The kindness of a buddha is extraordinary, meeting the needs of sentient beings wherever they are on their spiritual path, wherever they are in time and space. H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche exemplified this remarkable quality when he created the Bodhisattva Peace Training (BPT) for those of all faiths, or of none at all, who aspire to increase their capacity to benefit others. A distillation of the Mahayana teachings on bodhichitta, the BPT presents dynamic and effective methods for cultivating loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom through contemplation and meditation, both during formal practice and in daily life. Through the introduction of a vast and accessible perspective on applied bodhichitta, the BPT has been an open door to the Buddhist path for many new practitioners and a powerful support for existing practitioners, as well as a spiritual foundation for people of other faiths. One way in which Rinpoche manifested his all encompassing and uncompromising commitment to ending the suffering of beings was to make these tools available to anyone willing to use them to reduce non virtue and in crease virtue and wisdom—in their families and communities throughout the world—thereby increasing their capacity to benefit others in the short term and leading to liberation in the long term. Rinpoche envisioned BPT participants, over time, gaining enough knowledge and facility with the methods that they could share them with others, like one candle lighting the next, steadily increasing the light in the world.
Rinpoche offered the first BPT in 1988, and in 1991 authorized Lama Shenpen and Lama Tsering to teach it. In 2001, when Rinpoche articulated his vision for the development of a Bodhisattva Peace Training Institute at Iron Knot Ranch to make the BPT more widely available, Lama Shenpen began to teach it more broadly to youth and adults and to train others interested in offering it in their own communities.
Rinpoche stressed the importance of compiling and publishing his BPT teachings as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the teachings and as a manual to support those attending the trainings. Lama Shenpen finished Change of Heart: The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku in 2003, and a generous grant is making it possible to disseminate books free of charge to at risk youth and adults around the country. Over the years, a growing number of participants have taken the teachings to heart and are applying them in their daily lives. These are some of the stories of those fulfilling Rinpoche’s vision.
The Ghetto Film School (GFS) is an organization in the South Bronx that provides educational, artistic, and career opportunities in film and video to local youth. GFS students will travel to Iron Knot Ranch for an immersion in the principles and practice of the Bodhisattva Peace Training, as well as instructions on how to work with the teachings after the training. Each student will then make a short film documenting the way the principles of bodhichitta are reflected in their community.
The films will debut at the GFS Annual Public Screening at Lincoln Center, New York, and will also be widely distributed through GFS networks to national film festivals, television and web platforms, and schools and youth service organizations with free copies of Change of Heart included as a study guide.
The brutal reality of domestic violence is an intense context for the practice of compassion and equanimity, but Ellen Pence steps squarely into it. She’s the director of Praxis International in Duluth, Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate violence in the lives of women and children. Due to the successful track record of Praxis in training advocates for battered women, responders within the system such as judges, prosecutors, police, and facilitators of groups for men who batter, the federal government now requires that anyone receiving federal funds for domestic violence work in rural areas be trained by Praxis. So when
Ellen speaks about the impact the Bodhisattva Peace Training has had on her approach to training and curriculum development, we see the principles of good heart filtering into diverse segments of society, from Wyoming ranch country to Lakota reservations in the prairies to remote villages in Alaska.
Many of those Ellen works with are facilitators of groups for men who batter. She used to exclusively address the batter ers’ lack of remorse and anger, but now the training also focuses on the facilitators’ own judgments and frustration and provides tools for them to work on their own minds. Meditation is one such tool that has led many facilitators to realize that the poisons of their minds only obstruct their attempts to help these men.
The BPT methods have also helped Ellen’s work with police officers in improving their response to domestic violence calls. Now that she is addressing her own bias and aversion, she is better able to help officers reflect on their shortcomings, thereby supporting them in their work without abandoning the needs of the victims of violence.
Chuck Derry, cofounder of the Gender Violence Institute, also works with law enforcement departments by providing domes tic and sexual violence training and policy development in ru ral and tribal areas of Minnesota. Initially, his organization’s relationship with law enforcement was often delicate or even conflicted. But the BPT has given Chuck a greater understanding of the officers’ concerns and frustrations, and consequently their interactions have become more open and trusting. Now when Chuck works on a policy with the police, it is more likely to actually be implemented and make a difference in the lives of battered women and their children.
