“If we transform our mind, everything we experience is transformed.” Mingyur Rinpoche

In this six-week online course, we will learn how to transform all experiences, even difficult thoughts and emotions, into sources of joy. In this first level, with Tergar Instructor Edwin Kelley as our guide, Mingyur Rinpoche will teach us how meditation can transform the way we relate to stressful situations and challenging emotions, and how to embrace all aspects of life with mindful awareness.

Tuesdays, February 25 – April 1, 6:00—8:00pm (Melbourne, Australia time)

Note - Those wishing to take JOL1 at an earlier time can enrol in the online program with Tergar Instructor Myoshin Kelley beginning on January 6 with Tergar Washburn - Details here.

Meditation enables us to transform all experiences, even difficult emotions and painful thoughts, into sources of joy. The modern world has become fascinated with the practice of meditation. With all the hype and glossy images on magazine covers, it would be easy to think that meditation is about sitting in the right posture, using a special technique, or forcing the mind to be calm or relaxed all the time. But the real power of meditation isn’t in the method. It’s in shifting our perspective.

The key to this shift in perspective is awareness. In this 6-week workshop series, we will learn to transform our experience by exploring sensations, thoughts, emotions, and even awareness itself as supports for meditation.

This program offers step-by-step instructions that will benefit those new to meditation and inspire those who have an existing practice. The schedule for this workshop series includes video teachings by Mingyur Rinpoche, presentations by Tergar Instructors Edwin Kelley, as well as guided meditations and discussion. It is suitable for people of all faiths, as well as both beginning and experienced meditators.

This live, online course covers the same material as the in-person Joy of Living Level I weekend workshops, and all participants will receive a printable course and practice guide as well as opportunities to join ongoing weekly gatherings of Tergar Australia, and is currently open to practitioners throughout Australia regardless of your current location.

In this seminar, you will learn:

• How to start a daily meditation practice, including the correct meditation posture and the ideal length of a meditation session.
  
• How to rest in open awareness, a state of spacious and alert presence.
  
• How to cultivate focused awareness by using visual objects, sounds, tastes, and other sense objects as a support for meditation.
  
• How to transform physical pain, difficult emotions, and destructive thought patterns using the practice of awareness meditation.
  
• How to deal with distractions and obstacles in meditation, such as excessive thought activity, sleepiness, and discouragement.
  

For those of you who have taken Calming the Mind before, it is always helpful to revisit this material, as this level is so essential that it can be very helpful to take it no matter where on the path one is.

About the Joy of Living Program

The Joy of Living program provides a path of meditation training that is open to people of all faiths and belief systems. The style of meditation presented in this program teaches how to work with the challenges of everyday life to create a peaceful mind and joyful heart. The training itself is comprised of three levels. In Calming the Mind, the first level of the Joy of Living, we learn how to use any situation or experience, even difficult emotions and physical pain, as a gateway to inner peace. The second level, Opening the Heart, focusing on the cultivation of loving-kindness and compassion, while the third level, Awakening Wisdom, teaches the practice of insight meditation.

Course Length:
6 consecutive Tuesdays from 25 February to 1 April 2025, 6:00—8:00pm (Melbourne, Australia time)
Instructors: Edwin Kelley

IMPORTANT - Please plan to come to all 6 sessions. People who do not attend the first session will not be able to attend the rest of the workshop series without permission from the course facilitators. If you are unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible.

Suggested Donations:
Standard Rate: $150.00 AUD
Sponsor Rate: $200.00 AUD
Concession Rate: $100.00 AUD
Repeater Rate: $125.00 AUD

Bursaries : Those who choose the sponsor level enable us to offer a number of bursaries will be available to ensure that, where possible, people with financial difficulties are not prevented from participating in this course.

If your ability to pay makes it difficult for you to attend, please contact us at events@tergar.org.au for further options.

Location

A Zoom link for the weekly meetings will be included in your confirmation email, sent once you complete registration. We will also send out a confirmation email with the Zoom link to attend the series sometime in the week before the first meeting.

Cancellation Policy
Registrations can be cancelled for a full refund at any time up to 24 hours prior to the start of the first event. Full or partial refunds cannot be made for any cancellations requested after this time unless under extenuating circumstances.

About your Instructor, Edwin Kelley

Edwin Kelley

Edwin Kelley attended his first meditation retreat near Perth, Australia in 1975. He later pursued a career as a public accountant and in 1992 went to Burma to undertake a six-month period of intensive meditation practice with meditation master Chanmyay Sayadaw. While practicing in Burma he ordained temporarily as a Buddhist monk.

In 1994 he was hired as Director of Operations by one of America’s best known meditation retreat centers, the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), in Barre, MA. Eighteen months later he was appointed Executive Director of IMS and served in that capacity until 2003 when he resigned to pursue further long-term intensive meditation practice.

Edwin first encountered Vajrayana Buddhism in Dharamsala, India in 1993 and became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in 1998. He has a post graduate diploma in Buddhist Studies from the University of Sunderland in the UK.

In 2009, Edwin and his wife Myoshin, moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to help establish the global Tergar Meditation Community, where he then served variably as Executive, and Co-Executive Director, and CFO, until retiring from his administrative role with Tergar International at the end of 2022. He now lives on the Sapphire Coast in southern NSW, Australia.

Tergar Australia
This course is being facilitated by the Tergar Australia — The Australian meditation community of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche. Tergar Australia supports individuals, practice groups and meditation communities throughout Australia in learning to live with awareness, compassion and wisdom. Established in May 2020, we currently meet weekly in both virtual gatherings online and in-person, and welcome practitioners from all corners of Australia and beyond. Sign up to our mailing list and learn more at http://www.tergar.org.au/