By Marianne Ward

“I believe that the purpose of our life is to seek happiness”, so states the Dalai Lama in ‘The Art of Happiness.’

Fittingly, on October 9th, a handful of people had the pleasure of welcoming John deGraaf and Laura Musikanski to the Center to hear them present on Gross National Happiness (GNH) – translation: wellbeing.

John is Executive Director of Take Back Your Time and Outreach and Communications Director of The Happiness Initiative. He has produced more than fifteen national PBS documentaries, and is the co-author of ‘Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic‘ as well as the forthcoming ‘What’s the Economy for Anyway’?

Laura Musikanski is the Executive Director of Sustainable Seattle and the Director of The Happiness Initiative.

We learned that GNH originated in Bhutan. In 1972 when the newly appointed 16-year old king was asked what he would do to increase Bhutan’s Gross National Product (GNP), he replied, “Gross National Happiness (GNH) is more important than Gross National Product”. GNH, he said, would be the goal of his reign.

And so, in time, Bhutan began to measure nine domains that affect happiness:
• Psychological wellbeing or mental health
• Physical health
• Time or work-life balance
• Education
• Cultural vitality and expression
• Social connection and relationships
• Environmental quality and access to nature
• Quality of governance
• Material wellbeing

The United Nations, too, has called on all governments to make “the pursuit of happiness” their goal and find ways to measure it.

Wellbeing is clearly so much more than the economic health of a country and cannot be measured by the GNP. War, environmental disasters, a mass influx of money into elections, and the high cost of products all increase GNP.

Yet, with the incessant daily news reports on the Gross National Product one could easily conclude that Americans are valued solely for their contribution to the economy – be it as workers, consumers, inventors, or job creating entrepreneurs.

GNH, as stated on its website, is based on the premise that the calculation of ‘wealth’ should include the preservation of the environment and quality of life issues. The goal of a society should be the integration of material development with psychological, cultural and spiritual considerations – all in harmony with the Earth.

GNH USA, based in Vermont, kicked off the movement here in the US last year with a conference in Burlington which included speakers and delegates from seven countries, including Bhutan, and 17 states and provinces.

More exciting things are to come; another conference is in the planning…stay tuned!

By Jane Kramer
As a long time member of our Shambhala sangha, I invite you to take a look at the array of films showing this year at the Vermont International Film Festival in Burlington October 21st – 30th.
Of special interest to sangha members is the film “My Reincarnation”, showing the complex relationship between exiled Tibetan spiritual master Chogyal Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche and his Italian-born son Yeshi.
Other topics include examples of Egyptian cinema, Cuban and Israeli-Palestinian films, animations, films about food, and a Vermont filmmakers showcase.
“A Little House in a Big House” takes us inside the Vermont Women’s prison where 45 women build a single family home from start to finish.
Anyway, check out the website for complete descriptions and times of the films.
See you at the cinema!
Jane Kramer

By Carol Snow, Toni Messuri, and Patti Lanich

In our efforts for continued outreach, the Burlington Shambhala Center Team did an amazing job raising funds (and friends) for JUMP on Saturday September 24. What a wonderful way to begin our weekend celebration of the Shambhala Lineage! Our team of 7 took second place for “team fundraising” with a grand total of $934! Some of us were walkers and two intrepid warriors ran. The day was rainy and spirits were high. The total raised for JUMP was over $15,000. Many blessings!

Let’s continue our outreach practices as we all continue to raise our gaze and look beyond to parts of our city that desperately need attention. We don’t have to look too far to witness the suffering in our own home town.

Below are some examples of where the money we raised for JUMP will go:

$5 buys a load of clean laundry. Many JUMP clients without homes are camping and the flooding and rain have been especially brutal this year on these folks.

$10 buys a bus pass for a JUMP client to get around for job interviews

OR a grocery voucher to buy milk for a big family when they run out of food money at the end of the month.

$20 buys some gas for a single Dad to get back and forth to see his kids who are living out of town

OR for a veteran who needs to drive to the VA Hospital in White River.

$440 funds a whole day of JUMP where, each weekday, we help 11 clients and their families with needs similar to those above.

We thank you for your continued efforts.

