Summer Retreat: Mind at Ease: Self-Liberation Through Mahamudra Meditation
with Gaylon Ferguson
Open to all practitioners
IN-PERSON AT Berkeley shambhala center with the teacher — in addition to online or in-person group gatherings at the Davis & Sonoma SHAMBHALA CENTERS • Presented by Northern California Shambhala
What Is Mahamudra Meditation?
In the Kagyu Buddhist lineage of teachings, natural awareness is the heart of meditation. This is called “mahamudra,” the “great seal” of luminous emptiness.
There are three streams: sutra mahamudra, tantra mahamudra, and essence mahamudra. Sutra mahamudra engages the practices of shamatha (mindfulness) and vipashyana (insight) meditation. Tantra mahamudra uses vajrayana skillful means of visualization and mantra. Essence mahamudra is realizing the nature of mind.
In this group retreat — open to all practitioners, we will follow the teachings and practices outlined in Traleg Rinpoche’s profound text Mind at Ease: Self-liberation through Mahamudra Meditation. Rinpoche guides us in contemplating our human birth, karmic cause-and-effect, death and impermanence, and the limitless loving-kindness and compassion of awakened heart.
We are delighted to welcome senior Shambhala teacher Gaylon Ferguson to the Berkeley Shambhala Center!
Attend from anywhere in the world via Zoom, and if you are in proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area, you can attend in-person with the teacher and others at Berkeley, or gather in-person with groups at the Davis or Sonoma Shambhala Centers.
Partial attendance is fine, but please plan to attend full days, if possible.
Schedule
Friday, June 28 to Tuesday, July 2
Morning session • 9:30 am to 12:30 pm (PDT)
Afternoon session • 2:30 to 5:30 pm (PDT)
A more detailed schedule will be posted to the Summer Retreat Landing page for attendees, as we get closer to the retreat time. The Landing page link will be shared in the ‘Welcome Letter’ sent out to registrants.
If you have questions, please contact Irv Kirschbaum at kirschi3 [at] gmail [dot] com
Gaylon Ferguson
GAYLON FERGUSON, PhD, has led group meditation retreats since 1976. He taught at Stanford, the University of Washington, and Naropa University, where he was a Core Faculty Member for fifteen years. The author of three books, the most recent (March 2024) is Welcoming Beginner’s Mind: Zen and Tibetan Buddhist Wisdom on Experiencing Our True Nature. Gaylon’s others books are Natural Wakefulness (on the four foundations of mindfullness) and Natural Bravery (on fear and fearlessness as a path to manifesting bravery). All of these are available where books are sold. His articles have appeared in Lion’s Roar, Tricycle, and Buddhadharma magazine. Gaylon also contributed the foreword to the pioneering collection Black and Buddhist: What Buddhism Can Teach Us About Race, Resilience, Transformation and Freedom (Shambhala, 2020).
Retreat attendance is open to all practitioners. Attend from anywhere in the world via Zoom, and if you are in proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area, you can attend in-person with the teacher at the Berkeley Center, or in-person with groups at the Davis or Sonoma Shambhala Centers.
What to expect
The retreat will include sitting and walking meditation and instruction, dharma talks, silence, contemplation, discussion, and movement. We will support each other in maintaining the joyful discipline of retreat in community.
Vajrayana practitioners
As in previous retreats, we will practice all together as well as in smaller practice groups based on the Trungpa Rinpoche guru yoga sadhana, Bestowing Supreme Blessings: Dharma Sagara. Previous experience with this sadhana is not required.
Partial attendance
If you can’t attend for the whole retreat you are welcome to drop in for a full day or more.
Generosity Policy
No one will be turned away for lack of funds. Paying the full program or patron price provides much needed support to Northern California Shambhala. For more information please see our generosity policy.
Registration
Please register and pay in advance to make certain you receive all the relevant information before the retreat. The Welcome letter containing the Zoom links and other important information will be sent to paid registrants in June.
Contact
For further information, please contact: Irv Kirschbaum at kirschi3 [at] gmail [dot] com
Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows with Gaylon
Saturday & Sunday, June 22 to 23 • 9:00 pm to 5:00 pm
In-person only at the Berkeley Shambhala Center
We are excited to host Gaylon Ferguson as our summer retreat teacher in person for the first time in many years, and to celebrate his joining us in both mind and body, he has agreed to offer Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows, also after a long hiatus in the Bay Area.
The practices and ceremonies around the vows will be held the weekend before the Summer Retreat. If you are interested in exploring this opportunity, please mark your calendars and read more here.
Highly recommended if you plan on taking vows is Gaylon’s Shambhala Online Course: Being Buddhist: Exploring the Refuge Vow which begins Sat, April 6 (three 2-hour sessions, April 6–20)
If you have questions, please contact Irv Kirschbaum at kirschi3 [at] gmail [dot] com
Summer Retreat: Mind at Ease: Self-Liberation Through Mahamudra Meditation
June 28 to July 2 • Friday to Tuesday • 9:30 am to 5:30 pm (PDT)
Open to all practitioners. Attend from anywhere in the world via Zoom, and if you are in proximity to the San Francisco Bay Area, you can attend in-person with the teacher at the Berkeley Center, or in-person with groups at the Davis or Sonoma Shambhala Centers.
- $350 Program price
- $450 Patron price
- $250 Seniors, students, limited income price
- Pay what you can afford: type in dollar amount in space
- Per-Day rate, $60-$80 sliding scale: multiply the number of attendance days by the per-day rate and type that dollar amount in the space
Registration Please register and pay in advance to make certain you receive all the relevant information before the retreat.
- When you register, please indicate in the ‘Message’ space whether you are attending in-person at a center (and which center), or via Zoom. If you plan to attend only part of the retreat, please also indicate your attendance day(s).
- For in-person attendees: For the protection of everyone, if at any point you are feeling at all unwell, please stay home and attend online.
- A Welcome letter containing the Zoom links and other important information will be sent to registrants prior to the program.
- For questions, please contact: Irv Kirschhbaum at kirschi3 [at] gmail [dot] com
For online programs Shambhala uses Zoom for online programs which is available for computers, smart phones, and tablets. You need to download the free app on your device before joining the session. Once it’s loaded, click the link and follow the prompts to join the session. Please join at least 5-10 minutes in advance so that you’re ready when the program begins, and make certain that your mic is muted when you join to avoid background noises which are multiplied with many participants. Note that the Zoom experience seems to be most predictable when you are signed into your Zoom account and have the most current version installed on your computer. Learn more about Zoom • read Zoom FAQs.
