. “The first noble truth of Buddhism is that there is suffering in life, that there is an unsatisfactory quality to living in a world where everything is constantly changing, and to living in a world where there is so much greed and hatred and delusion,” he said. “Punk rock’s foundation is dissatisfaction, acknowledging greed, hatred and delusion and rebelling against sexism, racism, political corruption and war.”

By bringing punk and Buddhism together, Levine has reached a mostly untapped demographic.

“I’ve been to other Buddhist centers where I felt out of place, but I’ve found a home here,” said Gary Sanders, 37, who drives from Castaic to East Hollywood to attend Levine’s meditation sessions. “Noah’s taken an approach that makes it palatable to our scene.”

The movement gets its name from Levine’s 2003 book “Dharma Punx,” which chronicles his involvement in the Santa Cruz punk rock scene, his recovery from addiction to crack, heroin and alcohol, and his turn to Buddhism.

Levine, whose father is noted Buddhist writer Stephen Levine, first tried meditating in 1988 while locked up at a juvenile hall in Santa Cruz (for trying to steal a car radio to score some drugs). At the time, he was a homeless 17-year-old dropout, an angry kid who had spent his whole life rebelling. At a young age he had found an outlet for his anger in the punk scene — in the fury of the music and the anarchy of the mosh pit — but when he slid into addiction, he traded his mohawk, Doc Martens and leather jacket for a crack pipe.

Sitting in a padded detox cell, Levine at first felt suicidal. When he started meditating, he found a kind of peace. “My early life’s external rebellion had only led to more suffering,” he wrote.

Read more…

Who is Noah Levine? The Los Angeles Times recently published the following article on his work and influence in the Buddhist community.

In the Stillness, Space for a Rebellious Spirit

By Kate Linthicum
May 4, 2009

Except for his bald head, there isn’t much monkish about Noah Levine. His body is covered with tattoos, his speech is spiked with profanities, and his style (T-shirts devoted to his favorite bands, lots of black) is a throwback to his days as a hard-core punk rocker.

So it looked a bit unusual to a newcomer when, on a recent evening, Levine, 37, sat cross-legged at a Buddhist center in East Hollywood to lead several dozen people in a guided meditation.

“Now bring your awareness to your breath,” began the Buddha in the Bad Brains T-shirt, who happens to be one of the most influential Buddhist teachers in America.

Levine is the founder of the Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, which has centers in East Hollywood and Santa Monica and more than 20 affiliated groups nationwide. He and his students practice a unique incarnation of Buddhism infused with punk rock’s anti-establishment ethos. They call themselves Dharma Punx.

Dharma Punx don’t wear robes and they don’t bow to statues of the Buddha. Anyone can form a group — as long as he checks with Levine first — and there isn’t the emphasis on hierarchy found in many forms of Buddhism (there are no Zen masters or Tibetan lamas). The idea, Levine said, is to make Buddhist teachings accessible to punks — and to reconnect Buddhism with what he sees as its radical roots.

“I don’t feel like this is bringing a punk rock corruption into Buddhism,” Levine said. “I think that that anti-establishment ethic is a part of Buddha’s teachings.”

Read more…

For those needing to complete prerequisites to attend in 2010, consider joining us this summer. The following prerequisites programs are offered:

Shambhala Sacred Path with Acharya Jeremy Hayward - April 14-19, 2009

Shambhala Sacred Path: Meek, Perky, and Outrageous & Inscrutable with Acharya Arawana Hayashi – May 4-10, 2009

Shambhala Sacred Path: Golden Key with Valerie Lorig – June 7 – 10, 2009

Warrior Assembly with Acharya Jeremy Hayward and Adana Barbieri - June 10-21, 2009

Sutrayana Seminary with Acharya Gaylon Ferguson – June 6-21, 2009