Drawing from Quaker traditions, Friends for a NonViolent World in Saint Paul, Minnesota, provides programs that help prison inmates learn nonviolent skills and mobilizes grass roots, nonviolent citizen coalitions to participate in electoral politics. Its director, Phil Steger, was looking for tools to transform his anger, fear, and fatigue, as well as to cultivate in himself the peace and joy he encouraged in others. He explains that “the most formidable obstacles to my being an effective peace maker reside not in other people, in the media, or in the administration, but in my own mind.” As a practicing Catholic, he sought spiritual practices that would supplement his religious life without replacing it.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training offered methods unlike any he had encountered before; they suited his life’s activity and goals by opening his heart, addressing the roots of violence in his own mind, and being easily applied even in moments of heated conflict, making them invaluable to his work. “When so much is beyond my power to control, it is bracing to experience even an inch of freedom and peace that no piece of propaganda or presidential action can take away.” During campaigns, Phil trains citizen activists in tonglen and equanimity meditation to ensure that their efforts are genuine and effective, and transcend the facile strategy of trading one set of opinions and prejudices for another.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training principles are also being discussed in academic settings, from social work to communications and political science departments. Mari Ann Graham, director of the Masters in Social Work Program at the College of Saint Catherine/Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, has found the principles and methods to be especially valuable in conflict mediation and problem solving with colleagues and students in what can often be a politically charged and polarized atmosphere. Mari Ann is so convinced of the value and efficacy of these teachings on applied bodhichitta that she considers them more important than her Ph.D. education.
Julie Andrzejewski, professor of Human Relations and MultiCultural Studies, teaches a class called “Change Agent Skills” at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. In the arena of civil and social rights, the channeling of outrage and anger into protest and confrontation has often been used to respond to and reverse societal injustices, which makes what Julie teaches unique. She witnessed in her classroom that fixating on social oppression only implanted in her students the bias and myopia that characterized the very systems and institutions they were trying to change. She has therefore shifted the emphasis of her curriculum from confrontation to compassion. She now instructs her students not to blame others, but to examine their own motivations and notice how they get in the way of the changes they want to see in the world. This approach has been well received by her students, even inspiring some of them to attend a BPT themselves.
Godfrey Mnubi is one such student. Born and raised in Tanzania, he intends to return home after completing the master’s program in Social Responsibility at Saint Cloud State. Urban areas in Tanzania are experiencing a massive influx of homeless and poverty stricken youth who leave their rural homelands to find jobs in the city. Godfrey plans to help youth remain in their communities by providing job training and other services. He believes that the BPT methods will increase his effectiveness in facilitating compromise between communities with different values and will help make accessible a wisdom that’s been lost among the youth of Tanzania. A practicing Roman Catholic, Godfrey was taught the importance of loving your enemies and “turning the other cheek,” but he never learned how to actually do it. Having completed the training, Godfrey now thinks he has a chance.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche would often use the example of the peacock to illustrate the activity of a bodhisattva. A peacock can ingest what is poisonous to other animals, transforming the substance into colors that are both brilliant and beautiful. Susan Hubbard is CEO of Eureka Recycling in Saint Paul, a nonprofit curbside recycler for more than 275,000 people and their 60,000ton yearly share of recyclables. Their fleet of biofuel operated trucks is just one of their many innovations in sustainable community service.
Susan recounts that she was about to “pop off” from complete burnout when a flier advertising the BPT landed on her desk. Four years later, she’s still with Eureka Recycling, meeting challenges with patience and practice. She’s found creative ways to work with corporate polluters that encourage them to explore alternatives that are eco-friendly yet profitable, thereby saving jobs as well as preserving their relationship with and reputation in the community. Susan credits the BPT methods with enabling her to explore skillful ways of relating to institutions and people with very different values in ways that minimize harm while building trust.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche encouraged participants to ask questions, express doubts, and examine the teachings closely to see if they made sense in light of their own life experience. This kind of examination and contemplation thrives in Change of Heart study groups, where folks can review the teachings, help each other come to a better understanding of the methods, and support one another when the going gets tough. These groups keep the spirit of the training fresh and alive.
Candy Palmo works with one such group in Weaverville, California, which assiduously studies each chapter, line by line. They examine their lives and beliefs in light of the teachings, and if they have lingering doubts, they can voice them during a monthly conference call with Lama Shenpen.
In the group that Susanne Fairclough facilitates in Arcata, California, participants become more familiar with the meditations found in the book. Their discussions alternate with brief periods when the mind is allowed to relax into the spacious nature of being. There is also emphasis on viewing one’s experience as a mirror reflecting one’s own mind, and members of the group have shared insights into how their habit patterns obstruct opportunities to benefit others.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-step programs (collectively known as “the Program”) offer a process of self examination and discovery that can lead to release from addiction for those who, through substance abuse, have become what the Program calls “as desperate as only the dying can be.” Shelly D. has been in the Program for 11 years and has found the steps extremely effective. She has attended numerous Bodhisattva Peace Trainings since 2002, has facilitated a Change of Heart study group in Silver City, New Mexico, and aspires to bring the BPT methods to others in recovery communities. Shelly comments, “While the Program helps one negotiate addiction to particular substances, the BPT offers tools for becoming aware of how our experience of reality is informed by our deep habit to fixate on anything we think will make us happy and reduce our suffering. Because the practices are clear, simple, and nondenominational, they are easily work able, even for folks with hangups about religion and prayer.” She considers three or four day retreats in treatment centers and rehabilitation clinics an ideal context in which addicts can work with the BPT principles.
