Insights and Stories from Portland
Portland Shambhala Blog
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Community Gathering Recap: Finding a Way Forward Together
A lovely bouquet of flowers in the home of John and Nancy Smith.
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2023 – PSMC Year of Water Rabbit I Ching Reading
At this year’s Shambhala Day Celebration on February 21st, 2023, we threw the I Ching for the Year of the Water Rabbit for our community. Gardner Murphy provides the following comments on hexagram #10 LU Correct Conduct, or Walking Your Path: The image of the trigram of Heaven over the trigram Lake are in their…
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More on meditation and resilience
The talks, discussions, and experience from Portland’s Winter Retreat that was conducted by Janet Bronstein continue to roll around in my mind. The framing that I came away with could be expressed in an invitation: Come listen with us: To our own hearts Listening to our own hearts is fundamental and a very traditional idea…
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Reflections on our Winter Retreat
An end-of-year retreat has become a tradition at Portland Shambhala and this past one was the best one yet. It demonstrated how far we’ve come and also poses some challenges for the years ahead. Almost 50 people signed up, including regular participants from our regular offerings and people from far away. Silent meditation for everyone…
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Reflection on Shambhala as a social movement
Recently, a group of us at Portland Shambhala were considering these two questions: What would Shambhala as a social movement be like? What could such a social movement bring to the world? I feel it would be inauthentic to try to frame Shambhala as a social movement without interweaving the history (the good and…
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A TRAIN RIDE WITHOUT DESTINATION: We Can See Where We Were and What We Did in 2021, but Not What Will Mysteriously and Magically Unfold in 2022
(He/Him/His) In collaboration with John Smith “Karma is like a game of chess. Wherever you are on the board at this moment is the result of your past actions. But whatever you are going to do in the next moment depends on the present situation. The present situation is partly influenced by the…
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Questioning ourselves and Shambhala’s new Code of Conduct
Years ago, my efforts to reflect on and create a kind of mirror for the Portland Shambhala Community involved a lot of obviously uplifting stories such as a Harvest of Peace report or notes from a Drala Hike leadership retreat. Even when the topics were more somber, like Practicing while incarcerated, Sukhavati for Ron Tomas, or Aging in Shambhala,…