Welcome to the Bhumi Garden newsletter + blog
The Bhumi Garden is central meeting place to learn about things brewing and blooming within our community.
Want to help plant something in the Garden? We welcome contributions from the entire community! We’d love to highlight your art work, poems, practice reflections, programing (both within Bhumi and beyond), resources, and volunteer opportunities of all kinds. Email sesalli@bhumisparsha.org for more information.
Words from our Groundskeeper, Eric Busse
Watch the video above for a special message from Eric
Celebrate Queer Pride with Ayesha Ali
Always Queer, Always Here: Celebration of Resilience
Laws and threats, sometimes in our favor and often not. What is true and has always been true is our existence is not and has never been up to the acceptance or lack of acceptance of others or for that matter ourselves. Let’s come together to share across generations to celebrate ourselves.
Friday June 23rd at 7pm ET - you can join here or on the Bhumisparsha calendar.
May We Be Free!: Reflections on Spiritual Friendship and Community with Lama Rod and Lama Justin
Listen in as Lama Justin and Lama Rod discuss freedom, friendship, spiritual community and imagination. This intimate conversation will open up to an opportunity to ask questions about any of the topics raised within their conversation. All of our community is encouraged to join!
Sunday June 25th at Click Here to Join or find it on the Bhumisparsha Calendar
Photo va Pexels - cottonbro studios
New Offering! Shamatha & Friends for Anxiety
Unbalanced and/or excessive wind (Tbt: loong; Skt: vata) in the subtle body can manifest in many ways, including anxiety, constantly feeling on edge, having difficulty feeling safe in spaces and in relationships. Sowa Rigpa (Traditional Tibetan Medicine) recommends shamatha meditation for people with wind disturbances. Additionally, both Ayurveda (a Traditional Indian Medicine) & Sowa Rigpa recommend breathing practices for anxiety. Ironically, meditation and connecting to the breath can sometimes be challenging for those of us who are carrying unresolved trauma, especially early childhood, chronic trauma.
In this ongoing series we will practice some shamatha (calm abiding) meditation techniques sessions as practiced in the Nyingma tradition, breath practices for wind disturbances, and nejang yoga. These sessions are meant to be more experiential than theoretical, and the practices will be introduced in a veeery slow & gradual manner to adapt the needs of those of us carrying anxiety and unresolved trauma.
4th Thursdays (starting July 27th), 4:00 - 4:45pm Pacific / 7:00 - 7:45pm Eastern Time
Click here to join or find the offering on the Bhumisparsha Calendar
ACCESS NEEDS: Please email anita3@gmail.com if you would like to share access needs or have any questions.
FACILITATOR:
അനിത (anita) (they/them, Ohlone land) is certified as a meditation teacher by Pema Khandro Rinpoche/Buddhist Studies Institute in the Nyingma tradition.
The series is offered fully on a dana basis. All dana will be offered to Bhumisparsha for trans people of color..
To learn more and get a taste of this practice, check out recordings from anita’s first session of teachings
In Person Retreat with Lama Rod - Atlanta, GA
Embodiment-Based Mindfulness Meditation
Connect with Lama Rod Owens in person and welcome yourself home to the body that sustains you. Embodiment-based mindfulness meditation is a practice of being in our bodies, knowing our bodies, moving with our bodies as it moves through the world. It is breathing with it, hurting with it, and rejoicing with it.
Join Lama Rod as he supports us in gentle and clear guided embodiment-based mindfulness teachings that can invite you back into your body to establish a firmer sense of balance, stability, and connectedness not only to ourselves, but with others around us. Following the retreat, all participants will also receive a segment of the day’s teachings in written and audio format to support you in deepening your practice.
If you have any questions please email programs@lamarod.com
In Person Event with Lama Justin - Philadelphia, PA
Friday July 7th, 6:00 - 8:00pm at The Rubin Museum
This introductory workshop, led by Justin von Bujdoss, aims to help workshop attendees anticipate what may or may not arise in a dark retreat setting. There will be a period of up to 15 minutes of complete darkness during the session.
These experiences tend towards the visionary and have qualities that appear to mirror some of the experiences that are encountered with certain psychedelic substances. The similarities and differences between the dark retreat and psychedelic experience are striking and highlight locations for future research.
Prior to the workshop, Justin von Bujdoss will lead a 5:15 PM tour of the Lukhang Murals located on the 2nd floor. The murals depict practitioners preparing to enter into dark retreats, a visual guide for participants to more fully understand this undertaking.
You can also learn more about this offering through this press article covering previous events
The New Saints: From Broken Hearts to Spiritual Warriors
Announcing a new book by Lama Rod Owens!
Saints, spiritual warriors, bodhisattvas, zaddikim—no matter how they are named in a given tradition, they all share a profound wish to free others from suffering. “Our era calls for saints who are from this time and place, who speak the language of this moment, and who integrate both social and spiritual liberation,” says Lama Rod Owens. “I believe we all can and must become New Saints.” With The New Saints, readers will discover insights and techniques to ignite their inner fierceness and compassion; create a sustainable spiritual practice that serves others and the planet; and embody the virtues of a New Saint.
Creativity In Our Community
Below are some writings from our community member, Rev. Sarah Siegel. Enjoy!
A Simple Discovery
It is such a joyful discovery to find, that when the small self lays down the last of its defenses, and stands quaking and vulnerable, with nothing but a glimmer of hope for something greater; all the world removes its masks, in that very moment, and rises on the winds of Great Love to meet the one. In this meeting, the melody which has been playing since beginning‐less time finds its dancers. And the one and the many unite under a sky filled with infinite stars! Each star reflecting the image of all that is lost, within the faces of all that is found.
It is from this knowingness that I wish to abide for the rest of my years on this planet. It is from this ocean of wonder that I wish to offer others, whatever I may have to give. It truly is from within the service of letting go of everything I once thought I wanted, that I open to receive more than I could ever have believed possible.
How could it be so, you ask?
My dear friend, I can not answer. But, please, take my hand and‐seek to find the music within. It is from this place that we will dance our way out beyond all that once stood in the way of our experience of freedom.
The stillness of Motherhood
The stillness of motherhood is first pages ripped out of a half-written in journal.
I am wanting
a new start.
My stomach, oil and sand
mixed by the churning of tense nerves.
My muscles stretched taught
like the plastic wrap
I felt guilty having used to cover last night’s leftovers.
I laugh sourly at that analogy,
but this. is. my. life.
The constant need to pack in, pack away, heat up, pick up, wipe up, clean up
is never far from my heels.
Like the dog that follows me with
sullen eyes from room to room
Always wanting something that I don’t have to give.
A walk. A treat. A pat.
I have created this.
Still, I ask:
What freedom lies here?
Liberation is as much a part of
cleaning up, heating up, wiping up
as crisp air is to the autumn breeze.
All this pressured “doing” is just illusory movement
within the boundless nature of mind.
In that, it is also still.
Still.
Still the sink stands filled with dirty dishes.
And that plastic wrap now lays, crumpled, inside the trash can.
Reminding me each time I discover it beneath the silvery lid that
this particular projection
through the prism of meaning
is the same as the gust that fills my lungs with
October’s cerulean blue sky,
when I step outside to take a brief, quiet moment for myself.
Meanwhile, the children play with
wooden blocks on the living room floor while the dog whines once again to go out.
And for a second all is radiant and perfect.
For a moment all is perfectly
still.