Through these profound practices of compassion and wisdom, Chagdud Rinpoche has illuminated the hearts and minds of many others, inspiring them to help reduce non virtue and increase virtue in the world. May all beings meet with such kindness.
— Tony Simon
The kindness of a buddha is extraordinary, meeting the needs of sentient beings wherever they are on their spiritual path, wherever they are in time and space. H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche exemplified this remarkable quality when he created the Bodhisattva Peace Training (BPT) for those of all faiths, or of none at all, who aspire to increase their capacity to benefit others. A distillation of the Mahayana teachings on bodhichitta, the BPT presents dynamic and effective methods for cultivating loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom through contemplation and meditation, both during formal practice and in daily life. Through the introduction of a vast and accessible perspective on applied bodhichitta, the BPT has been an open door to the Buddhist path for many new practitioners and a powerful support for existing practitioners, as well as a spiritual foundation for people of other faiths. One way in which Rinpoche manifested his all encompassing and uncompromising commitment to ending the suffering of beings was to make these tools available to anyone willing to use them to reduce non virtue and in crease virtue and wisdom—in their families and communities throughout the world—thereby increasing their capacity to benefit others in the short term and leading to liberation in the long term. Rinpoche envisioned BPT participants, over time, gaining enough knowledge and facility with the methods that they could share them with others, like one candle lighting the next, steadily increasing the light in the world.
Rinpoche offered the first BPT in 1988, and in 1991 authorized Lama Shenpen and Lama Tsering to teach it. In 2001, when Rinpoche articulated his vision for the development of a Bodhisattva Peace Training Institute at Iron Knot Ranch to make the BPT more widely available, Lama Shenpen began to teach it more broadly to youth and adults and to train others interested in offering it in their own communities.
Rinpoche stressed the importance of compiling and publishing his BPT teachings as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the teachings and as a manual to support those attending the trainings. Lama Shenpen finished Change of Heart: The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku in 2003, and a generous grant is making it possible to disseminate books free of charge to at risk youth and adults around the country. Over the years, a growing number of participants have taken the teachings to heart and are applying them in their daily lives. These are some of the stories of those fulfilling Rinpoche’s vision.
The Ghetto Film School (GFS) is an organization in the South Bronx that provides educational, artistic, and career opportunities in film and video to local youth. GFS students will travel to Iron Knot Ranch for an immersion in the principles and practice of the Bodhisattva Peace Training, as well as instructions on how to work with the teachings after the training. Each student will then make a short film documenting the way the principles of bodhichitta are reflected in their community.
The films will debut at the GFS Annual Public Screening at Lincoln Center, New York, and will also be widely distributed through GFS networks to national film festivals, television and web platforms, and schools and youth service organizations with free copies of Change of Heart included as a study guide.
The brutal reality of domestic violence is an intense context for the practice of compassion and equanimity, but Ellen Pence steps squarely into it. She’s the director of Praxis International in Duluth, Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate violence in the lives of women and children. Due to the successful track record of Praxis in training advocates for battered women, responders within the system such as judges, prosecutors, police, and facilitators of groups for men who batter, the federal government now requires that anyone receiving federal funds for domestic violence work in rural areas be trained by Praxis. So when
Ellen speaks about the impact the Bodhisattva Peace Training has had on her approach to training and curriculum development, we see the principles of good heart filtering into diverse segments of society, from Wyoming ranch country to Lakota reservations in the prairies to remote villages in Alaska.
Many of those Ellen works with are facilitators of groups for men who batter. She used to exclusively address the batter ers’ lack of remorse and anger, but now the training also focuses on the facilitators’ own judgments and frustration and provides tools for them to work on their own minds. Meditation is one such tool that has led many facilitators to realize that the poisons of their minds only obstruct their attempts to help these men.
The BPT methods have also helped Ellen’s work with police officers in improving their response to domestic violence calls. Now that she is addressing her own bias and aversion, she is better able to help officers reflect on their shortcomings, thereby supporting them in their work without abandoning the needs of the victims of violence.
Chuck Derry, cofounder of the Gender Violence Institute, also works with law enforcement departments by providing domes tic and sexual violence training and policy development in ru ral and tribal areas of Minnesota. Initially, his organization’s relationship with law enforcement was often delicate or even conflicted. But the BPT has given Chuck a greater understanding of the officers’ concerns and frustrations, and consequently their interactions have become more open and trusting. Now when Chuck works on a policy with the police, it is more likely to actually be implemented and make a difference in the lives of battered women and their children.
