Dear Friends and Members,

You are invited to join an online celebration of Pema Khandro’s birthday this coming Wednesday, Dec 15, at 6 p.m. Pacific Time.

The event will include a White Tara practice led by Pema Khandro and she will talk about her life and work.  Personally, I love the White Tara practice, which is for the purpose of fostering world peace and healing from calamities.  I’m especially looking forward to hearing Pema Khandro speak of her life and work.  I hope you will be able to attend.

For those of you who would like to make a birthday offering, Pema Khandro has asked that donations be made to benefit Dakini Mountain, the new Retreat center in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

You can register for Pema Khandro’s Birthday Celebration at the link below.  If you cannot attend but wish to make a birthday gift offering, you can do that also at the same link.

Pema Khandro’s Birthday Celebration

The Dakini Mountain fundraising campaign for 2021 has brought in $30,900 of the $50,000 goal.  Thank you for your support and generosity!  

Only $19,100 more is needed to complete the 2021 goal.  We’re in the homestretch!

Dakini Mountain is the physical center of the vision of Pema Khandro.  It’s a vision of Buddhism flourishing in the 21st century and beyond.  It’s a vision based on the timeless Buddhist teachings of liberation and compassion merging with a modern context of revitalized ethics, empathy training, nonviolent communication, gender equality, and respect for diversity.

Please support Dakini Mountain.  Help keep the Buddhist teachings and the vision of Pema Khandro strong and vibrant.

Thank you!

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you a happy holiday season,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

PEMA KHANDRO’S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

Dear Friends and Members,

Today is Giving Tuesday.  

As we enter this holiday season that some call the Season of Giving, it’s a good time to ask ourselves:  

“What causes are most important to me?” 

“How can I make a difference?”

I’m reminded of the holiday classic movie – It’s a Wonderful Life. Considered one of the greatest movies of all time, It’s a Wonderful Life came out in 1946 starring Jimmy Stewart as George Bailey.  

It’s a poignant story that provides inspiration and hope when the world, either your own personal one, or the world at large, looks far too bleak and discouraging.

George Bailey is a good man in a world that is essentially not different from our own, which is to say, there are many sad problems that create a great deal of suffering.  Adding to the pain, we see that most of the suffering is unnecessary, the result of a lack of wisdom and an abundance of bad actions.

George keeps doing good things.  It’s just who he is.  For example, he uses his personal savings to keep the local bank afloat.  He then uses the financial power of the bank to provide affordable housing for his community.  He does many good things but keeps running into hard luck and powerful corruption that eventually brings him to his knees.  So distraught, he decides to end it all and jump off a bridge, but when someone else falls off the bridge in front of him, he instead jumps in to rescue that person.

In the story, an angel intervenes and we come to the point of the movie where the angel shows George what the world would be like if George had never existed.  George thought his life was pointless, but instead, is shocked to see that the level of suffering in people’s lives is so much greater in a world without him.

This is how I feel about our lives as Buddhist practitioners and people who support Buddhism.  We want to relieve all suffering, our own and others, and sometimes it seems like we fail.

But I have come to firmly believe that our efforts have great effect beyond what is obvious.  One thing that makes me believe this is that when I am around Pema Khandro or others who exemplify ethics and genuine love and compassion, I become a better person.  And when I am a better person, I have seen that I have this same influence on others.  It’s not really complicated.  Goodness begets goodness and the power of goodness is unlimited.

If you feel like me that Buddhism and the teaching of Pema Khandro in particular, make a great difference in this world (Reason 5 for those who have been following the series), now is the time your support is needed.

Giving Tuesday Means You Care.   We are continuing to raise funds to support and sustain Dakini Mountain, the physical center of Pema Khandro’s work in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California.

Since the beginning of Buddhism, centers like this have been critical to keeping Buddhism alive and vital.  Many of you who have been to a Buddhist holy place know that such places can change your life, open your eyes to your potential and instill the momentum to bring your potential to reality.

$28,000 of the 2021 fundraising goal of $50,000 to cover critical maintenance, property tax and insurance costs for Dakini Mountain has been met.  $22,000 more is needed.

Giving Tuesday is today.  Please support Dakini Mountain.  Help keep the Buddhist teachings and the vision of Pema Khandro strong and vibrant.

Thank you! 

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you a happy holiday season,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

Dear Friends and Members,

Dear Friends and Members,

Today I will give a third reason to support Dakini Mountain and the work of Pema Khandro.

Reason 3

You want to take the advanced teachings of Vajrayana Buddhism and support others to do the same.

