Berkeley Shambhala Meditation Center

"Buddha discovered that there is no such thing as “I”, Ego. Perhaps one should say there is no such thig as “am”, “I am”. He discovered that all these concepts, ideas, hopes, fears, emotions, conclusions, are created out of one’s speculative thoughts and one’s psychological inhertience from parents and upbringing and so on. We just tend to put them all together, which is of course partly due to lack of skill in our educational system."

~ Chögyam Trungpa, “Meditation in Action”

The Art of Being Human, the first Shambhala Training Weekend presents the view that human beings, at the core, are fundamentally awake. By training in meditation, we learn to remember our natural confidence and relax to the freshness of the present moment, no matter what that moment may bring. This intimate retreat provides instruction for sitting and walking meditation as a means to develop mindfulness in daily life.

We’ll discover that awakening is not about escaping from the world we live in but instead is about bringing our practice to every aspect of our lives: work, play, relationships, and more.

The weekend includes
- Guided meditation practice
- Mindfulness meditation talks
- One-on-one meditation instruction

Saturday & Sunday, Sept 14-15 • 10:00 am to 5:00 pm
**The program begins at 10:00 am but people are welcome to come at 9:30 for tea!

Registration and more info here:
https://berkeley.shambhala.org/program-details/?id=737458

Open house, this Sunday 25th: 10-11:30 AM.
Meditation, discussion, tea! Come join us at Berkeley Shambhala in person!

“Every instance is death; every instance is birth. It is a changing process: there is nothing you can grasp onto; everything is changing. But there is some continuity, of course- the change is the continuity.”
~ Chögyam Trungpa, “Transcending Madness”

Join us in person at Berkeley Shambhala to watch Chögyam Trungpa teaching on "Ego and its projections". We'll watch the first talk titled "Suffering, the first noble truth" followed by a discussion group with Jesse Miller.

This is the first talk in a seminar given by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Naropa Institute in 1976.
In this talk, he describes the mechanism of ego — how it generates confusion and the role of meditation in freeing oneself from it. Rinpoche describes suffering as the working basis of the path, emphasizing the need to trace its origins back in our own psychological make-up. Our preoccupation with what we like or don’t like keeps us stuck in a “blind corner,” obscuring a larger vision and knowing who we really are. Meditation brings clarity and openness, a way of working with ego by making friends with our minds, seeing beyond what we want to who we are.

See you on Sunday Aug. 18th at 10AM!

Begin your journey of health and well-being in Qigong 1 with instructor, Michael Busby, by learning six classic qigong techniques that relax the body and two postures of standing qigong that gather internal energy. Continue in Qigong 2 by learning how to guide energy through the body using the Nine Self-Massage. Complete the program by learning Twelve Devas Tendon Changing — the most effective form of qigong used in repairing physical injuries and enhancing muscular-skeletal strength.

In-person at Shambhala Berkeley

Sat August 3rd: 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM
Sun August 4th: 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

“The warrior, fundamentally, is someone who is not afraid of space. The coward lives in constant terror of space. When the coward is alone in the forest and doesn’t hear a sound, he thinks there is a ghost lurking somewhere. In the silence he begins to bring up all kinds of monsters and demons in his mind. The coward is afraid of darkness because he can’t see anything. He is afraid of silence because he can’t hear anything. Cowardice is turning the unconditional into a situation of fear by inventing reference points, or conditions, of all kinds. But for the warrior, unconditionality does not have to be conditioned or limited. It does not have to be qualified as either positive or negative, but it can just be neutral—as it is.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa, “Shambhala, the sacred path of the warrior”

“We have a fear of facing ourselves. That is the obstacle. Experiencing the innermost core of our existence is very embarrassing to a lot of people. A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible. We can't do that.
We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts. We have to see them. That is the foundation of warriorship, basically speaking.
Whatever is there, we have to face it, we have to look at it, study it, work with it and practice meditation with it.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

“What compassion really means is feeling with other people, not an up-down relationship.. a relationship between equals and the sense of equals comes from the fact that you have related to suffering and that you understand it from the inside out when you see other people going through it. So the Buddha, he embraced his own suffering, and in doing so, he embraced the suffering of humanity and this is one of the reasons why suffering becomes the path. Because it is what opens your heart to what other people are going through. It is what allows you to feel our interconnectedness with human beings and with animals.“

~ Pema Chödrön, “The truth of our existence”

“Accepting something, by the way, isn’t the same as liking it. To accept a feeling that we habitually associate with discomfort doesn’t mean we immediately turn around and start enjoying it. It means being okay with it as part of the texture of human life.”

