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

KUNDALINI YOGA WEEKEND
WITH MEHTAB AND GURU KARAM BENTON

July 11 – 13
Presented by the RabBoar Studio
Rogers, Arkansas

Come explore and learn Kundalini Yoga, the yoga of awareness, from two of the leading Kundalini Yoga teachers in the United States!

THE YOGA OF SOUND
Friday July 11, 6:30pm – 9:00pm
Enjoy a relaxing and fun evening workshop as we use music and the live sound of the gong to take you on a yoga journey! Simple yoga, guided deep relaxation and the music of the gong will take you where your mind and body have never gone before! Open to everyone.

KUNDALINI YOGA IMMERSION
Saturday July 12
9:00am-12:00pm and 2:00pm-5:00pm
Kundalini Yoga uses movement, breath and sound to balance the chakras and awaken your energy. It is an ancient and dynamic form of yoga that quickly improves health on all levels. In this full day immersion into Kundalini Yoga, we will begin with the basics and take you through a transformational experience. You will study with the husband and wife team of Mehtab and Guru Karam who have taught thousands of beginning students this unique and powerful form of yoga. Open to yoga students and teachers of all levels. No previous Kundalini Yoga experience needed.

OPENING THE HEART CHAKRA
Sunday July 13, 9:00am – 12:00pm
When the Heart Chakra is opened, we are compassionate with ourselves and others in a healthy and empowering way. In this workshop, we will strengthen the physical heart and then clear away the past traumas, grief and disappointments that block us from experiencing the abundance of the heart. Some yoga experience, or participation in Saturday workshop is recommended.

ABOUT THE TEACHERS
Mehtab and Guru Karam Benton are the founders of the Yoga Yoga Studios in Austin, Texas where they have taught thousands of students and trained hundreds of yoga teachers.

Mehtab began teaching Kundalini Yoga
in 1974 inSan Rafael, California where he taught yoga in the public schools and in drug rehabilitation programs. He has taught Kundalini Yoga to students and teachers from around the world and is the author of ten books, including a book on Yoga and the Gong. He is a featured instructor in the University of Texas Master Class series where he plays the gong and lectures on the practice of yoga.

Guru Karam began her life-long yoga
practice at age 16 at a Kundalini Yoga Ashram in Houston, Texas. She has presented classes internationally on Yoga Nidra, the art of deep relaxation and brings a feminine perspective and lively sense of humor to teaching and practicing yoga. She and her husband Mehtab began the Yoga Yoga studios in Austin, Texas and has helped nurtured its growth into one of the largest yoga communities in the United States.

For more information or to register, visit http://www.rabboar.com/studio/Workshops.htm

Anam Thubten Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama rooted in the teachings of the Nyingma lineage, returns to Fayetteville on Monday, April 21 for “Spiritual Discourse”, a heart to heart dialogue, which invites the audience to join in an exploration into the realm of truth which is always available to us. In this meeting, he will challenge those core beliefs which have chained us to our misery for far too long. Freedom is knocking on our door.

Sponsored by by the University of Arkansas Department of Religious Studies, the talk will be held at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 224 N. East Avenue in Fayetteville at 7:00 pm.  The talk is free and open to the public, but a donation of $10 is suggested to help cover Anam Thubten’s travel expenses and other costs.

Anam Thubten Rinpoche was born in Tibet and undertook Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition at an early age. Soon after entering the monastery he was recognized as the reincarnation of Anam Lama. He has studied with many dharma teachers in Tibet. He has been teaching in the West since the 1990’s and currently serves as the spiritual advisor and dharma teacher for the Dharmata Foundation, headquartered in Point Richmond, California.

The reason I’m teaching is not because of having been recognized as a Tulku, or out of adherence to title and position within the Buddhist institution, but from a passionate love of true Dharma.  Dharma is pure and perfect.  Through it, we can transform our lives. This is neither theory or speculation.  It has been demonstrated in the lives of many of us, who have taken refuge in it.  Dharma is always aligned with truth, since it goes beyond all of the concepts one can have.    ~Anam Thubten

Anam Thubten Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist lama rooted in the teachings of the Nyingma lineage, returns to Arkansas for public talks in both Fayetteville and Little Rock and a weekend retreat in Little Rock, sponsored by the Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock.
 
