A Day of Silent Meditation
for Young Adults, ages 14 - 25
Sunday, June 22nd; 9 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Wattle Hollow Retreat Center

This will be an introductory course, with full instruction and guidance by Joy Fox, in various Buddhist-style meditative techniques known as Vipassana, the Pali word for “Insight”. There will be question and answer periods, discussion groups, and time for journaling, walking in the woods, and simple self-reflection.

For those of you wanting some tools to slow the world down a bit  and take a look inside, here’s an opportunity.

This day is offered for dana (the Pali word for donation).  It includes lunch.  Pre-registration is required to attend this course.

For more information or to register, visit http://www.wattlehollow.com/schedule.htm

Tibetan Buddhist Monk Passang Gelek will offer a class on “The Making of a Sacred Sand Mandala” at Unity of Fayetteville beginning Monday, October 15 at 7 PM. Passang was trained at Drepung Loseling monastery in South India. He recently arrived in Fayetteville for an extended stay from his previous home in San Antonio, Texas.

A sand mandala is a two, or sometimes three-dimensional (if the sand is sculpted), geometric pattern that is first laid out with compasses and chalk lines and straight edges, and then filled in with colored sand. Mandalas are by no means unique to Tibetan culture, although the Tibetan monks have taken them to a visionary and aesthetic level that has rightly distinguished them on the international stage. It was not until 1988, when the Dalai Lama first decreed that these mandalas could be constructed in public, that anyone in the West was able to view one as it was being assembled. The construction of a mandala is essentially a meditation, and a very powerful one at that, and so they have traditionally been done within sacred environments and only around a very select audience of monks and other clerics.

Class participants will learn this form of active meditation as they become familiar with the mechanics of constructing a sacred mandala.  Depending on interest, the class may be expanded to include the making of other items including traditional Tibetan sculptures and prayer flags.

There will be a fee for this workshop.  Contact Martin Jardon for more information.  He can be reached by email at mjardon(at)uark.edu, or by phone at 575-2509.