Drawing from Quaker traditions, Friends for a NonViolent World in Saint Paul, Minnesota, provides programs that help prison inmates learn nonviolent skills and mobilizes grass roots, nonviolent citizen coalitions to participate in electoral politics. Its director, Phil Steger, was looking for tools to transform his anger, fear, and fatigue, as well as to cultivate in himself the peace and joy he encouraged in others. He explains that “the most formidable obstacles to my being an effective peace maker reside not in other people, in the media, or in the administration, but in my own mind.” As a practicing Catholic, he sought spiritual practices that would supplement his religious life without replacing it.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training offered methods unlike any he had encountered before; they suited his life’s activity and goals by opening his heart, addressing the roots of violence in his own mind, and being easily applied even in moments of heated conflict, making them invaluable to his work. “When so much is beyond my power to control, it is bracing to experience even an inch of freedom and peace that no piece of propaganda or presidential action can take away.” During campaigns, Phil trains citizen activists in tonglen and equanimity meditation to ensure that their efforts are genuine and effective, and transcend the facile strategy of trading one set of opinions and prejudices for another.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training principles are also being discussed in academic settings, from social work to communications and political science departments. Mari Ann Graham, director of the Masters in Social Work Program at the College of Saint Catherine/Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, has found the principles and methods to be especially valuable in conflict mediation and problem solving with colleagues and students in what can often be a politically charged and polarized atmosphere. Mari Ann is so convinced of the value and efficacy of these teachings on applied bodhichitta that she considers them more important than her Ph.D. education.
Julie Andrzejewski, professor of Human Relations and MultiCultural Studies, teaches a class called “Change Agent Skills” at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. In the arena of civil and social rights, the channeling of outrage and anger into protest and confrontation has often been used to respond to and reverse societal injustices, which makes what Julie teaches unique. She witnessed in her classroom that fixating on social oppression only implanted in her students the bias and myopia that characterized the very systems and institutions they were trying to change. She has therefore shifted the emphasis of her curriculum from confrontation to compassion. She now instructs her students not to blame others, but to examine their own motivations and notice how they get in the way of the changes they want to see in the world. This approach has been well received by her students, even inspiring some of them to attend a BPT themselves.
Godfrey Mnubi is one such student. Born and raised in Tanzania, he intends to return home after completing the master’s program in Social Responsibility at Saint Cloud State. Urban areas in Tanzania are experiencing a massive influx of homeless and poverty stricken youth who leave their rural homelands to find jobs in the city. Godfrey plans to help youth remain in their communities by providing job training and other services. He believes that the BPT methods will increase his effectiveness in facilitating compromise between communities with different values and will help make accessible a wisdom that’s been lost among the youth of Tanzania. A practicing Roman Catholic, Godfrey was taught the importance of loving your enemies and “turning the other cheek,” but he never learned how to actually do it. Having completed the training, Godfrey now thinks he has a chance.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche would often use the example of the peacock to illustrate the activity of a bodhisattva. A peacock can ingest what is poisonous to other animals, transforming the substance into colors that are both brilliant and beautiful. Susan Hubbard is CEO of Eureka Recycling in Saint Paul, a nonprofit curbside recycler for more than 275,000 people and their 60,000ton yearly share of recyclables. Their fleet of biofuel operated trucks is just one of their many innovations in sustainable community service.
Susan recounts that she was about to “pop off” from complete burnout when a flier advertising the BPT landed on her desk. Four years later, she’s still with Eureka Recycling, meeting challenges with patience and practice. She’s found creative ways to work with corporate polluters that encourage them to explore alternatives that are eco-friendly yet profitable, thereby saving jobs as well as preserving their relationship with and reputation in the community. Susan credits the BPT methods with enabling her to explore skillful ways of relating to institutions and people with very different values in ways that minimize harm while building trust.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche encouraged participants to ask questions, express doubts, and examine the teachings closely to see if they made sense in light of their own life experience. This kind of examination and contemplation thrives in Change of Heart study groups, where folks can review the teachings, help each other come to a better understanding of the methods, and support one another when the going gets tough. These groups keep the spirit of the training fresh and alive.
Candy Palmo works with one such group in Weaverville, California, which assiduously studies each chapter, line by line. They examine their lives and beliefs in light of the teachings, and if they have lingering doubts, they can voice them during a monthly conference call with Lama Shenpen.
