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The Abhidharma is the collection of the Buddha’s teachings on the composition and functions of the human mind.

If you are looking for a Buddhist Studies course offering a more in-depth exploration of these teachings than is presented in the Way of Shambhala curriculum, consider taking this one: Looking at Mind: An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology.

Taught by David Marshall, this course is scheduled to run at the Kootenay Shambhala Centre on six consecutive Thursdays, from February 11th to March 18th, 2010. Everyone is welcome. Online participation―through audio recordings and other materials―will be possible.

For a full course description, go to our Looking at Mind: An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology page.

Here are two evocative poems by Kootenay Shambhala member David Marshall.

What She Told Me

The river’s voice
tongues these rocks round, or,
rock and water together
make this music. Changing
with weather, the seasons,
dry years and wet,
now a whisper, then
a bleached log roared
high above our heads.

Stories of flood years
told in a river voice.
A quiet engineer
who built on the only dry land
left at flood’s height,
an eleven-year toothache
of a neighbor who built
too cheap to bother.

Our gaze in the mornings
probed water like an ouzel
dipping stone fly breakfast
from quiet pools.

When you look deep,
river water ripples
like muscle
and the woods flow, too.

Rain water, snow melt,
drought in summer.
The river is an artery
pulsing out a mountain’s life.
Floods speak a mountain
stone tongue to the sea;
sea foam becomes salmon
in her answer.

The river tells one story
in many voices. Rocks
hold the riverbank for our house,
flood logs wait upstream.
Bank people rootless
as mayflies, water-dancers.
Not even the river
stays.

* * *
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In last night’s Open House talk, the third in a three-part series presenting an overview of the Shambhala Buddhist path, teacher David Marshall reviewed the first two talks and discussed the distinguishing features of vajrayana Buddhism in general and Shambhala Buddhism in particular. Click on the icon below to listen to the talk.

Download “Celebrating Everyday Life,” with David Marshall (MP3: 44.9 MB; 49 min)

DAVID MARSHALL is a student of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, and has been a practitioner of Shambhala Buddhism since 1997. He has taught meditation and various Buddhist classes within Shambhala and to college students, social workers and prisoners.