While Tantra is a very popular word, the meaning of Buddhist Tantra is not well known today. Tantra is an important part of the Buddhist path to the unsurpassed happiness of enlightenment. In these monthly 2-hour workshops, Resident Teacher Trina Gunther will share the key meanings and practices of Tantra, as presented in Geshe Kelsang Gyatso’s book Modern Buddhism.
These workshops are an excellent forerunner to receiving the empowerments of Highest Yoga Tantra, which will be offered at the International Summer Festival this year. The festival will take place at Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre in the United Kingdom (UK) from July 28-August 12. For more information please visit the festival website.
Everyone is welcome. Each workshop includes chanted prayers, teaching and guided meditation.
Buddhist Tantra leads us to a pure life - a life created by wisdom and compassion. We discover the magical ability of our own mind to create purity within ourselves and all around us. Through using these meditations with compassion and wisdom we can bring unbelievable benefit to our world and experience supreme bliss.
In this workshop we will explore the questions:
Why are all of our experiences of pleasure so fleeting? Why do they turn into pain the more we cling to them and pursue them? This is because, in general our experiences of worldly pleasure or enjoyments gives rise to attachment, a disturbed and restless mind which is the source of all suffering. However, through practicing Tantra we can transform our experience of worldly pleasure into a profound spiritual path that leads us very quickly to the bliss of enlightenment.
In this workshop, we will explore Buddha’s Tantra teachings which reveal how to transform our pleasures into the spiritual path. Using Tantric practices we start to relate to our pleasures with wisdom, transforming them into pure enjoyments.
Our imagination is so powerful. It is a remarkable quality of the mind that we first create objects with our imagination and then bring them into our everyday reality. Everything starts in the imagination. All external creations such as money, cars, and computers were developed in dependence upon someone’s imagination - if no one had imagined them, they would never have been invented. In the same way, all inner creations and all Dharma realizations, even liberation and enlightenment, are developed in dependence upon the imagination.
In this workshop, we learn the “creative” practice of Self-Generation in Buddha’s Tantric teachings. Using our wisdom we see through the hallucination of contaminated appearances that is our ordinary life, and using “correct imagination” taught by Buddha we create a new reality of purity and bliss.
Whether we are looking forward to receiving the Highest Yoga Tantra Empowerments of Heruka and Vajrayogini for the first time, or for the umpteenth time, we will have a better experience if we have prepared our mind for this significant spiritual event.
In this workshop, we will explore practical matters for attending the festival as well as how to prepare our minds for a most beneficial and blessed experience of these empowerments at the 2023 Summer Festival. We will also look at the vows and commitments of Highest Yoga Tantra and how to purify these if they have degenerated for us.
The International Summer Festival will take place at Manjushri Kadampa Meditation Centre in the United Kingdom (UK) from July 28-August 12. For more information please visit the festival website.
Trina Gunther is a long-time practitioner of Modern Kadampa Buddhism. She has studied and practiced in Dharma centers under Gen-la Dekyong and Gen Rigpa, and she has worked as Education Program Coordinator at centers in Los Angeles and the UK. She is an inspiring example of a lay practitioner of Kadampa Buddhism, and brings with her a wealth of practical experience of putting Buddha's teachings into practice amidst a busy daily life.
149 W Harvard St, Suite 102, Fort Collins, CO 80525
info@meditateinfortcollins.org