In the group that Susanne Fairclough facilitates in Arcata, California, participants become more familiar with the meditations found in the book. Their discussions alternate with brief periods when the mind is allowed to relax into the spacious nature of being. There is also emphasis on viewing one’s experience as a mirror reflecting one’s own mind, and members of the group have shared insights into how their habit patterns obstruct opportunities to benefit others.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-step programs (collectively known as “the Program”) offer a process of self examination and discovery that can lead to release from addiction for those who, through substance abuse, have become what the Program calls “as desperate as only the dying can be.” Shelly D. has been in the Program for 11 years and has found the steps extremely effective. She has attended numerous Bodhisattva Peace Trainings since 2002, has facilitated a Change of Heart study group in Silver City, New Mexico, and aspires to bring the BPT methods to others in recovery communities. Shelly comments, “While the Program helps one negotiate addiction to particular substances, the BPT offers tools for becoming aware of how our experience of reality is informed by our deep habit to fixate on anything we think will make us happy and reduce our suffering. Because the practices are clear, simple, and nondenominational, they are easily work able, even for folks with hangups about religion and prayer.” She considers three or four day retreats in treatment centers and rehabilitation clinics an ideal context in which addicts can work with the BPT principles.
Through these profound practices of compassion and wisdom, Chagdud Rinpoche has illuminated the hearts and minds of many others, inspiring them to help reduce non virtue and increase virtue in the world. May all beings meet with such kindness.
— Tony Simon
The kindness of a buddha is extraordinary, meeting the needs of sentient beings wherever they are on their spiritual path, wherever they are in time and space. H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche exemplified this remarkable quality when he created the Bodhisattva Peace Training (BPT) for those of all faiths, or of none at all, who aspire to increase their capacity to benefit others. A distillation of the Mahayana teachings on bodhichitta, the BPT presents dynamic and effective methods for cultivating loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom through contemplation and meditation, both during formal practice and in daily life. Through the introduction of a vast and accessible perspective on applied bodhichitta, the BPT has been an open door to the Buddhist path for many new practitioners and a powerful support for existing practitioners, as well as a spiritual foundation for people of other faiths. One way in which Rinpoche manifested his all encompassing and uncompromising commitment to ending the suffering of beings was to make these tools available to anyone willing to use them to reduce non virtue and in crease virtue and wisdom—in their families and communities throughout the world—thereby increasing their capacity to benefit others in the short term and leading to liberation in the long term. Rinpoche envisioned BPT participants, over time, gaining enough knowledge and facility with the methods that they could share them with others, like one candle lighting the next, steadily increasing the light in the world.
Rinpoche offered the first BPT in 1988, and in 1991 authorized Lama Shenpen and Lama Tsering to teach it. In 2001, when Rinpoche articulated his vision for the development of a Bodhisattva Peace Training Institute at Iron Knot Ranch to make the BPT more widely available, Lama Shenpen began to teach it more broadly to youth and adults and to train others interested in offering it in their own communities.
Rinpoche stressed the importance of compiling and publishing his BPT teachings as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the teachings and as a manual to support those attending the trainings. Lama Shenpen finished Change of Heart: The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku in 2003, and a generous grant is making it possible to disseminate books free of charge to at risk youth and adults around the country. Over the years, a growing number of participants have taken the teachings to heart and are applying them in their daily lives. These are some of the stories of those fulfilling Rinpoche’s vision.
The Ghetto Film School (GFS) is an organization in the South Bronx that provides educational, artistic, and career opportunities in film and video to local youth. GFS students will travel to Iron Knot Ranch for an immersion in the principles and practice of the Bodhisattva Peace Training, as well as instructions on how to work with the teachings after the training. Each student will then make a short film documenting the way the principles of bodhichitta are reflected in their community.
The films will debut at the GFS Annual Public Screening at Lincoln Center, New York, and will also be widely distributed through GFS networks to national film festivals, television and web platforms, and schools and youth service organizations with free copies of Change of Heart included as a study guide.
The brutal reality of domestic violence is an intense context for the practice of compassion and equanimity, but Ellen Pence steps squarely into it. She’s the director of Praxis International in Duluth, Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate violence in the lives of women and children. Due to the successful track record of Praxis in training advocates for battered women, responders within the system such as judges, prosecutors, police, and facilitators of groups for men who batter, the federal government now requires that anyone receiving federal funds for domestic violence work in rural areas be trained by Praxis. So when
Ellen speaks about the impact the Bodhisattva Peace Training has had on her approach to training and curriculum development, we see the principles of good heart filtering into diverse segments of society, from Wyoming ranch country to Lakota reservations in the prairies to remote villages in Alaska.
Many of those Ellen works with are facilitators of groups for men who batter. She used to exclusively address the batter ers’ lack of remorse and anger, but now the training also focuses on the facilitators’ own judgments and frustration and provides tools for them to work on their own minds. Meditation is one such tool that has led many facilitators to realize that the poisons of their minds only obstruct their attempts to help these men.
