New Schedule

Beginning October, we will meet the first and third Wednesday of each month, from 6:30-8pm.

Please arrive with a few supplies: A couple cushions or pillows for sitting in meditation, and of course your copy of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and a notebook.

Who should attend: Assess your motivation, whatever it may be. If you are motivated, please come. If the material in the text resonates with you, you will surely benefit from attending.

What to expect: This workshop/support group is organized following a simple format: We read and discuss the text material and share whatever we wish. We contemplate the meaning of the text, and we meditate utilizing a variety of techniques covered in the book. It is my intent for all material discussed to be of universal benefit to anyone, from any religious tradition or background.

No prior experience with meditation is required.
For individual questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to email me directly at max@ahimsahealth.com

Stay tuned...

Dates for our upcoming workshop may change as I will have other teaching obligations Tuesday nights this coming semester. More soon!

Quotes

“Whatever joy there is in this world all comes from desiring others to be happy, and whatever suffering there is in this world, all comes from desiring myself to be happy.
But what need is there to say much more?
The childish work for their own benefit, The Buddhas work for the benefit of others. Just look at the difference between them!”

- Shantideva

Quotes

"It is not the appearance that binds you,
it is the attachment to the appearance that binds you."

-Tilopa

Quotes

"According to the wisdom of the Buddha, we can actually use our lives to prepare for death. We do not have to wait for the painful death of someone close to us or the shock of terminal illness to force us into looking at our lives."

-Sogyal Rinpoche,
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying

Workshop highlights

Death and illness within our own family inspired me to create this new workshop, based on concepts and techniques from one of my favorite books, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying. I found the western approach to death- grief and devastation- to be utterly useless and tiring. This workshop is very different, because the entire approach is different. Drawing from Buddhist thought, though appropriate for people from any religious tradition, we'll learn practical ways for becoming comfortable with uncertainty, stress, impermanence and death.
The reality of impermanence means that everything in our lives is unique and special, and the more we understand impermanence and make it a part of our experience, the more meaning we will have in our lives.

None of us can know how much time we have, so now is the time to get OK with that. Becoming OK with it takes more than the knowledge of impermanence, we have to "soak it in" and make it a part of our whole experience, a part of all our perceptions. Then our lives begin to change. We have to loosen our grip on all our attachments.

This is a workshop on how impermanence and death enrich life, and how to work with it in a different way. It takes courage. We can always choose to bury our heads in the sand, ignore or stay distracted from this truth, and get wrecked when impermanence hits us personally. If you are ready to abandon that approach, this recurring workshop is right for you.

Quotes

"Planning for the future is like going fishing in a dry gulch;
Nothing ever works out as you wanted, so give up all your schemes and ambitions.
If you have got to think about something-
Make it the uncertainty of the hour of your death..."

-Gyalse Rinpoche

Know Death to Live Well

A workshop on getting comfortable with impermanence

Premise:

Many western cultures idolize youth while ignoring old age and death, treating it as unsightly or taboo. But does this approach prepare us for the realities of life?

This Blog and accompanying workshop will explore the Tibetan tradition's way of handling life and death. We will read and work with ideas from The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, and utilize discussion, personal experiences and group meditation.

Stay tuned for dates, times and locations.