Winter Mindfulness Camp For Bhutanese Educators

INTEGRATING MINDFULNESS IN DAILY LIFE

Lhomon Educaton

Winter Mindfulness Camp For Bhutanese Educators

How do we integrate mindfulness into our daily lives? To help Bhutanese educators express mindfulness in their everyday roles as teachers and community leaders, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche has encouraged Lhomon Education to initiate a Winter Mindfulness Training Camp in Dewathang from the 5th to 12th January, 2013.

The week-long mindfulness program will be practice-oriented, with sitting and walking sessions, interspersed with short talks and discussions about strategies for Bhutan's spiritual education.

WHEN:                  January 5-12, 2013

WHERE:               Jigme Namgyal Polytechnic in Dewathang, Samdrup Jongkhar

WHAT:                  A practice-oriented workshop to help Bhutanese teachers

PROGRAM FACILITATORS

Paravi Wongchirachai is a lay student of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche's. Growing up in Thailand, he was first introduced to the practice of mindfulness in the Theravada tradition, particularly from the vipassana lineage of the Burmese master, Mahasi Sayadaw. He has continued this practice informally in his daily life, as well as through his interest in the awareness traditions of the Vajrayana. Paravi has worked in the public sector through most of his life, in areas of public knowledge, design and heritage. A member of the subcommittee on cultural heritage of the Thailand Senate, he also sits on the boards of Thailand Creative & Design Center and Siam Society Under Royal Patronage.  Family and work pressures, as well as a personal struggle with depression over the years, led him to seek Khyentse Rinpoche's guidance on how to bring the Buddhist commitment of mindfulness into everyday life. His experience is based on both paths of awareness and devotion.

As requested by Khyentse Rinpoche, Paravi will be acting as a facilitator, along with Jamyang Choden, a disciple of Khyentse Rinpoche originally from Bartsham now living in Germany, and Noa Jones, who coordinates the Lhomon Education initiatives.

All meals and dorm rooms will be provided. Participants will be asked to bring their own bedding. DSA is not provided by Lhomon Society.

To RSVP please contact Noa Jones at 1734-8878 or noa@lhomon.bt by December 5, 2012.

Lhomon Education (LME) is dedicated to bringing education alternatives to Bhutan through teacher development and support initiatives and holistic curriculum design. LME is a project of the Lhomon Society, a registered CSO  founded by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in 2010. www.lhomon.bt/education.

PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS

During the program, participants are expected to make positive efforts in cultivating their own practice at all times of the day, in all postures, and through meal and break times. Some sessions will be silent.

To customize the training exercises, participants will be requested to answer a pre-event questionnaire.

Most of the group practice will be focused on dynamic exercises based upon the classical four foundations of mindfulness, alternating with short talks and group discussions. Practice will extend to mealtimes, during which participants are encouraged to maintain mindfulness throughout the process. A dharma film will be screened each evening after dinner. In the last two days, the group will explore how to adapt mindfulness to meet the pressures of modern Bhutanese life, as well as how mindfulness can refresh traditional practices of devotion and transformation in Bhutanese Buddhism.

DETAILED TIMETABLE TO COME

"The essence of compassion is to copy how you relate with your child (in your relationships with others). The problem is how much you want to be the head of the family or the ringleader of your friends. You know, if that ambition is not there, but you have a genuine willingness to share, that is precisely the concept of sangha, or the Buddhist community, in traditional terms. You are willing to be friends with everybody, but at the same time you are not particularly taking credit. You don’t make people depend on you. Everybody can stand on his or her own feet. The ideal of helping is to make others independent of you. You help them to become more independent rather than making them addicted to you."

-- The Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche