Shambhala Practice and Study Paths, April 4, 2021

There are still doubts and loss of confidence, and the opposite: a very strong spiritual impulse for the light of the teaching.

What we experience as a community invites us to be responsible not only for our practice but for how we conduct ourselves in the world. I find this to be an opportunity for personal and collective maturity.

To be Shambhalian is to be open to the world in its greatest and deepest dimensions. I hope for cultural and social contributions from elsewhere, that we can recognize as being ours and that we don’t do things in isolation.

I am inspired by practice, intensive study, and trust in the heart of the teachers who give themselves entirely with all their intelligence and all their heart despite their own suffering.

Living through crises makes us deepen the non-conceptual experience. In our center, we went through a lot of powerful emotions: anger, love, fear. Never before have we gone through such a rich period of teachings, unconventional teachings, different from spiritual instructions.

We learned to accommodate, to suspend judgments; to stay in the energy of co-emergence. Today we are embarked on an immense field of exploration, on an experience of sharing—one could say democratic, but it is more than that, it is an experience on another way of listening.

What we are trying to do by sharing strong opinions is most difficult, but it is wonderful.

I thank you all. This way of speaking frankly about ourselves beyond hesitation is very promising for a new possible connection.

What makes us a community is frank and gentle conversations, without aggression, like this. This is new to me. I don’t know how to talk about it, I never thought this would happen.