About the Course

This course is part of a five-course-series that provides a thorough exploration of the Hinayana path drawing on teachings from prominent teachers and classic sources. The emphasis is on cultivating maitri or friendliness to oneself, and on the Shambhala teachings of basic goodness, gentleness and bravery – allowing us to meet the modern human condition with warriorship and dignity.

The Four Noble Truths are used as the overall organizing principle. Instructions in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are interwoven and provide a meditative method for embracing the totality of our basically good experience—including pain and suffering.

Course V – We have been studying the Buddha’s first teaching: The Four Noble Truths.  After teaching that suffering is pervasive to all experience, that there is a cause to that suffering and that cessation is possible, he then taught a way forward, which we call ”The Path.”  In fact, everything he taught and all of our experience as practitioners comprise “The Path.”  In this course, we will examine Path from multiple perspectives of what has been taught and what is experienced by us individuals walking this path.

About the Teachers

Marianne Bots has been a student in the Shambhala lineage since 1976, studying with the venerable Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. She served as acharya or senior teacher in Shambhala.

She lives in the Netherlands and teaches throughout Europe. As a psychotherapist, she worked for more than 30 years in a psychiatric clinic for young adolescents. She now works in her private practice with individuals and couples. Basic sanity, the wisdom of the body, and mindful communication are the main foundations in her work.

Eric Spiegel has been a student and teacher in the Shambhala tradition since his teens. He was an early member of the Boulder community, deepened his practice at Karme Choling and was the resident senior teacher for the New York sangha for many years. His teachings are filled with warmth, humor and precision. Beginning with the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and 90s, Eric has worked extensively with illness and death, helping people realize their natural wisdom in the face of impermanence. He has also had a decades-long career in finance. He lives in the Hudson Valley, New York State.