Anam Thubten Rinpoche was born in Tibet and undertook Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition at an early age. Soon after entering the monastery he was recognized as the reincarnation of Anam Lama. He has studied with many dharma teachers in Tibet. He has been teaching in the West since the 1990’s and currently serves as the spiritual advisor and dharma teacher for the Dharmata Foundation. Anam Thubten is also a writer, Buddhist scholar and a lover of the true dharma.
 
Friday, April 18th, 7:00-8:30 p.m. - Little Rock
Public Talk: “Spiritual Discourse”
Buddhist teacher, Anam Thubten, is going to give heart to heart dialogue, and invite everyone to join in an exploration into the realm of truth, which is always for us. In this meeting, he will challenge every core belief, which has chained us to our misery for far too long. Freedom is knocking on our door.

Sat., April 19th to Sun., April 20th - Little Rock
Retreat Teaching: “Bodhichitta”
The moment we realize who we are, we begin to live a life of joy and freedom. Many of us have been holding on to a mistaken version of ourselves. Once the false self is deconstructed, what emerges from that is our true nature beyond all conditions. The path leading us there is called prajnaparamita, which means transcendent wisdom. This is the heart of Buddha’s teaching. Anam Thubten is going to introduce the timeless wisdom in a most direct and experiential manner. He invites everyone to go through a powerful inner transformation during this retreat.

Monday, April 21 - Fayetteville
Public Talk: “Spiritual Discourse”
This public talk will be held in Fayetteville at 7:00 p.m. For more information, please contact Professor Sidney Burris at 479-575-2509. Additional details will be published on NWABuddhist.info as they become available.

For information or to register for the retreat, visit the EBSLR website.

Wattle Hollow Retreat Center
Begins Thursday, April 17 at 5:00 pm
Ends Sunday, April 20 at 3:30 pm
 
Here is an opportunity to become more fully immersed in nature, vipassana meditation and yoga at Wattle Hollow. Participants are welcome to join us for the entire retreat, or any amount they can manage to attend.

Joy Fox will be your guide on this journey into the mind/body phenomenon, called Vipassana meditation of the Theravadan Buddhist lineage. She will teach the sitting/ walking/ eating/ and metta (the Pali word for lovingkindness) practices.

Beginners are welcome, along with our usual sangha. This longer retreat will allow time for nature walks, personal interviews, dharma discussions, journaling, contemplation…a real “refreshment” for the soul.

The fee is by donation, but advance registration is required, and you’ll want to reserve a place, as these retreats are beginning to fill up.

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

Internationally-renowned meditation teacher and author, Matthew Flickstein, will visit the Rime Center in Kansas City, Missouri for a weekend retreat April 4 - 6.Flickstein, a former psychotherapist, has been practicing and teaching insight meditation for over 32 years and founded the Forest Way in 1991. The organization follows the Theravada Buddhist tradition that focuses on insight meditation, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equanimity and how to incorporate those qualities into everyday life.

This retreat will explore the dimensions of self and no-self through meditation, contemplation, dharma talks and discussion. It will be a journey into the realm of time, space and emptiness.

For more information, visit www.rimecenter.org

Geshe Thupten Dorjee of the Tibetan Cultural Institute of Arkansas was one of three University of Arkansas faculty recipients of the 2008 Teacher of the Year Award, sponsored by the University’s Student Alumni Board and Associated Student Government. 

Recipients of the honor are selected based on nominations by current and former students.  This year, a total of 84 faculty members received nominations; of those, 30 were selected as Outstanding Faculty Nominees and 3 were named Teacher of the Year.  Most of the nominees receive 2 or 3 nominations; Geshe-la received an unprecedented 20 nominations from his students.  The award is typically won by faculty members at Arkansas who have been teaching for 10-20 years; Geshe Dorjee received the award after teaching at the University for 3 semesters. 

