Touching the Earth
A Two Day Non-Residential Vipassana Retreat
With Ginny Morgan
  
May 4-6, 2007    
Ecumenical Buddhist Society of Little Rock
Little Rock, Arkansas

It is said that the Buddha reached down and touched the earth to acknowledge his right to a fully liberated heart.  This earth touching realization is available for all of us. In this retreat we will explore the ways that we get caught in our own stories of who we are and who we are not.  We will use the teachings that Buddha identified as his core instruction-a set of teachings that have been called the “wings” to awakening”.  The retreat will be held in silence and include alternating sitting and walking meditation with instructions and is open to beginning as well as experienced meditators.

Ginny Morgan lives in Columbia, Missouri. She is the guiding teacher for Show Me Dharma Center and the former President of the Board of Mid America Dharma, the emerging retreat center for the Midwest area. After working as a play therapist for acutely and chronically ill children for many years, she has shifted her focus to Dharma teaching, and to working exclusively for Dharma activities. She has studied with Ram Dass, Munindra-ji, Matthew Flickstein, and teachers from Insight Meditation Society and Spirit Rock Meditation Center.     

The retreat will be held in the meditation hall at the Ecumenical Buddhist Society, 1015 W. Second Street, Little Rock, Arkansas.

RETREAT SCHEDULE AND FEES

The retreat schedule will be as follows:
May 4 – 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
May 5 – 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.
May 6 – 9:00 a.m. - Noon

Retreat fees are:
$70.00 Retreat plus one vegetarian lunch
$60.00 Retreat only (you may bring your own lunch)

For more information, visit http://ebslr.org/event_ginny_morgan_retreat.html

[UPDATE: In the event of rain, the vigil will be held in Giffels Auditorium on the 2nd floor of Old Main.] 

Geshe Thupten Dorjee will lead a candlelight vigil, on behalf of the University of Arkansas and Fulbright College communities, as an expression of sympathy and compassion for the victims of yesterday’s tragedy at Virginia Tech.

DATE: Tuesday, April 17, 2007
TIME: 8:00 pm
LOCATION: Peace Fountain in front of Old Main on the University of Arkansas campus

Attendees are encouraged bring a candle and cushions or blankets for sitting.  There will also be an opportunity to sign an expression of sympathy, which will be forwarded to the appropriate department at Virginia Tech University.

May all beings have happiness and the causes of happiness.

May all beings be free from suffering and the causes of suffering.

May all beings never be separated from the supreme joy that is beyond all sorrow.

May all beings abide in equanimity, free from attachment and aversion.

Dharamsala, April 15 - Dr. Clare Harris, Lecturer and Curator for Asia, Pitt Rivers Museum and School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography, University of Oxford, just finished her visit to Dharamsala to promote an interactive web archive that depicts Tibet visually, as captured through both colonial and post-colonial periods.

The Tibet Album presents more than 6000 photographs spanning 30 years of Tibet’s history. These extraordinary photographs are a unique record of people long gone and places changed beyond all recognition. They also document the ways that British visitors encountered Tibet and Tibetans.

Featuring photographs taken by Charles Bell, Arthur Hopkinson, Evan Nepean, Hugh Richardson, Frederick Spencer Chapman, Harry Staunton and the previously unidentified photographs of Rabden Lepcha.

Specially designed functions (maps, zoom, album) enable you to browse this site in many different ways. Photographs appear in a variety of formats and can be linked to the visual narratives they were originally used for.

The Tibet Album can be viewed at:  http://tibet.prm.ox.ac.uk/

Krishna (Chris) Gauci, of Portland, Oregon will visit Fayetteville from June 8 - 10, 2007.   Krishna is an experienced teacher with a strong background in Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta, and is a Waking Down senior teacher.  He’s a delightful and gifted presenter, and a down to earth guy.  His workshop — Invocation and Natural Surrender — is open to anyone, whether or not you are interested specifically in the Waking Down work.  To learn more about him and read his writings, visit www.KrishnaSatsang.com and www.wakingdown.org/KrishnaGauci.

“You are Infinite Consciousness and you are already free. You are also a bodily human personality that experiences limits in a world of limits. The paradox of being simultaneously both defies logic and can feel like quite a burn, but it is the key to a life of continuous transformation. If you are ready, the time of using one part of yourself to avoid the other can be over. Trusting both the Ocean and the wave. This is authenticity, humaneness and compassion. This is embodying the realization of The Eternal in time.”    - Krishna Gauci
 
There  will be a Satsang (a gathering to receive and share spiritual inspiration) on Friday evening June 8,  then a two day workshop on the weekend of June 9-10.  You’re welcome to attend the evening, one day, or both days in any combination.  Over the weekend we will explore together:

