Releasing into Presence with Lopön Chandra Easton. Mind Training (Lojong) slogan 24.
Channel: The Alembic
Date: 2024-01-24

In this class, we’ll experience the benefits meditation, mantra, and movement have to offer our body, mind, and soul. Classes will be relaxing, rejuvenating, and fun, enhanced by community and collective practice. Weaving together mystical stories, meditations, mantra, movement and singing chants, Chandra offers practices that facilitate releasing into presence with ease and comfort. All are welcome.

In this class, we’ll experience the benefits meditation, mantra, and movement have to offer our body, mind, and soul. Classes will be relaxing, rejuvenating, and fun, enhanced by community and collective practice. Weaving together mystical stories, meditations, mantra, movement and singing chants, Chandra offers practices that facilitate releasing into presence with ease and comfort. All are welcome.

Beginning in April 18th, 2023, we began exploring week by week the Mind Training (Lojong) slogans. At the heart of all practices of Tibetan Buddhism, Mind Training puts special emphasis on transforming all hardships and happiness into the path of awakening, meaning that all of life’s joys and sorrows can be fuel for the ultimate journey home. Mind Training consists of inspiring pithy slogans that help us dive deeply and intimately into our own capacity to develop wisdom and compassion in our lives. Chandra will share the classical text called The Seven Points of Mind Training by Chekawa Yeshe Dorje (1102-1176).

This Releasing Into Presence class explores ways we can release into our true nature through the three doors of body, speech (breath), and mind.

Meditation: Experience a richness of techniques for developing shamatha, calm abiding, and vipashyana, insight. These will include mindfulness of breathing, an especially effective approach to soothing the body and calming the discursive mind, and more advanced techniques called “settling the mind in its natural state” and “awareness of awareness.” Tonglen (sending & receiving) guided meditation will also be offered.

Mantra: Explore mantra recitation and chanting, both with and without musical accompaniment. Chandra will share a variety of mantras and melodies from the Buddhist and Hindu tradition, including melodies from her 21 Taras Collective project.

Movement: Practice gentle and accessible yoga and/or meditative movement/dance to bring more comfort and ease to your meditation and life.

About the teachers:
Dorje Lopön Chandra Easton is a teacher, writer, and translator of Tibetan Buddhism. She has taught Buddhism and Yoga around the world since 2001 and co-translated Sublime Dharma: A Compilation of Two Texts on the Great Perfection, published in 2012.

In 2015, she was given the title of senior lead teacher, Dorje Lopön (Varjāchārya), by Lama Tsultrim Allione and Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche. She is on the Tara Mandala Board of Directors, Executive Council, and the Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Council, which addresses the under-representation of people from different cultural, racial, sexual orientation, and social backgrounds in the Dharma and at Tara Mandala.

She recently authored a book on the twenty-one Taras in Buddhist Tantra. She is collaborating with musicians, Nina Rao and Genevieve Walker, on their joint project, the 21 Taras Collective, which aims to bring the 21 Taras alive through mantra, music, and meditation. She lives in Berkeley, CA.

Visit https://chandraeaston.com to learn more.