What does it mean to view circumstances as a charnel ground? How would you go about that? Does your meditation practice help you navigate uncertainty, contemporary social problems, existential anxiety, and problematic power dynamics in everyday encounters?

What methods develop your capacity to fully engage with challenge or crisis, without depleting your energy?

Buddhist Tantra began in the charnel grounds: disgusting fields of rotting bodies, mounds of disease-ridden debris, places of transgression and impurity, where only society's outcastes would dare to tread. Practitioners stretching the bounds of their conventional experience would go there at night to partake in ecstatic group rituals, or terrifying personal challenges.  

Monks and mahasiddhas alike regarded the charnel grounds as places of transformation. Over centuries, the charnel ground came to influence symbolism and views in Vajrayana. Going to the charnel ground is a metaphor for refusing to disengage with the most disgusting, disquieting, unappealing, threatening, and uncertain aspects of our selves and society. 

This half-day course will introduce practices that increase spacious involvement with challenging situations, so you can transform and powerfully influence circumstances. I'll cover some key principles and you will have a chance to practice methods, bring your own exmples, and discuss your findings. 

You'll find ways to practice with your experience, such that you can begin to feel fundamentally okay, whatever life throws at you. You'll explore a mixture of theory, practice, and application to real life circumstances with others on the course so that you leave inspired and better equipped to actively engage with messiness, chaos, and the unexpected. 

The program:

10:00 am ET: Context
Some grisly history, theory, principles, and function.

10:45 am ET: View
Video, discussion, and a guided meditation. We'll break for an hour at 12:00 pm ET.

1:00 pm ET: Chöd practice
Chöd is one of the most challenging Buddhist Tantric rituals. I'll introduce a short, essentialized version for individual practice, specifically designed to address existential anxiety, meaninglessness, and nihilist depression.

2:15 pm ET: Transforming chaos
The final section is about what to do on the fly: how to remain powerfully connected and influential in the midst of challenging, difficult circumstances.