The award was presented during a banquet attended by the Chancellor, Provost, Deans, student leaders, and other dignitaries of the University.  Geshe-la’s biography from the award banquet’s program reads:

Geshe Thupten Dorjee was born to a nomadic family in southern Tibet. Fleeing his country in 1959, Geshe and his family crossed the Himalayan Mountains, a treacherous journey, and arrived in a Tibetan refugee camp in Bhutan where Geshe and his family lived for over a decade. Constantly on the verge of starvation, witnessing the ravages of disease, Geshe happened to see several Tibetan monks debating and discussing philosophy, and at that point, he discovered his life’s calling.  Leaving the refugee camp, Geshe traveled to south India where, as a young teenager, he helped found and construct what would become the the largest Tibetan monastery in the world: Drepung Loseling Monastery.

Geshe then began a rigourous course of study that involved a series of written exams, extensive memory work, and public debates, with several of them conducted before the Dalai Lama himself.  In 1994, after 25 years of graduate-level work, Geshe was awarded the Geshe Lharampa degree, the highest degree awarded by a monastic university, and one of the most advanced degrees in the world.  The Dalai Lama suggested that Geshe’s future lay in the West, and for the past decade Geshe has been teaching and modeling the principles of non-violence in the United States.  He feels a very special connection to the University of Arkansas and is deeply devoted to his growing community of students. Currently, the University of Arkansas, with the generosity of Dean Don Bobbitt of Fulbright College, is the only University in America that has a Geshe Lharampa in residence.

News of this award has spread rapidly throughout the Tibetan community in exile, and has become a source of pride for Tibetans throughout the world.  Geshe has received dozens of congratulatory phone calls and letters from Tibetans and supporters of Tibet, and has been interviewed, along with some of the students who nominated him, by Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, who will broadcast the news into Tibet itself.  Documentary filmmakers have asked for video footage of the awards ceremony so that they can include it in a documentary about Tibetans in America to be presented to His Holiness the Dalai Lama during his upcoming visit to Madison, Wisconsin.

Characteristically humble, when Geshe-la received the news that he had won the award, he shrugged and turned to a colleague, asking, “Is this a big deal?”  He was assured, “Yes, Geshe-la.  It’s a very big deal.”

We join the Tibetan people and the students, friends, and supporters of Geshe Dorjee in extending our congratulations for this well-deserved honor.

B. Alan Wallace Retreat
The Four Immeasurables
March 7 - 9
Rime Buddhist Center
Kansas City, Missouri

This retreat will focus on meditation, with teachings, guided meditation and discussion. Featured will be a sequence of meditation practices designed to cultivate the Four Immeasurables – loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and impartiality. These practices will be followed by teachings on tonglen and Bodhichitta.

Dynamic lecturer, progressive scholar, and one of the most prolific writers and translators of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D., continually seeks innovative ways to integrate Buddhist contemplative practices with Western science to advance the study of the mind.

Dr. Wallace, a scholar and practitioner of Buddhism since 1970, has taught Buddhist theory and meditation throughout Europe and America since 1976. Having devoted fourteen years to training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by H. H. the Dalai Lama, he went on to earn an undergraduate degree in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College and a doctorate in religious studies at Stanford.

With his unique background, Alan brings deep experience and applied skills to the challenge of integrating traditional Indo-Tibetan Buddhism with the modern world.

For more information about Alan Wallace, visit www.alanwallace.org
 
Schedule

Friday, Mar. 7
7:30 p.m. First teaching

Saturday, Mar. 8
10 a.m.–noon Second teaching

Sunday, Mar. 9
10:30 a.m. Dharma Talk
2–4 p.m. Third teaching
 
For more information, including retreat fees and registration information, visit www.rimecenter.org

Vipassana Retreat with Susan Stone
Pure Awareness and Daily Life—The Great Conundrum
Feb 15-17, 2008
Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock

Vipassana is a progressive approach to mind development that is based in the world of form, that is, in conventional relative reality. In Zen and other non-dual traditions, however, the primary focus is on pure awareness or absolute reality.  Rooted in emptiness, Zen training points to how form (the relative) and emptiness (absolute) are simultaneously different and not different from each other. This retreat will examine this conundrum from a practice perspective: How does pure awareness express in daily life? The retreat will include Dharma talks, instruction in objectless Zen meditation, group discussion, and individual interviews in order to explore how an understanding and integration of the principles of non-dualism deepen our Vipassana practice while uncovering bodhicitta (the awakened mind-empty heart).

