Meditation Retreat Experience Returns to SMCD!

In the last few years our center has faced the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, but is finally engaging again in traditional Shambhala curricula. We will soon offer a longer deeper opportunity: a weekthun (week-long meditation). 2023 has seen the return of Shambala Training, with Level I: The Art of Being Human in January, followed successfully by a “reunion” session, both led by John and Bayard Cobb. They will join us again to present Level II: Birth of the Warrior at the end of March. In the meantime the center will offer Meditation in Everyday Life (MIEL), in which the practices introduced in Level I can be revisited and discussed over the course of several weeknight meetings. Any of these programs are appropriate starting points for engaging in the intellectual, as well as the practical, aspects of Shambhala-style meditation.

This is a remarkable development. Our center is reclaiming its natural state of confidence. Meditation practitioners of all levels of experience should feel welcomed and warmly invited to engage in these programs. It is a source of pride and rejoicing among longer-standing SMCD members to feel this rebirth energy, both remembering all the extraordinary teaching that has occurred in our center over the last two decades in the current location, and looking forward to growing interest among the Denver community in general. The practice of meditation has been sustaining and enriching for us, and we genuinely aspire to “share the wealth” and extend the richness of spiritual practice.

As the blog has acknowledged in recent postings, our activity level has dwindled considerably during the pandemic, as the whole society has struggled to cope with its risks. Our active membership has been reduced, but new students of dharma are finding their way to SMCD. We aspire to be a loving and courageous community, welcoming all who are interested in working with the mind and recognizing their own richness. Whether you have a long standing relationship with SMCD or are relatively new, your richness is valued and invited.

It is an inherently generous endeavor — working with the mind. It leads to greater equanimity and peace throughout human relationship, a small personal pebble dropped in the larger lake of human social interaction. It must start with interest in one’s experience. It is vulnerable and brave to look curiously at what one does and how one feels. It naturally blossoms into genuine interest in others. You can give no better gift to the world you live in.

Posted by Larry Seidl