~ Pema Chödrön

“The warrior who is inscrutable
Is like space which cannot be punctured by an arrow.
Since he has obtained mind which is beyond mind,
He is like a turquoise dragon playing in space:
He can never be fathomed by anyone at all.
He is the water of all waters;
He is the fire of all fires;
He is the wind of all winds;
Therefore he is the warrior of all warriors.
Beyond external manifestations,
In the inner space of vastness,
The warrior enjoys the dance.
That inscrutable warrior
Gains both temporal and spiritual victory.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa, “Inscrutable” from “Timely Rain”

Picture: Paro Taktsang (Tiger's nest), Bhutan

The first four [types of suffering]- birth, old age, sickness and death- are based on the results of previous karma...and are simply the hassles that are involved in being alive. The next three-coming across what is not desirable, not being able to hold on to what is desirable, and not getting what we want-are referred to as “the suffering of the period between birth and death”; and the last is simply called, “general misery”.

~ Chögyam Trungpa, “The truth of suffering and the path of liberation”

“To the degree that we can open to our own discomfort, we can open to others’ as well, and vice versa. This is so because in reality there’s no difference between our pain and that of others.”
~ Pema Chödrön

“By discipline and practice, we mean working with your life and your world right here and now, this very hour, this very minute. That is a very important point: you are working with your life.”
Chögyam Trungpa, “Milarepa”

This last form of suffering, general misery, is supposedly so subtle that it can only be perceived by realized ones. Only they have a sense of contrast to that anxiety, a sense of absence of anxiety. However, although it has been said that this form of suffering is very difficult for people to understand, it is not really all that sophisticated. It is actually very simple. The point is that ordinarily you are immune to your own suffering. You have been suffering for such a long time that you don’t notice it unless you are attacked by very vivid or very big problems. In that way, you are like somebody who is very heavy. A three hundred pound person may be quite jolly and happy because he feels that all that weight is part of his body.

~ Chögyam Trungpa, “The truth of suffering”

"The only way to relate with the present situation of spirituality or the neurotic state of the moment is by meditation. I don’t mean sitting meditation only, but relating with the emotional situations of daily life in a meditative way, by working with them, being aware of them as they come up. Every situation then becomes a learning process. These situations are the books; they are the scriptures."

~ Chögyam Trungpa

In this group retreat — open to all practitioners, we will follow the teachings and practices outlined in Traleg Rinpoche’s profound text Mind at Ease: Self-liberation through Mahamudra Meditation. Senior teacher Gaylon Ferguson guides us in contemplating our human birth, karmic cause-and-effect, death and impermanence, and the limitless loving-kindness and compassion of awakened heart.

GAYLON FERGUSON, PhD, has led group meditation retreats since 1976. He taught at Stanford, the University of Washington, and Naropa University, where he was a Core Faculty Member for fifteen years.

Partial attendance is possible.

More info: https://norcal.shambhala.org/program-details/?id=713147

We are speaking of becoming one with the emotions. This is different from and in contrast to the usual approach of suppressing them or acting them out.
If we are suppressing our emotions, it is extremely dangerous because we are regarding them as something terrible, shameful, which means that our relationship to our emotions is not really open. Once we try to suppress them, sooner or later they are going to explode.
There is another possibility. If you do not suppress your emotions, then you really allow yourself to come out and be carried away by them. This way of dealing with the emotions also comes from a kind of panic; your relationship with your emotions has not been properly reconciled. This is another way of escaping from the actual emotion, another kind of release, a false release. It is a confusion of mind and matter, thinking that the physical act of practicing emotions, of putting them into effect, supposedly will cure the emotions, relieve their irritation. But generally it reinforces them, and the emotions become more powerful. The relationship between the emotions and mind is not quite clear here.

~ Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

It’s always about someone has provoked in us a feeling that we don’t want to feel, that we fear to feel and therefore, we’d want to get rid of “them”. So, equanimity practice is not about getting rid of them. It’s about abiding in the fear of feeling or abiding in the feeling itself and the fear that it produces, it’s like making friends with it, opening our heart and mind to our fear of feeling certain things without feeding it by blaming ourselves or blaming other people. So, yes, this is very difficult work, but so worthwhile.