Warm regards,

Toni and Carol

by Geri Amori
Early in our time on the path, we get introduced to the idea of the Three Jewels as the pillars for progress on the path. The three jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. The Buddha as teacher is fairly obvious. Here is a guy who left his family and his kingdom to figure out enlightenment. When he did, he made the generous decision to share what he had spent years figuring out with others so that they could share in this wonderful understanding. It’s pretty clear this is a treasure.
Then there is the notion of the dharma, or truth, as a jewel. This is the stuff the Buddha figured out. Thank goodness he spent his life doing it and all I have to do is to get it….really get it….in every fiber of my being get it. Ok, that may take many lifetimes, but at least he gave us all a shot at it.
The third jewel is the one called sangha, or community. This is the confusing one. Which community? Who’s in the community? Why do we need the community?
Some people say that it’s a practical thing. The sangha is the community of fellow travelers who understand what you are doing because they are doing the same thing. They are important because they can help you see your blind spots and support you in your efforts.
But who are they? Are they all the Shambhalians in the world, or mostly the folks locally? What are they supposed to do to help me? What am I supposed to do to help them?
Some people come to our center and they really want to be left alone to do their own thing. “I just want to come meditate and maybe take a class or two, but don’t demand anything of me.” Others are disappointed that we don’t ask them to do things or try to connect with them personally.
Who do you consider the sangha? Please respond to this blog and pipe in. Together perhaps we can figure it out.

by Geri Amori
One winter day, the woman in front of me in the airport security line was struggling with coats, equipment and carry-on bags for herself and a toddler. While TSA procedures are trying for any human, they must be exponentially more complicated for people traveling with children whose belongings and little person require more arms to manage than even those of a well-endowed octopus.
This particular day was especially trying for the little fellow whose bag was nearly as large as he. The wait was longer than his miniature patience, and the bag was clearly a burden. As he turned the next of the innumerable corners in the zig-zag line, he hit the pole with his oversized load. The bag fell to the ground and he burst into tears. Big tears. Loud tears. “You pick that up and stop crying right now!” His mom ordered loudly.
Stunned, I bent over to help the child pick up his coat and the handle.
“What are you doing?” she directed angrily at me. “He’s got to learn to be responsible”, not cutting the child any slack for the endurance test he had already survived.
“He’s struggling, you witch” I thought defensively. “I was just trying to help.”
Looking at her face I realized she had a point. I truly didn’t know what had gone on before or the complete situation between her and the child. Perhaps this is a child who regularly throws tantrums. Perhaps I had mis-read her firmness for harshness and judged her for it. Perhaps I had made a mistake by not acknowledging her struggle to keep her own patience together while she traveled with the child who may not even be her own child.
“I’m sorry,” I said then. “I know it’s tough to travel with little ones.”
She softened, and I learned a valuable lesson.
I recognized how often my actions are based upon my own ideas of what is “good” or “compassionate”. There’s a kind of judgment that goes with that….a judgment that I know what’s right for someone else. How many times have I “given someone space” only to learn later they wanted more from me, or urged them to an action to later learn they felt I interfered?
The lesson for me is to try to find out what the other person considers helpful from their point of view when I can. While it is not always possible to ask, it is always possible to consider.
Please comment on this blog and will also help me by gently reminding me when you see my view clouded by projection.

Thanks to Geri Amori, we have photos to share from the refuge vow ceremony with Acharya Judy Lief on June 25, 2011!

by Annelies Smith
There is a Buddhist description of a meditation practitioner being like an onion. The more you let your discursive mind surrender to its true nature to abide or rest calmly, the more you peel away one layer of the onion pulp after another. Deep within is a radiance, transparency and simplicity that no longer seeks outer circumstances to measure against ones’ inner experience. A sense of knowing confidence prevails.
In one way, an advanced yoga practitioner is like a soft onion and a new yoga student is like a fresh onion. The soft onions are a little mushy, easy to change shape and slightly transparent. They are bendable and when they move into different asanas (yoga poses), the body spreads down the layers into a deeper place arriving at that wonderful sense of release. There is little resistance and eventually there is none. A new student has many layers that are crisp and strong and filled with potential that is about to be moved into for the first time. They are also potentially filled with the stress of daily living that is still lodged within, not having enough of an outlet.
The other day, I had a new student in class. He had a cheerful tone and a very strong body. It was his first yoga class and he was not bendable. I asked the class to come into gomukasana for an extended period of time. This fellow had a difficult time grabbing his elbow behind his back with his other hand, which was about 6 inches away. I asked him if he felt a stretch and he replied “no”. The layers were too fresh. The muscles in his upper arm had not yet learned to consciously relax. He probably did not even know they were engaged so he did not get that satisfying long slow opening in his shoulder that many yogis have grown to love. I suggested he breathe into his outer layer of skin and let it relax, slowly yielding in from there. He was able to make a shift.
In yoga as in meditation, it can be helpful to acknowledge which “layer” we are at and to slowly move in layer by layer.
Annelies Smith is a yoga teacher, body worker, and dancer. Find out more about Annelies and her work at http://vermontyogabodywork.com/

