Discover mobility for meditation with Amy Strom. Learn more about dealing with physical discomfort while sitting with movements that can support your sitting practice. This drop-in event premiers tonight, September 26, at 5 PM!
Join us for October’s Newcomer Orientation on October 3rd. Wondering what Dharma is? Haven’t been to the Bozeman Dharma Center yet? Just want to say hello? All are welcome to stop in! Explore the space, receive basic meditation instruction and get your questions answered.
Visiting Insight teacher, Melissa, McKay will be offering four weeks of teaching on Developing the Qualities of the Heart on Thursdays at 7PM starting September 21.
Melissa will guide a meditation, offer teachings and take questions on these four consecutive Thursdays. Each week will explore one of the four Brahma Viharas or “noble abodes of the heart.”
Sept 21: Metta, kind-hearted warmth and friendliness
Sept 28: Compassion, for self and world
Oct 5: Resonant Joy, being available for Delight
Oct 12: Equanimity; staying balanced, present and wise through life’s ups and downs.
No registration needed. Drop in, in person or over zoom as per usual on Thursdays
Register now for this transformative retreat led by visiting Insight teacher, Melissa McKay! The retreat will be held 9:30 AM – 4:30 PM on Saturday, September 30.
This retreat is designed to develop our essential kindness, hone our mindfulness skills and guide us to an open-hearted equanimity with all experience. Join us for a nourishing journey that combines the power of Metta (loving-kindness) with the clarity of Insight Meditation.
Guest Insight teacher, Melissa McKay, reviews the core skills of a meditation practice in this four week class on Wednesdays from 7:15 – 8:45 PM beginning September 20. Designed to be both an intro for beginners and a tune-up for those with experience, this course will clarify your home practice. Re-fuel and get inspired. Scholarships available. You can sign up for a single class or the whole series!
Beginning next week on September 21 at 5:30 PM, this new weekly program will offer an opportunity to meditate using sound as a source of concentration. Experience how the union of breath and sound can anchor you in the present moment. No prior experience or registration necessary.
Zen Priest, Kathie Fischer, returns to Bozeman next week to offer a retreat on Entering the Dharma Gate! Kathie will first visit with the Bozeman Insight Group on Thursday, September 14 at 7 PM. She will give an evening talk on Friday, September 15 followed by a daylong retreat on Saturday, September 16. With fifty years of dharma practice, Kathie is the perfect guide to help us enter the numberless Dharma Gates! Registration for Friday only is available.
In Buddhist practice, concentration is highly prized as a way to train our minds and hearts. It is a vehicle for presence, for remembrance. This life gives many opportunities for joy and beauty, and it also is rife with conflict and disagreement, lack, endless entertainment and thus distraction. What are we running from when we scroll through our phones, watch multiple episodes of a show, shop, eat too much and rage against those who appear different from our comfort?
Ways of concentration include being absorbed, employing awareness along with focus. Attention. Isn’t our life really determined by attention? Where we place our attention really colors and defines the quality of our life. If we wish to develop kindness or patience, we must concentrate. If we wish to free ourselves from so much distraction, opinion and noise, we must collect ourselves. We bring strength to our effort, to our spiritual orientation to life. Like juice concentrate. We extract the essence, the heart of the matter. Concentration is not some tedious exercise. It can provide a deep connection to life. We bring our attention to life, to our own good hearts, with strength and purpose.
To sit still with our experience, to be present with our prayer. To breathe. We practice placing our attention on the divine, on God, on the interrelationship of all things. To concentrate is to bring together — our attention, our intention, and our purpose. It is to take the time for reflection seriously. It is to be whole. Wholly available.
In my own meditation practice, concentration has been difficult. My mind races, my heart wants, and I am easily distracted. I know I am not alone, but it can be frustrating to give myself the gift of time and silence, and then be bombarded by all manner of desires and resistances. Even though we live in an environment full of juicy ways to ignore our hearts and be entertained, my experience is — even in beautiful silent settings, the mind pulls away from the present moment into habits of longing. Where is that intention of communion and service? I just want to watch TV.
The Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said, True concentration does not mean to be concentrated on only one thing…Without trying to concentrate our mind on anything, we are ready to concentrate on something…
Concentration is the readiness of the heart and mind — to face what is right before me, to stay present in conflict, to help and serve.
This Dharma Thought is brought by Karen DeCotis. This excerpt was originally published on bozemandailychronicle.com, part of the BLOX Digital Content Exchange.
The BDC is 10 years old! Enjoy this conversation with the founders about their practice and how the BDC was established.
Mem Schultz
Suzanne Colón
Alice Robison
Susan Morgan
Alice: A fledgling meditation practice started in 2000 while training as a somatic therapist. A decade of practice and training unfolded in Theravada Buddhism/Insight meditation, principally at Spirit Rock in CA. I participated in four one and two year training sessions, and sat one and two month long retreats. During this time I was hired by Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA as a retreat support staffer where I sat and served over 30 retreats.
