Ongoing Programs
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Starting January 2025
(see below for dates)
Buddhist Mind Science Course: Activating Your Potential
7 Modules
Activating Your Potential is a FPMT introductory course. Buddhism is considered by some to be a “science of mind” because it presents a comprehensive map describing the mind and its various aspects and functions. The Buddha’s teachings also provide methods to observe the mind directly and to discover and activate our inner potential.
Course Overview:
The course is presented over seven modules, with a strong experiential component that invites everyone to reflect and check for themselves the different topics presented in the modules:
Course Overview:
The course is presented over seven modules, with a strong experiential component that invites everyone to reflect and check for themselves the different topics presented in the modules:
- Cultivating lasting happiness: What Buddhism and science have to say about it, is an exploration of purpose in life and what leads to dissatisfaction and suffering, and what to happiness, for oneself and others. It also explores the value of warm heartedness and wisdom, and it lays out the general foundation for the following modules.
- Transforming the mind to cultivate lasting happiness, focuses on meditation, mental balance, and emotions.
- Getting to know your mind focuses, on the mind.
- Fundamental trainings to cultivate lasting happiness, presents the foundations of the Buddhist paths.
- Wise paths to the heart, focuses on warm heartedness.
- The nature of perception, focuses on wisdom.
- Embodying warm heartedness and wisdom, explores how to bring the values of warm heartedness and wisdom into the world.
Sunday, January 12th, 26th,
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CULTIVATING LASTING HAPPINESS
The course “Cultivating lasting happiness: What Buddhism and science have to say about it” focuses on an exploration of what leads to dissatisfaction and suffering, and what contributes to happiness for oneself and others. The fundamentals of meditation and mind training are introduced, especially in the areas of establishing a meaningful direction in life, balancing the mind with equanimity and a caring attitude, and nurturing warmheartedness and wisdom drawn from the Buddhist tradition. It is complemented by references to current scientific understanding on our nervous system, values, subjective well-being, neuroplasticity and altruism.
The Journey
“Cultivating Lasting Happiness” gradually unfolds as a journey along different topics:
Led by: Trey Ligon, Center Director
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
The course “Cultivating lasting happiness: What Buddhism and science have to say about it” focuses on an exploration of what leads to dissatisfaction and suffering, and what contributes to happiness for oneself and others. The fundamentals of meditation and mind training are introduced, especially in the areas of establishing a meaningful direction in life, balancing the mind with equanimity and a caring attitude, and nurturing warmheartedness and wisdom drawn from the Buddhist tradition. It is complemented by references to current scientific understanding on our nervous system, values, subjective well-being, neuroplasticity and altruism.
The Journey
“Cultivating Lasting Happiness” gradually unfolds as a journey along different topics:
- A universal need explores the common ground that we all want to find happiness and overcome suffering, and presents initial techniques to balance body and mind.
- Are we pursuing happiness in the best way? is an initial exploration of the Buddhist Four Truths and a suggestion to probe into common ways to pursue happiness—are we succeeding?
- Following the scent of lasting happiness encourages us to establish meaningful directions and to find ways to cultivate lasting happiness and activate our potential.
- Meditation and mind training presents tools for doing so.
- Wisdom and warm heartedness as a source of lasting happiness presents tools to cultivate the fundamental qualities of warm heartedness and wisdom and invites us to explore their contribution to our own and others’ happiness.
- Enhancing wisdom and warm heartedness further explores these fundamental qualities.
Led by: Trey Ligon, Center Director
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
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Dharmakaya Book Study Group
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In this society, with its hurly-burly pace demanding of our time, it is ever so easy to let life slip by. Looking back after ten, twenty, thirty, years—we wonder what we have really accomplished. The process of simply existing is not necessarily meaningful. And yet there is an unlimited potential for meaning and value in this human existence.
The Seven-Point Mind Training is one eminently practical way of tapping into that meaning. At the heart of the Seven-Point Mind Training lies the transformation of the circumstances that life brings us, however hard as the raw material from which we create our own spiritual path. The central theme of the Seven-Point Mind Training is to make the liberating passage from the constricting solitude of self-centeredness to the warm kinship with others which occurs with the cultivation of cherishing others.
Led by: Mary Wellhoner
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
The Seven-Point Mind Training is one eminently practical way of tapping into that meaning. At the heart of the Seven-Point Mind Training lies the transformation of the circumstances that life brings us, however hard as the raw material from which we create our own spiritual path. The central theme of the Seven-Point Mind Training is to make the liberating passage from the constricting solitude of self-centeredness to the warm kinship with others which occurs with the cultivation of cherishing others.
Led by: Mary Wellhoner
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
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Drop In Guided Meditation
January 2025 Tuesday starting January 14, 2025 12:00 PM - 12:45 PM (In Person only) |
Join us for a guided meditation exploring the powerful Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Tonglen, meaning "giving and taking," is a profound practice that cultivates compassion and helps us connect with the suffering of the world. Tonglen is a powerful practice that can help us to live with greater compassion, courage, and connection to all beings.
Led by: Anne Ligon, SPC
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
Led by: Anne Ligon, SPC
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
Dharmakaya Study Group
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The intention of this group is for Dharma friends to come together and discuss the various principles of Buddhist ideas in order to create a deeper understanding for our practice. We will be reading and discussing Samsara, Nirvana and Buddha Nature, volume three in the Library of Wisdom and Compassion series by His Holiness Dalai Lama and Venerable Thubten Chodron.
Knowledge of buddha nature reveals and reconciles the paradox of how the mind can be the basis for both the duhkha of samsara (the unpurified mind) and the bliss and fulfillment of nirvana (the state of true freedom and peace). To illustrate this, Samsara, Nirvana, and Buddha Nature first takes readers through Buddhist thought on the self, the four truths, and their sixteen attributes. It then explains afflictions—including how they arise and their antidotes—followed by an examination of karma and cyclic existence, and, finally, a deep and thorough elucidation of buddha nature. Samsara, Nirvana, and Buddha Nature shows us how to purify our minds and cultivate awakened qualities.
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds
Knowledge of buddha nature reveals and reconciles the paradox of how the mind can be the basis for both the duhkha of samsara (the unpurified mind) and the bliss and fulfillment of nirvana (the state of true freedom and peace). To illustrate this, Samsara, Nirvana, and Buddha Nature first takes readers through Buddhist thought on the self, the four truths, and their sixteen attributes. It then explains afflictions—including how they arise and their antidotes—followed by an examination of karma and cyclic existence, and, finally, a deep and thorough elucidation of buddha nature. Samsara, Nirvana, and Buddha Nature shows us how to purify our minds and cultivate awakened qualities.
Suggested Donation $5 -$10
No one turned away for lack of funds