One of my favorite things to do in spring is to go out early on Sunday mornings to watch birds, then come to the Shambhala Center to practice, and then stop at my favorite café to read the paper or write a letter. Though I generally don’t think of rain as a problem, birding really is made more difficult by having your eyes fill up with water as you tilt your head back to peer up into a tree top. So after a quick assessment of this morning’s steady downpour, I decided to abbreviate my usual spring ritual and go straight to the Center.
Stepping into our beautiful new shrine room and seeing sangha friends always lifts my spirits. This morning I felt even more uplifted by the magnificent Ikebana arrangement that drew my eyes as soon as I entered the room. The combination of a twig of small, creamy-white flowers and a large, outrageously purple rhododendron flower was a pure work of art. I noted my botanist’s desire to identify the small white flowers (“Thinking! No need to go into it right now!”) and began my meditation session with an impromptu gratitude fest for these riches.
The beauty of that arrangement stayed with me all day. I particularly appreciated its local element — Jean (today’s Ikebana meister) must have picked a twig from a fruit tree nearby rather than buying something that would have been transported here from far away. This in turn led me to think of my other favorite thing to do on a spring day – to walk in the woods and look for the flowers on trees. I had always known that fruit trees have flowers, but the fact that big trees like maples and hickories produce flowers, too, had somehow escaped me as a city kid.
Botanically speaking, the particular flower that opened my eyes to this annual flower-show-in-the-woods turned out not to be a flower at all — but it might as well count as an honorary one, with its pastel tones of orange and cream and its petals elegantly curved back, reminiscent of a Georgia O’Keeffe painting. It belonged to an enormous shagbark hickory, and the supposed flower was actually made up of the bud scales that unfurl with the hickory’s new leaves. Flower or bud — from that day on, I looked much more closely at both on my walks in the woods and around the neighborhood.
Getting to know the trees and birds around us is a particularly fun way of relating to our environment. And the skills needed to do it are exactly what we train our minds to do on the cushion – observation, inquisitiveness, mindfulness, and awareness. I’ll leave you with a favorite quote by Hermann Hesse:
He who has learned to listen to trees
No longer desires to be a tree.
He desires to be nothing other than what he is.

Shagbark hickory bud scales

Photos courtesy Geri Amori

More of Geri’s photos are available at BSC Shambhala Day Celebration

More of Geri’s photos are available at BSC Shambhala Day Celebration

By Carol Snow

“I’m stuck.” I could hear both defeat and longing in John’s voice as he sat across the table from me. “I try to make a little progress then I find myself sitting at home day after day, doing nothing, going nowhere . I am sick of it.” John had come to JUMP (Joint Urban Ministry Project) hoping to get a bus pass and a laundry voucher so that he could clean himself up and go look for a job. The volunteers were busy putting together a bag of food and personal items for John. I asked him to tell me more about feeling stuck. As he was talking he noticed our interfaith book shelf. “So what is this ‘Sacred Path of the Warrior’ book all about.” “You might be very surprised”, I said, handing Chögyam Trungpa’s paperback text to him. “It has to do with being a very down-to-earth hero in your own life – it’s about being courageous, about recognizing your own basic goodness. Actually it’s all about how to get unstuck! Would you like to take it with you?” With delight, John tucked the book into his bag of food and supplies.

The Burlington Shambhala Center has a strong and growing connection with JUMP – an interfaith ministry supported by 27 local faith communities. JUMP operates a downtown drop-in center, providing emergency assistance, spiritual care and advocacy to our most vulnerable neighbors (the poverty rate in Burlington is 20%!). In December, the Burlington Shambhala Center donated books to JUMP. (by Chögyam Trungpa, Sakyong Miphham and Pema Chödrön) All have been given away to grateful clients. Dare we ask for more?? Center members have also provided lots of shampoo. Shampoo goes out as fast as it comes in as nearly 300 clients walk through the doors of JUMP every month. And perhaps most significantly, five Center members are somewhere in the process of training to become JUMP volunteers.

………Clean hair, a listening ear, an inspiring word – getting unstuck can start anywhere.