The BPT methods have also helped Ellen’s work with police officers in improving their response to domestic violence calls. Now that she is addressing her own bias and aversion, she is better able to help officers reflect on their shortcomings, thereby supporting them in their work without abandoning the needs of the victims of violence.
Chuck Derry, cofounder of the Gender Violence Institute, also works with law enforcement departments by providing domes tic and sexual violence training and policy development in ru ral and tribal areas of Minnesota. Initially, his organization’s relationship with law enforcement was often delicate or even conflicted. But the BPT has given Chuck a greater understanding of the officers’ concerns and frustrations, and consequently their interactions have become more open and trusting. Now when Chuck works on a policy with the police, it is more likely to actually be implemented and make a difference in the lives of battered women and their children.
Drawing from Quaker traditions, Friends for a NonViolent World in Saint Paul, Minnesota, provides programs that help prison inmates learn nonviolent skills and mobilizes grass roots, nonviolent citizen coalitions to participate in electoral politics. Its director, Phil Steger, was looking for tools to transform his anger, fear, and fatigue, as well as to cultivate in himself the peace and joy he encouraged in others. He explains that “the most formidable obstacles to my being an effective peace maker reside not in other people, in the media, or in the administration, but in my own mind.” As a practicing Catholic, he sought spiritual practices that would supplement his religious life without replacing it.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training offered methods unlike any he had encountered before; they suited his life’s activity and goals by opening his heart, addressing the roots of violence in his own mind, and being easily applied even in moments of heated conflict, making them invaluable to his work. “When so much is beyond my power to control, it is bracing to experience even an inch of freedom and peace that no piece of propaganda or presidential action can take away.” During campaigns, Phil trains citizen activists in tonglen and equanimity meditation to ensure that their efforts are genuine and effective, and transcend the facile strategy of trading one set of opinions and prejudices for another.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training principles are also being discussed in academic settings, from social work to communications and political science departments. Mari Ann Graham, director of the Masters in Social Work Program at the College of Saint Catherine/Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, has found the principles and methods to be especially valuable in conflict mediation and problem solving with colleagues and students in what can often be a politically charged and polarized atmosphere. Mari Ann is so convinced of the value and efficacy of these teachings on applied bodhichitta that she considers them more important than her Ph.D. education.
Julie Andrzejewski, professor of Human Relations and MultiCultural Studies, teaches a class called “Change Agent Skills” at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. In the arena of civil and social rights, the channeling of outrage and anger into protest and confrontation has often been used to respond to and reverse societal injustices, which makes what Julie teaches unique. She witnessed in her classroom that fixating on social oppression only implanted in her students the bias and myopia that characterized the very systems and institutions they were trying to change. She has therefore shifted the emphasis of her curriculum from confrontation to compassion. She now instructs her students not to blame others, but to examine their own motivations and notice how they get in the way of the changes they want to see in the world. This approach has been well received by her students, even inspiring some of them to attend a BPT themselves.
Godfrey Mnubi is one such student. Born and raised in Tanzania, he intends to return home after completing the master’s program in Social Responsibility at Saint Cloud State. Urban areas in Tanzania are experiencing a massive influx of homeless and poverty stricken youth who leave their rural homelands to find jobs in the city. Godfrey plans to help youth remain in their communities by providing job training and other services. He believes that the BPT methods will increase his effectiveness in facilitating compromise between communities with different values and will help make accessible a wisdom that’s been lost among the youth of Tanzania. A practicing Roman Catholic, Godfrey was taught the importance of loving your enemies and “turning the other cheek,” but he never learned how to actually do it. Having completed the training, Godfrey now thinks he has a chance.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche would often use the example of the peacock to illustrate the activity of a bodhisattva. A peacock can ingest what is poisonous to other animals, transforming the substance into colors that are both brilliant and beautiful. Susan Hubbard is CEO of Eureka Recycling in Saint Paul, a nonprofit curbside recycler for more than 275,000 people and their 60,000ton yearly share of recyclables. Their fleet of biofuel operated trucks is just one of their many innovations in sustainable community service.
Susan recounts that she was about to “pop off” from complete burnout when a flier advertising the BPT landed on her desk. Four years later, she’s still with Eureka Recycling, meeting challenges with patience and practice. She’s found creative ways to work with corporate polluters that encourage them to explore alternatives that are eco-friendly yet profitable, thereby saving jobs as well as preserving their relationship with and reputation in the community. Susan credits the BPT methods with enabling her to explore skillful ways of relating to institutions and people with very different values in ways that minimize harm while building trust.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche encouraged participants to ask questions, express doubts, and examine the teachings closely to see if they made sense in light of their own life experience. This kind of examination and contemplation thrives in Change of Heart study groups, where folks can review the teachings, help each other come to a better understanding of the methods, and support one another when the going gets tough. These groups keep the spirit of the training fresh and alive.
