Join (Rev.) Andrew Blake and Sarana Institute for our online meditation study series designed to strengthen your meditation practice and help you integrate the impacts of mindfulness and meditation into your daily life.

Practicing Dharma is a path of discovering wisdom and compassion or transformative actions. To get there, we sit and meditate weekly together.

Meditation practice is built on a foundation of skillful methods of insight and feeds the development of compassion to meet suffering and transform our life into meaning and joy.

What to Expect

Class begins at 7 pm ET on Tuesdays with a dharma talk, followed by a sitting practice, a walking meditation, then a contemplation based on each week’s theme. Class ends with a discussion and council practice, where we share from the heart and our experiences. We end at 9 pm. This class is suitable for any practice level and best suited for those wishing to deepen their Buddhist-informed practices and understanding.

Description of our Upcoming Series

Vajrayana Series: Applying Buddhist Psychology in Transforming Attachment

In Part 2 of this Vajrayana series, we continue to explore Tibetan Buddhist methods of increasing our well-being and decreasing our tendencies that lead to suffering. In his 2019 book Desire: Why it Matters, author Traleg Rinpoche uncovers how the teachings on attachment can be used to alleviate deep-rooted patterns through meditative awareness, mindfulness, and reflection. Transformation is approached by recognizing the many influences that shape our experiences and tending the fire that generates our experiences by managing our positive and negative emotions/thoughts.

In part 2 of his book, he explores the teachings of Abhidharma, or Buddhist Psychology, which present a map of how our imprints become either doors to further suffering or openings to insight into the interconnected nature of all phenomena, including how we view our "self." The word "dharma" in this context means "many elements." Part of the complicated nature of how we see ourselves is that we misperceive our experience of things by seeing and believing our experience to be real and accurate rather than applying mindfulness as a mirror to reflect and observe the myriad imprints that form our experience, the "many." The Buddha taught that nothing is singular in its nature, and this new awareness leads to less grasping and fixation, writes Traleg Rinpoche.

Vajrayana works with both our shamatha (focused attention) and vipassana (reflective awareness) skills, and then offers another unique method called deity practice. Near the end of the series, we will explore the underpinnings of deity practice and understand how it is the same as mindfulness and insight meditation with a twist.

This course is open to all levels of meditation practice and those interested in integrating Buddhist approaches and teachings into their lives and healing. If you are new to meditation, please don't hesitate to contact us before registration.

Other Details

• Tuesday Evenings from 7 - 9 pm ET on Zoom

• Starts April 30th for 9 Weeks to June 25th, 2024

Registration Fee

There are a few options for registering:

• Base Fee: $250

• Supportive Fee: $300 for those who can contribute more

• PWYC Fee: Any amount that you can contribute

*as a spiritual gift, the dharma is not a commodity bought and sold. Our registration fees go to support Rev. Andrew and the work at Sarana Institute. If the suggested fee is challenging, pay an amount that works within your finances. Everyone is welcome in our sangha, and finances must never be a reason not to join us.