“All thoughts vanish into emptiness, like the imprint of a bird in the sky.” – Chogyam Trungpa, The Sadhana of Mahamudra
Third Sunday of each month
This powerful monthly practice is done once a month on the third Sunday. We chant it together in English. It takes about 45 minutes. We have plenty of copies so please join us if you can. There is no charge.
The Sadhana of Mahamudra is a practice text composed by the Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala. He wrote the Sadhana in a sacred cave in Bhutan in 1968 at an important turning point in his presentation of the Buddhist teachings in the West.
Overcoming Spiritual Materialism
Chanting the sadhana, or liturgy, offers a means for renewing our spiritual strength and overcoming obstacles in our practice, our lives and the world that arise from physical, psychological and spiritual materialism and aggression. By practicing this we can rouse the power of our own wakefulness. Because the sadhana was written specifically for our time, its potency is particularly strong.
The sadhana is based on two main principles—the principle of space associated with the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism and the principle of energy associated with the Kagyü school. The text is full of symbolism that may seem strange. Don’t expect to understand it fully the first time. You can simply chant the words and relax into the atmosphere that doing so creates.
“I think that in the future people will relate with this sadhana as a source of inspiration as well as a potential way of continuing their journey. Inspiration from that point of view means awakening yourself from the deepest of deepest confusion and chaos and self-punishment; it means being able to get into a higher level and being able to celebrate within that.”
– from Chogyam Trungpa’s Sadhana of Mahamudra seminar, November 30, 1975