• Natural Surrender: Surrendering into Life as Life surrenders into and as Us.
• The paradox of what it means to invoke and pray for the changes we want while still trusting Life or Onlyness itself. 
• The relationship between doing and allowing
• Invocations using archetypes, images, and names of Divine Being
• Surrender as the recognition of what is always already happening
• Invocations directed to “The Great Whatever”, or no one in particular
• Invocation as Divinely human empowerment
• The relationship between having what we want and wanting what we have. 
• Stretching the limits of the finite through daring/invocation and the part natural surrender plays when ”Being shortens the leash” 
• Some reasons when and why Invocations happen quickly when they do, and why they don’t when they don’t
• How Invocation, Daring and Natural Surrender are a circuit of continuous transformation of the inside and the outside

During the weekend we will uncover our own feelings around the  paradoxical relationship between our experience of ourselves as already being enough and our natural yearning for more. As always, we will be doing this through guided meditation, sharing, dialogue, gazing and deeply relaxing in the silent transmission of Presence.   Also, Krishna will be responsive to our needs and interests as a group.

If you are interested, want more information, or are ready to register now to reserve your place, please contact Leslie Oelsner at 521-2395.

Cost of the workshop is undetermined at this time, but there will be sliding scale available as we don’t want anyone turned away because of lack of funds. 
 
Below is a paragraph from Krishna’s website:
 
“In both our profound freedom and profound limitation we are the Totality of Being and no part of us can be left behind. We are the ever-changing dance of life in motion and we are the deepest Stillness that is revealed in this dance. Every part of us is welcome. You may not be comfortable, but you are no mistake, you are here for a purpose. What a Paradox: In a thousand ways our hearts are forever longing to merge with the Source of all pleasure and satisfaction and we are always already that Source. We can neither stop our longing nor stop being the Source. You are the Unity of duality and non-duality. You belong here and all of you is yearning to find its full expression. Embracing this incarnation, you live your own Gospel, sing your own Gita and discover your own Dharma. Make yourself at home here and dare to move into and fully inhabit the heroic drama of your own divinely inspired story. This is my wish for you and our meeting together.”

Vipassana Retreat with Michael Freeman at Wattle Hollow Retreat Center April 20 - 29, 2007

Michael Freeman is coming to Wattle Hollow teach a long Vipassana retreat.  Folks have the option of staying the entire time, or just doing a portion of it.

Cost is $30/day to cover food and lodging, and dana (Pali word for donation) for the teacher. 

Michael has been meditating for 25 years. He is the guiding teacher and founder of SW Sangha, a meditation center in San Lorenzo, New Mexico since the early 90’s. He is familiar with a diverse variety of meditative styles, though the practice of Vipassana (Insight meditation) will be the technique mostly used in this 10-day retreat. This is a great opportunity for those yogis seeking a longer sanctuary for retreat and to dive deeper into their meditation practice.

For more information or to register, visit www.wattlehollow.com
 

Fayetteville Soto Zen Center has changed its name to Fayetteville Soto Zen Meditation Group, and has moved its meeting place from United Campus Ministries to the Arkansas Yoga Center.

As of May 7, 2007, FSZMG will meet at Arkansas Yoga Center, 1949 Green Acres, Fayetteville, Arkansas, 72703, which is located behind the Fayetteville AQ Chicken Restaurant on College Avenue. Weekly meetings of FSZMG are held upstairs at AYC, Mondays from 7:30 pm sharp to 9:00 pm.

The practice of Zen involves focusing the mind on nothing while being totally aware during meditation (zazen). Participants sit zazen facing the wall for 30 minutes, do a brief period of walking meditation, and go back to sitting for another 20 minutes. This is usually followed by a Dharma talk and a short discussion. Cushions are provided.

For more information, call group leader Jack McDowell at 479-789-2531. For a collection of Jack’s Dharma talks go to zentalks.blogspot.com. Writing under his Zen name, Kan-za, he hits the timeless bull’s-eye every time.

Anam Thubten Rinpoche
Presents a Dharma Talk In Fayetteville
“Putting an End to Suffering”

When: Thursday, April 5th 2007, 7:00 - 8:30 PM
Where: St. Martin’s Episcopal/Lutheran Chapel
814 W. Maple Street, Fayetteville
Donation: $10 - $15 sliding scale (suggested)

Born in Tibet, Anam Thubten Rinpoche undertook Buddhist training in the Nyingma tradition at an early age. He was recognized as the incarnation of Anam Lama at age 15 by several masters, including Gompa Tulku Rinpoche. Tulku Thupten Rinpoche came to the West in 1992 and teaches in fluent English. Currently serving as spiritual advisor and dharma teacher for the Dharmata Foundation (www.dharmata.org), Anam Thubten is also a writer, Buddhist scholar and a lover of the true dharma.

“I believe that everyone is capable of realizing their true nature, which is already perfect. Only then can we be truly happy and become a blessing to others. Let us allow ourselves to go beyond all resistance and experience the inexpressible nature of our true being.”
~Anam Thubten

For more information, contact Sandy Pope at 501/821-3463 or Sandy (at) bemoremindful.com