Due to the benefits of modern technology, many of you have participated in the robust offerings of Internet classes given by Pema Khandro through the Buddhist Studies Institute, bringing the shedra, the classical training in Buddhist Philosophy to you right in your homes.  And yet there is more.  There are advanced teachings that must be given in person, the annual retreats that rely on our retreat center. With your help, Dakini Mountain is the place where those retreats will happen.

I’ll give you a fourth reason to donate for Giving Tuesday soon, but you don’t have to wait.

You can donate right now.

Thank you! 

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you a happy holiday season,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

Dear Friends and Members,

Giving Tuesday is coming soon.  Today, I will give a second reason to support Dakini Mountain and the work of Pema Khandro.

Reason 2

You care about Pema Khandro and want her work to flourish.

If you are receiving this email, you have most likely taken teachings from Pema Khandro.  If you have found her to be someone you care about and want to support, this is a great reason to support Dakini Mountain, a cause close to her heart. Pema Khandro can’t do it alone, she relies on the whole community to help make all of our projects possible, and most especially Dakini Mountain. 

I’ll give you a third reason to donate for Giving Tuesday soon, but you don’t have to wait.

You can donate right now.

Thank you! 

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you a happy holiday season,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

Dear Friends and Members,

Giving Tuesday is in 7 days.  Over this week,  I will give 5 reasons to support Dakini Mountain and the work of Pema Khandro.

Reason 1

You want to support gender equality in Buddhism.

If you are familiar with Pema Khandro and her Buddhist school, you know about her earnest efforts to promote the cause of women in Buddhism. (And you have seen her constant efforts to promote respect and inclusion for all vulnerable people!)  The leadership of women has historically been underrepresented and historically disadvantaged in the Buddhist tradition and in religions all across the world. Pema Khandro, being herself one of the few female lamas and female tulkus promotes gender equality in Buddhism through her perseverance against all odds, and despite many obstacles. She has even led a women-run dharma organization for two decades. She has campaigned for education about women and been a leader in teachings about ethics and protecting women from harm. These are subjects she brings up in every teaching. Even her scholarship has been dedicated to promoting women in Buddhism. And she has the  awareness of the value that women leaders have to offer in today’s world.

You can donate right now to support Pema Khandro’s pioneering efforts.

I’ll give you another reason to donate for Giving Tuesday soon, but you don’t have to wait.

Thank you!

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you a happy holiday season,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

Dear Friends and Members,

Thank you for being part of the 2021 Dakini Mountain Fundraising drive.  Thanks to people like you, we are now past the halfway point of $28,000 raised.  $22,000 more will complete the $50,000 goal.

We are in the homestretch entering the traditional holiday season of giving, November and December.

As you consider what causes you want to support in this year, please keep Dakini Mountain on your list.

Dakini Mountain is the physical center of the vision of Pema Khandro.  It’s a vision of  Buddhism flourishing in the 21st century and beyond.  It’s a vision based on the timeless Buddhist teachings of liberation and compassion merging with a modern context of revitalized ethics, empathy training, nonviolent communication, gender equality, and respect for diversity.

Some day, perhaps in the not distant future, you will come to Dakini Mountain.  As Dakini Mountain develops, it will be a place to revitalize your personal inspiration, a place to rest and recover, a place to deepen your practice of the Buddhist way of life.  Such places can change your life. Such places definitely make society a better place.

Please support Dakini Mountain.  Help keep the Buddhist teachings and the vision of Pema Khandro strong and vibrant.

Any donation you can make, large or small, makes a difference.

Thank you!

Also, long term financial support is needed now for the Dakini Mountain loan refinancing.  If you have the ability to be a loan guarantor or participate in estate planning or legacy giving, there are many ways you could help. 

Refinancing to reduce the costs of Dakini Mountain is a top priority for this year, but one to three more loan guarantors are needed. For more information on becoming a guarantor or legacy giving, please reply to this email.  

You can also find more information at 

https://buddhiststudiesinstitute.org/planned-giving/

Gifts can also be made by check, payable to Ngakpa International, and mailed to Dakini Mountain, P.O. Box 2396, Nevada City, California 95959, USA.

Ngakpa International is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit EIN 68-0529687 and all gifts are tax deductible as allowed by law.

For more information about Dakini Mountain, visit www.DakiniMountain.org

Wishing you joy and happiness,

Janak

Director of Fundraising

Ngakpa International

Buddhist Studies Institute

Dakini Mountain Retreat Center

P.O. Box 2396

Nevada City, California 95946

USA

COMMUNITY LIVING AT DAKINI MOUNTAIN

Dear Friends,

Sometimes our own minds can be unbearable and intolerable. It is a reality that most people do not deal with until they have to – how body and mind can become injured, an injury that no one can see but which silently takes over our lives and disorients our sense of self. This is what trauma can be like. It is a terrible experience that sticks or one we cannot so easily become unstuck from. As Van der Kolk puts it – “Being traumatized means continuing to organize your life as if the trauma were still going on—unchanged and immutable—as every new encounter or event is contaminated by the past.”

