Contentment In Everyday Life (In Person)

Open to all

What is contentment? Generally we think it's having enough money, enough love, enough sustenance, and security. And yet, somehow it's never enough. "Contentment" in this sense remains elusive.

In the Shambhala teachings we regard "contentment" as simply resting in the moment, acknowledging and being with "what is," a state of simplicity. This course provides an opportunity to strengthen one's practice of meditation and explore the foundational Buddhist and Shambhala teachings, with a focus on how we can find contentment in the midst of our daily life experience. With meditation practice, we learn to meet difficult emotions and life's challenges with gentleness, steadiness and humor. We begin to appreciate ourselves and simple human experience.

This five-part course offers instruction on the following topics:  

Class 1: Introducing Contentment: "Friendly to Oneself"

Class 2: Contemplating Contentment: "Nowness"

Class 3: Suffering & The Four Noble Truths: "Meeting Suffering with Gentleness"

Class 4: Working with Emotions & Buddhist Psychology

Class 5: The Confidence of Contentment

About Shambhala Training:

The Shambhala Training path is a secular course of practice and study suitable for both beginning and experienced meditators, and open to people of any spiritual tradition. This comprehensive overview of mindfulness meditation and contemplative living practices presents the profound, simple and incredibly relevant view that when we foster a more awake and compassionate relationship with ourselves and with others, we can and are fostering a healthy transformation in society and our world altogether.

About the Teachers:

Rachel Faro is a senior meditation teacher and practitioner within the Shambhala and Tibetan Buddhist traditions who has taught and led meditation retreats, classes and workshops in Europe, Latin America, South Africa and throughout the United States.  A personal student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, she has been training, practicing and teaching since the early 1970's.  She is also an accomplished and well-known singer/songwriter, Grammy-nominated record producer and president of world music record label Ashé Records, releasing recordings of Cuban, Puerto Rican, Venezuelan, African, jazz, blues and folk music.  And finally, she is the proud mother of Anandi, an outstanding jazz singer, songwriter and Shambhala meditation teacher and practitioner based in Portland Oregon.

Bob Stevens arrived in New York in 1979 intent on studying Hinduism, but he stumbled upon a course on American Buddhism at the New School, which piqued his interest. This led him to attend a 3-month retreat with Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche to study Shambhala Buddhism and subsequently embark on the Shambhala path as a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. Bob is now the Chair of the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York Governing Council.

Testimonials:

"...I left feeling a true sense of contentment and with ways to cultivate contentment in my everyday life, learning to let go of much of the suffering I was putting myself through." — January 2021 Participant

"It was a transformational program in how I view everyday life, learning to find contentment and gratitude in many things I never thought I would." — January 2021 Participant

This event will be presented live, in-person at 151 W 30th St 3rd floor, New York, NY 10001 (Balance Arts Center).