Candy Palmo works with one such group in Weaverville, California, which assiduously studies each chapter, line by line. They examine their lives and beliefs in light of the teachings, and if they have lingering doubts, they can voice them during a monthly conference call with Lama Shenpen.
In the group that Susanne Fairclough facilitates in Arcata, California, participants become more familiar with the meditations found in the book. Their discussions alternate with brief periods when the mind is allowed to relax into the spacious nature of being. There is also emphasis on viewing one’s experience as a mirror reflecting one’s own mind, and members of the group have shared insights into how their habit patterns obstruct opportunities to benefit others.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-step programs (collectively known as “the Program”) offer a process of self examination and discovery that can lead to release from addiction for those who, through substance abuse, have become what the Program calls “as desperate as only the dying can be.” Shelly D. has been in the Program for 11 years and has found the steps extremely effective. She has attended numerous Bodhisattva Peace Trainings since 2002, has facilitated a Change of Heart study group in Silver City, New Mexico, and aspires to bring the BPT methods to others in recovery communities. Shelly comments, “While the Program helps one negotiate addiction to particular substances, the BPT offers tools for becoming aware of how our experience of reality is informed by our deep habit to fixate on anything we think will make us happy and reduce our suffering. Because the practices are clear, simple, and nondenominational, they are easily work able, even for folks with hangups about religion and prayer.” She considers three or four day retreats in treatment centers and rehabilitation clinics an ideal context in which addicts can work with the BPT principles.
Through these profound practices of compassion and wisdom, Chagdud Rinpoche has illuminated the hearts and minds of many others, inspiring them to help reduce non virtue and increase virtue in the world. May all beings meet with such kindness.
— Tony Simon
The kindness of a buddha is extraordinary, meeting the needs of sentient beings wherever they are on their spiritual path, wherever they are in time and space. H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche exemplified this remarkable quality when he created the Bodhisattva Peace Training (BPT) for those of all faiths, or of none at all, who aspire to increase their capacity to benefit others. A distillation of the Mahayana teachings on bodhichitta, the BPT presents dynamic and effective methods for cultivating loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom through contemplation and meditation, both during formal practice and in daily life. Through the introduction of a vast and accessible perspective on applied bodhichitta, the BPT has been an open door to the Buddhist path for many new practitioners and a powerful support for existing practitioners, as well as a spiritual foundation for people of other faiths. One way in which Rinpoche manifested his all encompassing and uncompromising commitment to ending the suffering of beings was to make these tools available to anyone willing to use them to reduce non virtue and in crease virtue and wisdom—in their families and communities throughout the world—thereby increasing their capacity to benefit others in the short term and leading to liberation in the long term. Rinpoche envisioned BPT participants, over time, gaining enough knowledge and facility with the methods that they could share them with others, like one candle lighting the next, steadily increasing the light in the world.
Rinpoche offered the first BPT in 1988, and in 1991 authorized Lama Shenpen and Lama Tsering to teach it. In 2001, when Rinpoche articulated his vision for the development of a Bodhisattva Peace Training Institute at Iron Knot Ranch to make the BPT more widely available, Lama Shenpen began to teach it more broadly to youth and adults and to train others interested in offering it in their own communities.
Rinpoche stressed the importance of compiling and publishing his BPT teachings as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the teachings and as a manual to support those attending the trainings. Lama Shenpen finished Change of Heart: The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku in 2003, and a generous grant is making it possible to disseminate books free of charge to at risk youth and adults around the country. Over the years, a growing number of participants have taken the teachings to heart and are applying them in their daily lives. These are some of the stories of those fulfilling Rinpoche’s vision.
The Ghetto Film School (GFS) is an organization in the South Bronx that provides educational, artistic, and career opportunities in film and video to local youth. GFS students will travel to Iron Knot Ranch for an immersion in the principles and practice of the Bodhisattva Peace Training, as well as instructions on how to work with the teachings after the training. Each student will then make a short film documenting the way the principles of bodhichitta are reflected in their community.
The films will debut at the GFS Annual Public Screening at Lincoln Center, New York, and will also be widely distributed through GFS networks to national film festivals, television and web platforms, and schools and youth service organizations with free copies of Change of Heart included as a study guide.
The brutal reality of domestic violence is an intense context for the practice of compassion and equanimity, but Ellen Pence steps squarely into it. She’s the director of Praxis International in Duluth, Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate violence in the lives of women and children. Due to the successful track record of Praxis in training advocates for battered women, responders within the system such as judges, prosecutors, police, and facilitators of groups for men who batter, the federal government now requires that anyone receiving federal funds for domestic violence work in rural areas be trained by Praxis. So when
Ellen speaks about the impact the Bodhisattva Peace Training has had on her approach to training and curriculum development, we see the principles of good heart filtering into diverse segments of society, from Wyoming ranch country to Lakota reservations in the prairies to remote villages in Alaska.
