Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha (Semester 3)
Semester 3: April 24th – July 24th (Spring/Summer Session), a sequence of nine classes.
No class 4/17, 5/8, 5/29, 6/19, & 7/3.
This course is for students of all levels.
Sunday Afternoons, 12:30 to 2:30 PM ET
Meets in-person and on Zoom, click for links
Teachers: Jane Kolleeny and Charlie Olson
Suggested Donation: $110 (Spring/Summer Session)
In-person meeting location: The Aligned Center, 1 Bridge Street, Suite 64, Irvington, New York
Virtual drop-ins welcome
A foundation-level course like this one, or its equivalent in study and practice, is a prerequisite for our intermediate and advanced level courses at WMC.
Note that WMC maintains a policy of making our programs affordable to all. Those with limited income please offer what you can afford.
Transforming Suffering into Compassion—Treading the Path of Wisdom and Compassion
Please join us for the third and final semester of our Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha course, a foundational curriculum presenting the authentic path of mindfulness-awareness meditation and insight as originally described by the Buddha and expertly transmitted to the West by one of the great Tibetan masters of our time, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.
This semester we will explore the entire range of the Mahayana path of the bodhisattva, focusing on the practice of transcendent compassionate activity and the cultivation of wisdom, which altogether make up what is called “relative bodhicitta.” This includes the practice of tonglen (exchanging self and other), the bodhisattva vow, the six paramitas, emptiness, and the path of the Mahayana. Readings will be from a wide variety of Trungpa Rinpoche’s writings. We provide a printed sourcebook of readings (or pdf version for download). Each class will begin with meditation, followed by a facilitated discussion on the topics covered in the readings.
This third semester is the culmination of our foundational curriculum and build upon the two prior segments held in the Fall of 2021 and Winter of 2022. Optimally, participants will experience the three semesters in sequence, but there are no prerequisites for enrollment in any segment. In fact, participants are welcome to attend on a class-by-class basis. However, completion of the entire three semesters of the foundation curriculum, or its equivalent in terms of study and also experience with practice, is a prerequisite for enrollment in our intermediate-level courses in which we explore the Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma Volumes One and Two.
This series is recommended for both beginning and experienced practitioners. The courses are designed to benefit participants whether or not they can attend regularly. Those who can attend consistently and keep up with the readings will gain an appreciation of the full sequential Tibetan Buddhist path, but any single session would be informative and accessible on a stand-alone basis. Audio recordings of the talks and group discussions are available online, as always.
Walking in the Footsteps of the Buddha, is a year-long foundation-level course in 3 semesters:
Fall Semester — Discovering Sanity through the Path of Meditation
Winter Semester — Transforming Suffering into Compassion—Insight, Egolessness, and Buddha Nature
Spring Semester — Treading the Path of Wisdom and Compassion
