All posts filed under: Social Engagement

Strong Mental Health In Five Practical Steps

Published by smcblog

// By: Blake D. Bauer Step 1: Express Your Emotions Honestly and Kindly Our mental wellness is intimately connected to our emotional health. And our relationship to our emotions directly impacts our mind and thought processes far more than we realize. A significant amount of our unhealthy or negative thoughts are in fact symptoms of repressed emotions. These overwhelming or imbalanced thoughts are alerting us to the deeper feelings, needs, and desires that we’re ignoring or internalizing. Throughout a given day we’re either aware of what we’re feeling and then expressing it honestly and kindly, or we’re not. When we internalize our emotions regularly, we literally create a build up of inner tension, which then causes physical stress and an increase in cortisol levels. This leads to further psychological stress, negative thinking, a lack of tolerance, limited patience, and the kind of unhealthy reactions that hurt both ourselves and the people around us. Over time, internalizing what we feel very literally causes depression and leads to further struggle in all life areas. Every time you …

May 29, 2021

We’re in This Together: Heartbreak and Healing in 2020 and Beyond

Published by smcblog

By Gelong Loden Nyima // Originally published September 22, 2020. I wrote this article from a friend’s spare room in Longmont, Colorado, back in September of 2020. I was evacuated from my home at Shambhala Mountain Center (SMC) due to the largest wildfire in Colorado history, which later burned portions of the land at SMC. The day of writing, I spoke by phone with a friend in California—a conversation delayed by days due to blackouts they were having in relation to record heat waves and millions of acres of fire. Afterwards, I prepared notes for a class I was teaching online due to a pandemic which has now killed over 560,000 Americans, hospitalized several of my friends, and is preventing live gatherings in shrine rooms. Our national news is filled with violence and political strife. This was life in 2020, another day in America. Cosmic Context We’re living in what’s known as a kaliyuga or a dark age in Buddhism. These are times in which the mass amalgamations of many years of actions arising from …

September 22, 2020

Mind-Body / Social Engagement

Gelong Loden Nyima on Buddhism and COVID-19

Published by Travis Newbill

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, with all its myriad forms of suffering, concurrent with the climate crisis, systemic injustices, and all the rest of it, the reality of the “dark age” prophesied in ancient Buddhist texts is feeling way too real. And yet, dark as it may be, “at least we have spiritual tools,” says Gelong Loden Nyima in this recent interview with Asaf Ophir on the Hear the World podcast. In the 35 minute conversation, Nyima—a Buddhist monk, teacher, and resident at Shambhala Mountain Center—speaks with incredible clarity about how the core practices and ethical framework of Buddhism can help to support and guide us in the crucial work of caring for ourselves and others, and engaging in meaningful social action. Enjoy the audio interview below, and scroll down for selected excerpts, transcribed. “In Buddhism our actions really matter, and we need to use them wisely because it’s all of our actions which co-create our world—for better and for worse. […] “While this pandemic affects everyone, the ways that it does also devastatingly demonstrate …

August 6, 2020

Mind-Body / Mindful Living / Social Engagement

OM VOTE HUM

Published by Travis Newbill

Back in May, over 100 Buddhist leaders signed a letter stressing the necessity of voting in the coming US election, and also of working to ensure that as many eligible voters as possible do so as well. In the weeks leading up to November 3, this message is worth repeating like a mantra—so we’re re-publishing the letter in full below. In addition to the basics of making sure that you, your friends, and your family, are all registered and signed up to receive absentee ballots, the letter lists several ways that you can contribute to the larger volunteer movement to help Get Out the Vote. To this list, we’d like to add Dharma Vote—a group comprised of mindfulness and meditation practitioners that holds regular online meetings to offer mutual support, guidance, and accountability. Buddhists Help Get Out the Vote In this time of great fear, it is important that we think of the long-term challenges—and possibilities—of the entire globe. Photographs of our world from space clearly show that there are no real boundaries on our …

August 5, 2020

Social Engagement

A Conversation on Love and Rage with Lama Rod Owens and Buddhist Teacher Kate Johnson

Published by smcblog

Lama Rod Owens: I would say anger was really the first material I had to work with, that began my practice. Actually, there were senior practitioners that I was around who were coming to me initially, before I really had a practice. They were coming to me saying, “Rod, I think you have a problem with anger.” I couldn’t see it; it was so normalized for me. People would come and sit me down, and they would be like, This is what I’m seeing. I would be like, Fuck you, and I couldn’t see that reaction as an expression of anger. Kate Johnson: That reaction to being told you were angry. LRO: Yeah, it was so ingrained, like anger was so much a part of my life, and I was heavily in activism so it was really fueling something for me. But as I moved out of my early twenties, I began to see what people were talking about, and for me, clinical severe depression was really the first time that I began to understand …