Susan: My Buddhist path started with Christian contemplation leading to Theravada practice at the Insight Meditation Society where I practiced with Joseph Goldstein and did a number of 3 /6 month retreats there and at the Forest Refuge. Then I had the good fortune to meet my Tibetan teacher, Tulku Sangngag of Ewam, when its Buddha Garden was a field of thistles. I studied, practiced, and traveled with him and our Ewam sangha on pilgrimage for many years. I met Anam Thubten Rinpoche there and became his student also. Anam Thubten Rinpoche ordained me as a Dharma Leader and asked me to teach.
Around 2010, with a couple of friends I started the Bozeman Dharmata Sangha, which was one of the three original residential sanghas at the BDC and was a fellowship of Anam Thubten’s. We hosted Rinpoche for weekend retreats at the BDC for 10 years. We are happy that he will return for a weekend retreat in June 2024. I hope to see many of you there!
Mem: I started in the Vipassana/Insight tradition with the intention to learn how to meditate with a qualified teacher and was fortunate to find one at my first retreat in Bozeman 24 years ago.His direct and skillful approach to the teachings helped me to learn how to look at my mind, and where to begin exploring the vast field of Buddhism.
I have continued to study and sit with many wonderful teachers in all of the traditions but have not really “landed” in one or the other, and don’t even consider myself a Buddhist! 🙂 However, I feel deeply connected to the Buddhist teachings and have confidence in their truth and wisdom in everyday life.
Suzanne: My practice is now a blend of time on the cushion (30-45 minutes about 4 times a week) and pausing mid-task often during the day to infuse awareness and ease into whatever I’m doing. At some point (22 years in?) the distinction between metta and insight practice dropped away, so while I might employ different tools or method in any given sit, there is a deep well of kind-hearted, warm attentiveness that pervades it all and defies categorization.
Suzanne: At least 2 of the 3 original “resident” sanghas needed a new home at the time, and there was a sense that if we banded together, we could create something greater than what we each could create on our own. Much of the credit should go to the vision that Mem Schultz and Susan Morgan had, they inspired me to jump in and once we found some funding we were off and running. One of the main goals from the beginning was to relieve the resident sanghas of the burden of huge rent payments – the BDC was created as an entity to shoulder those burdens.
Susan: I was motivated to start the Dharma Center with a desire to provide a place of peace and refuge in our manically extroverted society. I wanted to express my gratitude for the beautiful, healing Buddhist practices through the BDC. And to make these practices available to others for the benefit of all.
I met with energetic and like-minded women; together we focused on bringing together the Buddhist groups in Bozeman while hoping for a regional presence as well. With the connivance of a sympathetic realtor we found the space on East Main Street for our first beautiful center, risked leasing it, and set out our plans to invite resident Sanghas to join us, set up the space based on our experience of other centers, initiated the noon sits, people came, and we began to practice.
Alice: It was an honor to envision the BDC with the many people who were, and still are, dedicated to bringing the dharma to a rural outpost in MT. Originally it was one of the only dharma centers along the northern tier of the US between Minneapolis/St. Paul and the west coast. That was part of the vision.
Alice: It is inspiring to watch the BDC grow and have the dedicated local teachers and sangha members sharing their wisdom, time, care, and the arrival of teachers from all over the US to come and offer the teachings in person or via Zoom. The BDC sanghas are the force that gives all beings the possibility to wake up. Many people have dedicated their transformation and practice to make it what it is today. What a gift in shifting people’s hearts and minds towards kindness, compassion, and acceptance of oneself and others. Long may it run!
Susan: Congratulations to the BDC on its 10th anniversary. I am delighted to have had a role in getting it going 10 years ago and to see how it is flourishing as a refuge and inspiration in the loving hands of so many!
Suzanne: It’s wonderful. I’ve always said that we don’t know what a successful outcome looks like. The BDC could serve as a hatchery for a Zen center, a new Tibetan temple, an Insight + wellness center – who knows? And as we turn 10 years old, I think that’s still true. We’ll enjoy this lovely vehicle for practice as long as it serves, and then let it go. It has served us well for a decade and I’m grateful to everyone who’s come to practice, lent a hand, and donated funds.
Mem: I am grateful to see the Bozeman Dharma Center in its 10th year and have a sense that it will continue to flourish in ways that we envisioned at its start, inspiring our community by its good leadership and code of inclusivity.
Step into a day of transformative wisdom led by visiting Insight teacher, Melissa McKay, on Saturday, September 30.
This retreat is designed to develop our essential kindness, hone our mindfulness skills and guide us to an open-hearted equanimity with all experience. Join us for a nourishing journey that combines the power of Metta (loving-kindness) with the clarity of Insight Meditation. Early Bird Registration available through September 14.
