About the Course
This course is part of a five-course-series that provides a thorough exploration of the Hinayana path drawing on teachings from prominent teachers and classic sources. The emphasis is on cultivating maitri or friendliness to oneself, and on the Shambhala teachings of basic goodness, gentleness and bravery - allowing us to meet the modern human condition with warriorship and dignity.
The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.
Course III - The foundational teachings of the Buddha indicate that the suffering we experience in our lives can come to cessation if we recognize, deeply and profoundly, how that suffering has arisen. This requires gentle bravery and deep contemplation, bypassing simplistic notions of how our suffering has arisen.
About the Teachers
Gelong Loden Nyima is a fully ordained Buddhist monk. He lived at Gampo Abbey from 2009 – 2017 where he practiced intensively, completed a cycle of advanced studies (Shedra), and served in various roles including as a senior teacher. He now lives at Drala Mountain Center where he serves as Resident Teacher and a founding faculty member for the Path of Meditation, the Summer Seminar, and other programs. He spends a portion of each year in retreat, travels to continue his own dharma education, and can often be seen jogging around the land at DMC.
Judith Simmer-Brown, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Contemplative and Religious Studies Emeritx at Naropa University, where she has taught for over 40 years. Simmer-Brown is a compassion trainer for the Compassion Initiative at Naropa. She is author of Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (Shambhala) and editor, with Fran Grace, of Meditation and the Classroom: Contemplative Pedagogy for Religious Studies (SUNY). For Shambhala, she teaches Shambhala Training levels, Mahayana and Vajrayana topics, with a special love of White Tara, feminine principle, working with emotions, compassion and social engagement.