In Pursuit of Mysteries

Panel on “A Buddhist Path for the West”

I’ve been exchanging e-mail with Steve Seely, the managing director of the Nitartha Institute, today. He mentioned that Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and students, Carole Fleming and Tyler Dewar, are doing a panel at Nalanda West in Seattle tomorrow night, February 19, at 7:00 PM. This is the first of the “Big Topics” panels, which will be a monthly discussion series at Nalanda West. You can find the flyer for it here. The topic for tomorrow is “A Buddhist Path for the West & Spiritual Transmission.”

I encourage any of my Buddhist friends in the Seattle area to attend this talk. Nalanda West is based out of a former school building in Fremont (about two miles, if that, from where I grew up).

I wanted to reiterate that I think that the Nitartha Institute is doing really great things for Buddhism in the West in Seattle. I have several of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s books and a number of friends who have attended teachings with him over the last few years. Both the books and these personal encounters have indicated, to me, that he really does have a mission to engage with us here in the West and in finding the best ways to reach those of us from our culture. I really respect the work that he and his students are doing.

Steve Seely pointed out to me that there is now an introduction to the institute available on Youtube, as you can see below:

I also want to mention that the next educational program at the Nitartha Institute is the nine day program at the end of March. It goes from March 22 through to March 30. This is described as follows:

Nitartha Institute will offer its initial course sequence in a 9 day format at the beautiful urban dharma center, Nalanda West. In addition, the second level sequence will also be offered for those that have completed Level 1. Each are equivalent to attending the first or second two-week sessions at the Nitartha Summer Program. The spiritual director of the Institute, The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, has also been invited to teach at the program though we do not have confirmation of his ability to do so at this time.

The focus of Level 1 is a close and thorough examination of mind itself, its different classifications and functions, its ways of knowing phenomena, and the classifications and nature of those phenomena–mind’s objects. The exploration includes an examination of the different aspects of perception and its relationship to our conceptual world.

Session I curriculum courses, Mind & Its World I and Clear Thinking I, are designed to introduce students to the precision and clarity of the valid cognition teachings, as presented by Buddha and explicated by the great Indian masters Dignaga and Dharmakirti in the 7th-8th centuries. Along with these teachings on valid cognition are beginning explorations of the tenet systems of two of the great Hinayana schools, the Vaibhashika and Sautrantika. Two classics of the Tibetan study curriculum, the Lorik (Classifications of Mind) and the Dudra (Collected Topics), form the basis for the study.

The purpose of these teachings is to reveal our fundamental confusion about what is real in our everyday world. They are not intellectual exercises. They are pragmatic explorations of our ordinary mind, its relationship with the world of phenomena and of thoughts, and exactly where we get confused by our projections and how. The teachings reveal how we can lead our lives with less confusion, and offer effective tools for clear communication with our world.

The studies will be supplemented with hands-on experiential exercises in clear thinking and analytical meditation. The cultivation of contemplative skills is essential to understanding and progressing along the path of meditation, bringing further clarity to one’s mind, practice and relationship to one’s world.

Level 2 continues with the exploration of mind through investigating karma, how our actions affect ourselves and the world. In the courses Mind & Its World 2 and Clear Thinking 2 this investigation includes looking at the nature and function of causes and conditions, mind and its accompanying mental events from the Abhidharma tradition, and the profound view of pratityasamutpada, or interdependent origination.

Information on the core courses can be found here and the curriculum information is here.

I’ve considered attending this upcoming session but given the amount of time involved and the fact of my current lack of vacation time at work, I will have to wait until some other sessions. I do encourage others to take the time to work in these programs if they are able to do so.

Hypnodrome Show

This evening, R and I went to San Francisco to see the new show by the Thrillpeddlers at the Hypnodrome. (I’d give the url to their site but it is giving blank pages at the moment…).

R had bought tickets for us because we had a wonderful time there a few months ago and Jill Tracy was in tonight’s performance again. We got to hear a few songs by her and see some short bits, including a zombie apocalypse story that involved cast from a local middle school:

Along with this, we got to hear Jello Biafra speak, mostly on the topic of pranks and pranking. He related some amusing tales from his days in the Dead Kennedys and by others related to pranks. I especially appreciated the back fired prank of a friend of his who set up a Jonbonet Ramsey shrine that wound up getting him listed by the FBI (as well as pranking local news). Poor taste but a great prank. The best of those was the time that the Dead Kennedys got to play a high school dance locally after a group of students gamed the system and got them through the “Whittler’s Club” for their annual dance in the school.

All in all, a fun mix of macabre plays, singing, and talking heads.

As an aside, I don’t think I’m going to drive down to San Jose in seven hours (which would be necessary to get to Pantheacon in time before registration closes). I think I’ll be staying home and studying for my Esoteric Buddhism class. Sexy, it is not, but probably a more fruitful day.

Classwork and Pagans

I haven’t had as much to say lately. Between the security releases that I spend much of my time on at work and classes, day to day life has been a bit busy. Outside of these things, dramatic things have not occurred.

I did finally decide to drop the Japanese language class until at least next term. Doing the graduate seminar on Esoteric Buddhism at the Institute of Buddhist Studies is taking up a huge amount of time with its assigned reading and pondering. I really don’t have the time for language study, a graduate school class, and my job (along with various other responsibilities). I did decide to take the IBS class for credit (I was previously auditing). I did this primarily because I am still thinking about getting my PhD through the Graduate Theological Union (GTU), of which IBS is a member school. I would be pretty bent out of shape if I audited this class and then was forced to take it again in two years because it was part of my PhD. Since any PhD work that I do will be related to Buddhism, it would be very likely that I’d be taking this class.

I’ve also considered getting an Master’s degree in Buddhist Studies through another school in the UK but I’m not sure that I really need a second Master’s degree. The coursework would be good for my own study of Buddhism but we shall see.

If I do decide to go to GTU, assuming that they accept me, it would be a year from this September at the soonest, as one must apply a year in advance. The primary issue, really, is financial still. There are very few half-time jobs in tech and I could not work full-time and also work on a doctorate (well, maybe I could if I was 20, not needing sleep, and single with no family). The problem with stopping working, other than GTU’s high tuition, is that I still need to support my eleven year old daughter as well as pay a mortgage. I haven’t figured out the best approach to the financials at this point but I do know that there is very little aid at GTU. Everyone I know who has attended has taken out huge loans, which I’m not sure I want to do in my late 30s. Paying off six figures of student loans in my 40s, especially when there is no guarantee of work in my field, isn’t my idea of a good time. I still struggle with the idea of going to school for six to eight years (even if I can manage the finances of it) to come out of it with little chance of finding a job (and that job, if I do find it, for 75% of what I make now, if I’m even that lucky). Of course, some say just to follow my Bliss but I’m not sure an adventure into academia is it.

This is a three day weekend due to an American holiday. Other than my 200+ pages of school reading in Snellgrove, I plan on going down to Pantheacon on Sunday for the day. While I’m not a pagan anymore, my roots are still within the Neopagan community (far more than Catholicism or the like) and I will have many friends, both local and from afar, down there this weekend. The convention is about an hour drive away (not that far from my work), so I expect to go and come back, rather than spending the night. The hotels are full anyway…

Al and a friend at a previous Pantheacon