When:
February 15-17, 2008

Where:
Ecumenical Buddhist Society
1015 West Second Street, Suite 108
Little Rock, AR 72201
 
Retreat Schedule:
Feb. 15 – 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
Feb. 16 – 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Feb. 17 – 9:00 a.m. - Noon

Costs:
$85.00 (Bring your own lunch)
Scholarship assistance available

Susan Stone, Ph.D., has practiced formal meditation for 25 years in the Zen and Theravada traditions. She has lived in Zen and Theravadan monasteries for 3 years. Ordained as a Zen lay priest, Susan is author of At the Eleventh Hour (Present Perfect Books 2001), about Mindfulness and caregiving. The book was nominated for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year award for 2001. She is co-author of The American Mosaic (McGraw Hill 1995), about workforce diversity; and is author of articles on Mindfulness.  Susan co-leads the Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville, Virginia (www.imeditation.org ).She also teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction at the University of Virginia, founded a Mindfulness group at a maximum-security men’s prison, and currently co-leads a similar group at a women’s prison in Virginia. She is a hospice volunteer and Reiki master who has worked with AIDS patients. Susan leads meditation retreats and workshops in a multi-state area. Her teaching increasingly is centered in nondualism.
 
Additional Information and Registration Forms

For additional information, registration forms, and scholarship information visit www.ebslr.org or contact Johnye Strickland at 501-834-0339 or jstrickland35@comcast.net.

The cost only includes what is needed to put on the retreat. Susan comes from a 2,500 year old tradition of meditation teachers that do not charge for meditation instruction. The practice of meditation leads to the greatest freedom. Who could put a price on that? At the end of the retreat there will be an opportunity to give a donation (dana) to the teacher.

Scholarship assistance is available for those who are unable to pay for the entire retreat fee. To request scholarship assistance, please contact Johnye Strickland at 501-834-0339 or jstrickland35@comcast.net

HOUSING

There are several hotels reasonably close to the Ecumenical Buddhist Society. These include the LaQuinta, 617 S. Broadway, Little Rock, AR (501) 374-9000 and the Doubletree Hotel, Markham & Broadway, Little Rock, AR (501) 372-4371.

Local sangha members have offered to house a limited number of out of town retreatants free of charge. If you are interested in staying with a local sangha member, please contact Johnye Strickland at 501-834-0339 or jstrickland35@comcast.net.
 

Stages of Awareness
Weekend Retreat With Lama Bruce Newman
Feb. 15th - 17th
Rime Buddhist Center
Kansas City, Missouri

This retreat will be an informal presentation on mindfulness and awareness. Do we really know what these words mean? Do we know when we are really experiencing them? We will study a few short modern Buddhist articles on the subject. The main emphasis will be on discussion to allow participants to air their doubts and present their experiences. Lama Newman will make a few short presentations along with some relevant meditations.

Lama Bruce Newman was born in Los Angeles in 1950 and graduated from UCSB in Physical Chemistry in 1972. Lama Newman’s root teachers for this period were Geshe Ngawang Dhargyey in Dharamsala, India, Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche in Oakland, California, and Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Venerable Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche, Venerable Zigar Kongtrul Rinpoche and my main teacher, Venerable Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche in Kathmandu, Nepal.

Lama Newman completed the traditional four-year retreat at Kagyu Samye Ling in Scotland under the guidance of H.E. Taisitu Rinpoche, Venerable Akong Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, and Lama Yeshe Losel. Upon completion of the retreat Lama Newman returned to America and settled near Gyatrul Rinpoche’s retreat center, Tashi Choling, outside Ashland, Oregon where he continued his contemplative life. In 2001, Lama Newman created and began Marig Munsel, a four-year training program at Tashi Choling.

For more information, or to register for this retreat, visit www.rimecenter.org