At last night’s Practice & Education Committee meeting we formally agreed to suspend this year’s Kootenay Public Weekthün (for a variety of reasons including retreat plans of key Weekthün staff) and expressed our intention to resume this longstanding and widely appreciated annual regional group practice tradition in Summer 2011.

Stay tuned…

Our new Photo Galleries page aims to capture glimpses of our Centre’s life and present them in a user-friendly way―in themed clickable galleries.

Check it out (and let us know what you think).

Below is a selection of photos taken at Kootenay Public Weekthün 2009: Touching the Earth, this year’s annual public one-week meditation retreat at Senge Ling (our retreat land near Nelson), which ran from June 27th to July 5th. Many thanks to Tom Baker for sharing his work. More photos may be posted as they’re submitted.

Please note that the dates are now one day later than those first publicized.

Join us Sunday, June 14th for a work (and fun) party to prepare Senge Ling, our retreat land near Nelson, for our “Touching the Earth” meditation retreat. Senge Ling work parties are a great way to get into the woods and enjoy being part of a community. Everyone is welcome.

We plan to leave Nelson at 10:00 AM and be back around 6:00 PM. Jobs will include cleaning the pavilion and kitchen shack, and grooming the tent sites and paths. Bring work gloves, lunch and something to drink. To arrange rides or for more information, contact Russ Rodgers at 250-352-6559.

If we don’t get everything done, we’ll have another work party on Sunday, June 21st.

This article was submitted by Russell Rodgers, director of this summer’s Kootenay Public Weekthün 2009: Touching the Earth program, in response to a request for more information about the program’s theme.

Russell Rodgers writes:

One of the key commitments in vajrayana Buddhism is to experience the world as sacred. Sacred in this context doesn’t mean that some deity proclaimed it so; it just is, primordially, in the present moment of fresh pristine awareness. In our busy existence, however, we tend to see our thoughts and concepts about the world rather than the world itself. Therefore we lose touch with its sacredness and basic goodness. Our concepts can be so subtle and pervasive that we don’t even realize that they are there. We just feel deadened and disconnected from the magical, living quality in our surroundings. As a corrective, and because we have buddha nature wakefulness buried somewhere within us, we feel haunted by the feeling that something is missing. Read the rest of this entry »

The Kootenay Shambhala Centre heartily invites new and experienced meditators alike to participate in this year’s annual public one-week meditation retreat at Senge Ling, our retreat land near Nelson, British Columbia, from Saturday, June 27th to Sunday, July 5th.

In this retreat, titled “Touching the Earth” and led by senior Kootenay Shambhala Centre member Russell Rodgers, we will explore our experience of the natural world in the context of shunyata, or empty/fullness.

When Buddha was challenged about the truth of his enlightenment, he took the earth as his witness. We will follow his example.

For a full program description go to our Public Weekthün 2009: Touching the Earth page.