Shambhala Training

What is Shambhala Training?

Shambhala Training is a non-religious meditation program that emphasizes both a deepening experience of meditation and an integration of that experience into daily life. By bringing the mindfulness cultivated through meditation into everyday experience, we are able to change our own lives and the environment around us. From this point of view, it is entirely practical.

Progressive Spiritual Development

Shambhala Training is presented initially in a series of five weekend workshops, spaced at least a month apart, which bring about progressive spiritual development. Each weekend consists of a series of talks by a senior teacher, individual meetings with a meditation instructor, group discussions, and periods of sitting and walking meditation. The supportive environment of each weekend enables beginners to engage in meditation for extended periods of time and thus deepen their experience of meditation. The progressive structure of weekend workshops in a series supports and guides people through the frustrations that sometimes occur as people go beyond the initial stages of meditation practice. The combination of all these elements is somehow profoundly and unexpectedly moving, and participants often find themselves making surprising progress from one weekend program to the next.

Contemplative Practice

Shambhala teachings cultivate unconditional confidence and sanity, the straightforward practice of being what we are, fearlessly and without hesitation. By discovering our own awakened nature through the practice of meditation, we can uplift our state of mind and then extend our gentleness and wisdom to the world around us.

Warriorship

One of the central images of the Shambhala teachings is that of Warriorship.  In Shambhala, the warrior is one who has the courage to face life non-aggressively, with fearlessness, gentleness, and a tender heart.   This path shows how to take the challenges of daily life in our modern society as opportunities for contemplative practice. Shambhala Training is inspired by the ancient legend of the Kingdom of Shambhala, said to be an enlightened society based on gentle and fearless action.

Basic Goodness

The basic truth of the Shambhala teachings is that we all want to lead sane, dignified and confident lives, and that this is possible. If we look directly at our own experience, we can discover a continuity of wakefulness underlying all the changing conditions. This wholesome, wakeful presence enables us to experience our lives fully and directly. In Shambhala Training, this is referred to as "basic goodness."  

Five Weekend Workshops

Shambhala Training begins with a series of five weekend workshops, entitled, The Heart of Warriorship.

• Level I: The Art of Being Human. This first weekend of Shambhala Training introduces participants to the practice of sitting and walking meditation. In addition, we learn the basic principles of the Shambhala path of warriorship. There is a basic, good energy present in all of our experience, and this basic goodness, innate to the way things are, is our own inborn, unconditional nature as well.
• Level II: Birth of the Warrior. This second weekend of Shambhala Training intensifies the discipline of meditation practice, enabling participants to work with obstacles that may have arisen as meditation practice develops. We also explore how habitual ways of thinking and experiencing obscure the raw brilliance of the world we live in and our own genuineness and tenderness. Finally, we learn how to work with the fear that occurs when we move forward out of these habitual patterns.
• Level III: Warrior in the World. In this third weekend of Shambhala training, we work in a deliberate way to bring the mindfulness and awareness we cultivate during meditation practice into everyday life. Alive to our sense perceptions, we can venture in the world with a vulnerability that is fearless, gentle, and awake.
• Level IV: Awakened Heart.When we enter the world in an open and vulnerable way, we let the world touch our heart, and our heart wakes up to the touch. We encounter the world with clear perception, freed of our conventional ways of thinking and experiencing.
• Level V: Open Sky, Primordial Stroke.With our body resting on the earth, no different from the earth, with our mind resting in the sky, no different from the sky, we encounter the vastness of heaven joined with the primordial depth of earth—how they actually come together in our own being. This state serves as the basis for our activity in world.