Living Bodhisattvas: Life as a Path of Awakening
July 14 - 27, 2024
About this Retreat
Holly Gayley is a scholar and translator of Buddhist literature in contemporary Tibet and associate professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research explores gender and in Buddhist tantra, literature by and about Tibetan and Himalayan women, ethical reform in contemporary Tibet, and theorizing translation, both literary and cultural, in the transmission of Buddhist teachings to North America. She is author of Love Letters from Golok: A Tantric Couple in Modern Tibet (2016), translator of Inseparable Across Lifetimes: The Lives and Love Letters of Namtrul Rinpoche and Khandro Tāre Lhamo (2019), editor of Voices from Larung Gar: Shaping Tibetan Buddhism for the Twenty-First Century (2021), and co-editor with Dominique Townsend of Longing to Awaken: Buddhist Devotion in Tibetan Poetry and Song(forthcoming in 2024). For more than two decades, she has regularly led meditation workshops and retreats.
Gelong Loden Nyima has been a Buddhist monk for over fourteen years. His training was at Gampo Abbey (2009 - 2017), the monastery of Trungpa Rinpoche and Pema Chodron, where he completed an advanced cycle of traditional studies called shedra, practiced intensively for many years, and was empowered as a senior teacher. He designed and taught residential trainings for four years. He then lived at Drala Mountain Center in Colorado (2017 - 2023), where he served as Resident Teacher, designing and teaching many programs ranging from open audience meditation, to youth work, to Mahayana Buddhism. He’s been blessed to receive teachings from many masters of the Nyingma and Kagyu lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, to have spent over three years in retreat, and to have supported thousands of people in their practice. He is a founding teacher of an ongoing Mahayana sangha called Bodhisattva Circle, and the author of Peace and Freedom, a pithy book on meditation. He now lives in his hometown of San Antonio, TX, where he will be offering events regionally and traveling to teach.
Details of this retreat
We often think of our practice as something that happens on the meditation cushion. From the Mahayana point of view, our whole life is the path of awakening. This perspective is encapsulated in namthar literature, Tibetan stories of “complete liberation” that recount lives of Buddhist practitioners who met challenges and endured adversity, bringing everything onto the path. When we rouse bodhicitta, the aspiration for all beings to be free of suffering, and allow that to guide our life choices, then every step becomes part of the path, and we become living bodhisattvas.
In this retreat, we will rouse bodhicitta through meditation, dialogues, and talks, exploring how to live into our deepest aspirations and values. We will study Shantideva’s classic, The Way of the Bodhisattva, and read from the life story of Yeshe Tsogyal and other enlightened masters to inspire us along our path as bodhisattvas. Together we can co-create the world we would like to see and live into our own awakening.
This July the Mahayana Summer Seminar continues at Sky Lake. If you have already attended a previous Mahayana Summer Seminar with Loden and Holly or one of our online Mahayana courses, you can register here. Otherwise, please fill out this application.
In this retreat, we will rouse bodhicitta through meditation, dialogues, and talks, exploring how to live into our deepest aspirations and values. We will study Shantideva’s classic, The Way of the Bodhisattva, and read from the life story of Yeshe Tsogyal and other enlightened masters to inspire us along our path as bodhisattvas. Together we can co-create the world we would like to see and live into our own awakening.
This July the Mahayana Summer Seminar continues at Sky Lake. If you have already attended a previous Mahayana Summer Seminar with Loden and Holly or one of our online Mahayana courses, you can register here. Otherwise, please fill out this application.
Getting Here
Accommodation
Dorm Room - $110 per night
Roommates will be assigned.
No Lodging - Commuter
Shared Room - $130 per night
Roommate will be assigned.
Shrine Room Floor
Shrine Room Floor
Single room - $160 per night
A room with either one queen or one twin bed and private bathroom to yourself.