June 16, 2020

Social Engagement

Rev. angel Kyodo williams: Examine Your Privilege

Published by smcblog

In this excerpt from her talk at the 2015 Wisdom in Action conference at Shambhala Mountain Center, Rev. angel Kyodo williams discusses the responsibility we all have to examine our privilege, and how wisdom teachings hold the potential for personal and social transformation. Donate to Rev. angel Kyodo williams here. About the Author Rev. angel Kyodo williams, Sensei is a maverick dharma teacher, author, and founder of Center for Transformative Change. She applies wisdom teaching to social issues at the intersections of racial, economic and climate justice. Rev. angel notes, “Love and justice are not two. Without inner change, there can be no outer change. Without collective change, no change matters.” // angelkyodowilliams.com

June 7, 2020

Social Engagement

COVID-19 Support (March 20-21): Free Online Retreat with Lama Rod Owens

Published by Travis Newbill

Lama Rod Owens—activist, poet, and authorized Lama in the Kagyu School of Tibetan Buddhism—was scheduled to lead a retreat at SMC this weekend (March 19-22), which has been cancelled due to COVID-19 precautions. Instead he will be offering a free online version of the program: Liberation Through Love Online Retreat Open to everyone, for free, while dana (donations) will also be accepted. Lama Rod will be exploring teachings around love, self and community care, as well as working with heightened levels of trauma. All are welcome to join these sessions via Zoom by clicking the links below at the scheduled start times. Friday, March 20, 7:30-9:00pm EST // Click here to join Saturday, March 21, 10am-7pm EST (with breaks) // Click here to join Lama Rod is offering many other online resources and practices as well, to help support people at this time. To stay informed, and to support: Follow Lama Rod on Instagram Sign up for Lama Rod’s Newsletter Donate to Lama Rod May this be of benefit to you all!

May 6, 2020

Mind-Body / Social Engagement

Healing and Showing Up

Published by smcblog

By Lama Rod Owens // When I suffered severe depression, the easiest thing to do was hide it. You become quite skilled in distracting others from focusing on you and your suffering. This is possible because most people are not interested really in how others are suffering and certainly not interested in their own suffering. There’s no judgement here. Suffering is difficult and tough. It’s complicated and very uncomfortable. Most of us master the game of distracting ourselves and avoiding vulnerability. I kept my disease to myself and found myself quietly slipping away, disappearing. Not many people noticed. Healing is movement and work toward wholeness. Healing is never a definite location but something in process. It is the basic ordinary work of staying engaged with our own hurt and limitations. Healing does not mean forgiveness either, though it is a result of it. Healing is knowing our woundedness; it is developing an intimacy with the ways in which we suffer. Healing is learning to love the wound because love draws us into relationship with it …

May 6, 2020

Mind-Body / Social Engagement

The Social Ego

Published by smcblog

By Rev. angel Kyodo williams // To lean into the aspiration for true liberation, you must confront the fact that “whiteness” is a social ego as void of inherent identity as the personal ego, and you have identified with it as much as your very own name, but without being willing to name it. Just as the ego-mind is a construct that constantly reinforces itself—building structures and systems of control and developing attitudes and views that maintain its primacy and sense of solidity so that it can substantiate its validity—so, too, does this construct of whiteness. One could call it the Mind of Whiteness. The construct has been designed so that white America—and by extension white teachers and practitioners—lives inside the prison of that small mind, such that without intentional intervention, you cannot see over the wall of the reinforcing perspectives that affirm and perpetuate the White Superiority Complex. The complex would disintegrate if the vastness of your own racial bias were illuminated. So you remain in ignorance, blind to the reality before you, which …

May 27, 2019

Social Engagement

How Meditation Can Help Us Work with Issues of Diversity, Bias, and Harm

Published by smcblog

By Jeff Scott // Jeff Scott is a teacher within the Shambhala community with a particular interest in how meditation practice can be a crucial tool for working with issues of diversity, bias, and harm. In this article, he responds to questions on this topic from SMC staff member Travis Newbill, and the resulting dialogue offers insight into the journey of personal and societal healing. Later this spring, the journey continues as Jeff leads Looking Deeply: Meditation & Diversity (May 10–12) at SMC. Travis Newbill: Shame and inadequacy seem to be common things people have to work with in meditation, and in community. One way this manifests for me – as a pretty much cis-white-hetero-male – is shame related to my lack of understanding of other people’s experience; in particular, those of less privileged identities/embodiment – and how my own lack of understanding may affect their experience in a negative way. I even feel insecure about how I’ve phrased this question – which isn’t yet a question – afraid it will further reveal my inadequacy, …

April 2, 2019

Relationships / Social Engagement