~ Pema Chödrön, Book: “Perfect, Just As You Are: Buddhist Practices on the Four Limitless One”

“If we are willing to stand fully in our own shoes and never give up on ourselves, then we will be able to put ourselves in the shoes of others and never give up on them.”

~ Pema Chödrön, Start where you are: a guide to compassionate living

May we not suck our habitual thumbs,
May we raise the greatest banner of the Great Eastern Sun.
Whether tradition or tales of the tiger,
We will never give up our basic genuine concern for the world.
Let there be light of the Great Eastern Sun
To wake up the setting-sun indulgence.
Let there be Great Eastern Sun in order to realize
Eternally there is always good morning.

~ Chögyam Trungpa, Written on the same day that the talk “Mirrorlike wisdom” was given. Excerpt from book: Great Eastern Sun

“There are times to cultivate and create, when you nurture your world and give birth to new ideas and ventures. There are times of flourishing and abundance, when life feels in full bloom, energized and expanding. And there are times of fruition, when things come to an end. They have reached their climax and must be harvested before they begin to fade. And finally of course, there are times that are cold, and cutting and empty, times when the spring of new beginnings seems like a distant dream. Those rhythms in life are natural events. They weave into one another as day follows night, bringing, not messages of hope and fear, but messages of how things are.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

Open houses in June:
Sunday 9th and Sunday 23rd. Please join us in person at Berkeley Shambhala Center for meditation, talk and tea! 10-11:30AM.

“The first meeting with oneself, with aloneness, is meeting one’s real ego without clothing—naked ego, assertive, distinct, clear, definite ego. The experience of loneliness is from ego’s perspective: ego has no one to comfort itself, no one to act as moral support. This kind of aloneness is simply the feeling of being nowhere, lost. There is tremendous sadness that there’s nothing around you that you can hang onto. But it is your own ego acting as the voice of sadness, loneliness, so you cannot blame anybody or even get angry. That starting point is very useful and valuable. It was the inspiration to go into retreat in Milarepa’s case, and in our case as well.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa, From talk five of “The Message of Milarepa,”, Karme-Choling Meditation Center, Barnet, Vermont, 1973

Photo: Allen Ginsberg and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche – Photograph © Naropa Archives

“Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

“Passion is the major occupation in the human realm. Passion in this sense is an intelligent kind of grasping in which the logical reasoning mind is always geared toward the creation of happiness. There is an acute sense of the separateness of pleasurable objects from the experiencer resulting in a sense of loss, poverty, often accompanied by nostalgia. You feel that only pleasurable objects can bring you comfort and happiness, but you feel inadequate, not strong or magnetic enough for the objects of pleasure to be drawn naturally into your territory. Nevertheless, you try actively to draw them in. This often leads to a critical attitude toward other people. You want to magnetize the best qualities, the most pleasurable, most sophisticated, most civilized situations.” ~ Chögyam Trungpa, book title: “The sanity we are born with”

“In Buddhism, we express our willingness to be realistic through the practice of meditation. Meditation is not a matter of trying to achieve ecstasy, spiritual bliss, or tranquillity, nor is it attempting to become a better person. It is simply the creation of a space in which we are able to expose and undo our neurotic games, our self-deceptions, our hidden fears and hopes. We provide space through the simple discipline of doing nothing. Actually, doing nothing is very difficult. At first, we must begin by approximating doing nothing, and gradually our practice will develop. So meditation is a way of churning out the neuroses of mind and using them as part of our practice.”

~ Chögyam Trungpa

“Sometimes the completely open heart and mind of bodhichitta is called the soft spot, a place as vulnerable and tender as an open wound. It is equated, in part, with our ability to love….Sometimes this broken heart gives birth to anxiety and panic, sometimes to anger, resentment, and blame. But under the hardness of that armor there is the tenderness of genuine sadness. This is our link with all those who have ever loved. This genuine heart of sadness can teach us great compassion. It can humble us when we’re arrogant and soften us when we are unkind. It awakens us when we prefer to sleep and pierces through our indifference. This continual ache of the heart is a blessing that when accepted fully can be shared with all.”

~ Pema Chödrön

"Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others."

~ Chögyam Trungpa

Please join us for the second in-person open house in May.
Sunday, May 26th, 10-11:30 AM.

Meditation, discussion and tea.

Meditation instruction available.