Governing Council Winter Retreat Highlights
On December 8th, 2013, the PSMC Governing Council met at Alice Price’s beautiful home in NE Portland for a day of discussion, contemplation, and, of course, great food! This retreat came while the council (especially Alice, our Finance Director) was hard at work finalizing the budget for 2014, but we decided to set this day … Continue
Behind the scenes preparation
In Shambhala, there are always invisible resources and partners who are behind the scenes. It is completely helpful to have people who have more experience than we do take all the time they need to think through some of the fundamentals that are behind every class at the Shambhala Center. Obviously, those people include the … Continue
Sukhavati for Ron Thomas
Ron Thomas died this fall from prostate cancer. He was a member of the Portland Shambhala Center since the late 1990s. He was a disabled veteran with a lot of chronic pain. He was a gentle person and a devoted student of the dharma. He was seldom seen at the Shambhala Center in his final … Continue
Twinkle: Light in the Darkness
Kim Crossman sends this along… Everybody wants to be happy. Everybody wants to feel love. But we all go through dark times – illness, loss, all kinds of mental and physical suffering. The first teaching the Buddha gave after he achieved enlightenment, on the 4 Noble Truths, answers this question of suffering. The 1st Noble … Continue
A busy Governing Council — now with more transparency!
One of the challenges of a (mostly) volunteer organization is finding time to work on short-term and longer-term issues. The past week has been especially busy. When we’re so busy, transparency can suffer as we try to “get stuff done.” On Sunday December 8, the Council had a full-day planning retreat at the home of … Continue
Lisa Stanley teaching people to sit still 5 minutes a day
Recently, Lisa Stanley was interviewed by Jenn Sturiale, a writer for Time Warner, for two articles on Upwave, a new health-related website with a twist. In one interview, Lisa talked about two related topics, which ended up in two pieces: In one article Lisa talked about meditation as “a way for people to slow down. Many … Continue
Basic Goodness III Haikus
The “Basic Goodness III, Basic Goodness of Reality: What is Real?” class just finished up our fourth meeting. Last week, we were given the instruction by one of our teachers, David Parker, to wander about the center and find a few things that strike us and write a haiku on them. Afterwards, a few people … Continue
Calling all photographers
The communication team would like to invite you to contribute photos for our blog or Facebook page. We’ve collected 419 photos over the last several months but could use more contributions. Photos of community events (even if everyone is drenched) or of the beauty around us are especially helpful. When we use them, we will … Continue
How to contribute to this community blog
This blog is a way for our community to be visible to itself. That involves contributing as well as reading. To become a contributor (of a one-time piece or a regular series) drop a line to [email protected]. It helps to have a photo as well as a few sentences or paragraphs.
Drala Hike Leadership Retreat
The Drala Hike Leaders held a retreat in October 2013. Several of the drala hike leaders spent a glorious weekend in Bend together. Guess what they did? We did a wonderful hike along Crooked River on the Otter Bench Trail, had a wonderful dinner together in Bend Saturday night and then briefly visited the Metolius River … Continue
