In an article posted on the Shambhala Times today, former Shambhala Europe Director Chris Tamdjidi discusses discovering the world’s magic as a key aspect of environmental protection. See Buddhism and Ecology: Environment as our Teacher.

Meditation can be viewed in many ways―as a tool for calming the mind, as a process of uncovering natural wisdom and compassion, as simply appreciating what it is to be fully human.

If you’d like to see for yourself what meditation is (and how it might affect your relationship with your life), the resources presented below will help you get started.

Come to our weekly Monday night Open House.

Sign up for our Meditation in Everyday Life weeknight course and/or Shambhala Training Level I weekend program.

Connect with a meditation instructor through our Meditation page.

Explore multimedia teachings on meditation in Shambhala’s About Meditation area.

Visit Shambhala Sun magazine’s How to Meditate section.

Responding to a call to the Kootenay Shambhala community for artwork for this blog, longtime member and sculptor Stephen Manuel submitted this photo of his latest casting. Learn more about Stephen’s art on his website―Mantras in Metal.

Enlarge image

Learn more on our Open House page.

On June 29th our updated regular public events schedule takes effect. Here’s what’s new:
• Children in Shambhala suspended until September
• Parents & Infants Meditation Group suspended until September

As usual, you can view the current schedule on our Regular Public Events Schedule page. You can download the updated schedule as a printable poster below.

Printable poster (PDF)

Also notable is that we’re planning to run our weekly Monday night Open House program at full steam all summer long! See our Open House page for details.

On May 19th - 22nd, Kootenay Shambhala Centre member Robin Higgins attended ALIA West, a three-day Authentic Leadership in Action intensive in Victoria. Inspired by “an amazing walking meditation in rain forest [where] an owl swooped by a hundred people standing in the morning forest,” she wrote the poem below.

Robin will share some of what she learned at the intensive in her June 15th Open House presentation, “The Art of Hosting Mindful Conversations.”

Forest Body: Walking with Arawana at Royal Roads

Fern and water unfurl
at foot of
ancient firs.
Earth breathes me.
Creek sings in my blood.
I am forest.

In dream time I return
to sit beside
my mossy grave.
Flesh joins
rotting leaves
to feed wild webs
of worms and roots
and hungry microcosms
of the invisible. Read the rest of this entry »

In a talk at last night’s Kootenay Shambhala Centre Open House, senior teacher Russell Rodgers led participants in an exploration of the cultural and perceptual underpinnings of current ecological problems and described three Buddhist practices for addressing these problems at their root. Click on the icon below to listen to the talk.

Download “Buddhism and Deep Ecology,” with Russell Rodgers (MP3: 57.5 MB; 1 hr, 3 min)

To explore this topic more fully, please join us for this year’s annual Kootenay public one-week meditation retreat at our retreat land near Nelson, from June 27th to July 5th. A full program description is available on our Kootenay Public Weekthün 2009: Touching the Earth page.