He says,

“When something reminds traumatized people of the past, their right brain reacts as if the traumatic event were happening in the present. But because their left brain is not working very well, they may not be aware that they are reexperiencing and reenacting the past—they are just furious, terrified, enraged, ashamed, or frozen. After the emotional storm passes, they may look for something or somebody to blame for it. They behaved the way they did because you were ten minutes late, or because you burned the potatoes, or because you ‘never listen to me.’ Of course, most of us have done this from time to time, but when we cool down, we hopefully can admit our mistake. Trauma interferes with this kind of awareness, and, over time, our research demonstrated why.”

Excerpt From: Bessel van der Kolk MD. “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.”

This issue of how the past can remain present is one that is a deep concern of Buddhist philosophy, so Buddhism and Trauma theory are natural conversation partners for so many reasons. One interesting intersection is in concern over meditation and its goals. Both share this interest in how a person can learn to let go of the past, how to reinhabit the body in a present-moment way (even when that can be difficult or horrific). They both share this concern with rewiring the nervous system to reign in present moment awareness in the midst of extreme states.

Another shared concern between Buddhism and trauma theory is how the body can stay stuck in past states, even without the mind realizing why. Van der Kolk says,

“Some people simply go into denial: Their bodies register the threat, but their conscious minds go on as if nothing has happened. However, even though the mind may learn to ignore the messages from the emotional brain, the alarm signals don’t stop. The emotional brain keeps working, and stress hormones keep sending signals to the muscles to tense for action or immobilize in collapse. The physical effects on the organs go on unabated until they demand notice when they are expressed as illness. Medications, drugs, and alcohol can also temporarily dull or obliterate unbearable sensations and feelings. But the body continues to keep the score.”

There is this whole process, of healing, that involves coming back into integration with bodily experience. Learning how to safely feel the body and how to calm and soothe ourselves viscerally. For me, Vajrayana meditations have always been the most powerful way to do that, so I know first hand how powerful a meditation practice can be. The good news of trauma and meditation is that it is possible to heal from trauma and that meditation can help. But the reality is that meditation does not actually always help. This is why when I think of the meditation teacher of the future, I know that without question, they must be trauma informed. What exactly that means, though, is an issue that I want to highlight this weekend. Some of the questions I will address are:

What do we do when sitting in silence makes things worse?

What about those for whom meditation increases anxiety?

What happens if someone has PTSD flashbacks when meditating?

The concepts of trauma have changed so much from the time when it used to be thought of as something that only Vietnam vets would have, to thinking even beyond PTSD to how people manage traumatic stress in their lives. I anticipate that the frameworks for trauma and resilience will continue to change too. One direction I see is in the sense in which the concepts have tended to be ethnocentric. Being a multi-cultural person, this has been really clear to me, but it is also something that we talked about as a community when Lewis was one of the guests last year. She raised this issue of a very different way of healing from trauma and cultivating resilience among the Tibetan Buddhists she had studied in her ethnographic work in a community that had faced so much violence and oppression. Lewis documented this in her recent book, Spacious Minds, Trauma and Resilience in Tibetan Buddhism. One difference she notes is a difference in approaches to meeting distress, in attitudes about suffering and its role, a worldview that primes them for letting go of negative emotions, an orientation towards recovery. As I think through what trauma informed meditation instruction is, I also consider what it means in a multi-cultural context, which meditation instruction often is.

This Saturday I look forward to offering a workshop on Trauma Informed Meditation Instruction, and hopefully to open up a space for thinking through these issues in a way that is as multi-cultural and curious as it is empathetic and compassionate for the people in our meditation class who may be processing tremendous hardships. This workshop is for meditation instructors who want to prepare for the realities of teaching in the midst of a global mental health crisis and who want to be prepared for helping people when normative approaches to meditation instruction won’t work.

A major issue here is how to be an assuring, steady and empathetic presence, so that we don’t retraumatize, so that we can be a part of the healing. I think of a quote from Van der Kolk’s, The Body Keeps the Score, “ As long as their caregivers remain calm and responsive to their needs, they often survive terrible incidents without serious psychological scars.”  However, there are limits and constraints to what a meditation instructor can do, in terms of the scope of the role and the scope of the training. I want to help clarify that and open up conversations about responsible care, boundaries, promoting resources and referrals and seeing oneself as one factor among many that can contribute to a person’s healing journey. With all this at heart, I look forward to this Saturday’s workshop.

My very best to you always,

Excerpts from: Bessel van der Kolk MD. “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.”

TRAUMA INFORMED MEDITATION TEACHING