Many of those Ellen works with are facilitators of groups for men who batter. She used to exclusively address the batter ers’ lack of remorse and anger, but now the training also focuses on the facilitators’ own judgments and frustration and provides tools for them to work on their own minds. Meditation is one such tool that has led many facilitators to realize that the poisons of their minds only obstruct their attempts to help these men.
The BPT methods have also helped Ellen’s work with police officers in improving their response to domestic violence calls. Now that she is addressing her own bias and aversion, she is better able to help officers reflect on their shortcomings, thereby supporting them in their work without abandoning the needs of the victims of violence.
Chuck Derry, cofounder of the Gender Violence Institute, also works with law enforcement departments by providing domes tic and sexual violence training and policy development in ru ral and tribal areas of Minnesota. Initially, his organization’s relationship with law enforcement was often delicate or even conflicted. But the BPT has given Chuck a greater understanding of the officers’ concerns and frustrations, and consequently their interactions have become more open and trusting. Now when Chuck works on a policy with the police, it is more likely to actually be implemented and make a difference in the lives of battered women and their children.
Drawing from Quaker traditions, Friends for a NonViolent World in Saint Paul, Minnesota, provides programs that help prison inmates learn nonviolent skills and mobilizes grass roots, nonviolent citizen coalitions to participate in electoral politics. Its director, Phil Steger, was looking for tools to transform his anger, fear, and fatigue, as well as to cultivate in himself the peace and joy he encouraged in others. He explains that “the most formidable obstacles to my being an effective peace maker reside not in other people, in the media, or in the administration, but in my own mind.” As a practicing Catholic, he sought spiritual practices that would supplement his religious life without replacing it.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training offered methods unlike any he had encountered before; they suited his life’s activity and goals by opening his heart, addressing the roots of violence in his own mind, and being easily applied even in moments of heated conflict, making them invaluable to his work. “When so much is beyond my power to control, it is bracing to experience even an inch of freedom and peace that no piece of propaganda or presidential action can take away.” During campaigns, Phil trains citizen activists in tonglen and equanimity meditation to ensure that their efforts are genuine and effective, and transcend the facile strategy of trading one set of opinions and prejudices for another.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training principles are also being discussed in academic settings, from social work to communications and political science departments. Mari Ann Graham, director of the Masters in Social Work Program at the College of Saint Catherine/Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, has found the principles and methods to be especially valuable in conflict mediation and problem solving with colleagues and students in what can often be a politically charged and polarized atmosphere. Mari Ann is so convinced of the value and efficacy of these teachings on applied bodhichitta that she considers them more important than her Ph.D. education.
Julie Andrzejewski, professor of Human Relations and MultiCultural Studies, teaches a class called “Change Agent Skills” at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. In the arena of civil and social rights, the channeling of outrage and anger into protest and confrontation has often been used to respond to and reverse societal injustices, which makes what Julie teaches unique. She witnessed in her classroom that fixating on social oppression only implanted in her students the bias and myopia that characterized the very systems and institutions they were trying to change. She has therefore shifted the emphasis of her curriculum from confrontation to compassion. She now instructs her students not to blame others, but to examine their own motivations and notice how they get in the way of the changes they want to see in the world. This approach has been well received by her students, even inspiring some of them to attend a BPT themselves.
Godfrey Mnubi is one such student. Born and raised in Tanzania, he intends to return home after completing the master’s program in Social Responsibility at Saint Cloud State. Urban areas in Tanzania are experiencing a massive influx of homeless and poverty stricken youth who leave their rural homelands to find jobs in the city. Godfrey plans to help youth remain in their communities by providing job training and other services. He believes that the BPT methods will increase his effectiveness in facilitating compromise between communities with different values and will help make accessible a wisdom that’s been lost among the youth of Tanzania. A practicing Roman Catholic, Godfrey was taught the importance of loving your enemies and “turning the other cheek,” but he never learned how to actually do it. Having completed the training, Godfrey now thinks he has a chance.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche would often use the example of the peacock to illustrate the activity of a bodhisattva. A peacock can ingest what is poisonous to other animals, transforming the substance into colors that are both brilliant and beautiful. Susan Hubbard is CEO of Eureka Recycling in Saint Paul, a nonprofit curbside recycler for more than 275,000 people and their 60,000ton yearly share of recyclables. Their fleet of biofuel operated trucks is just one of their many innovations in sustainable community service.
Susan recounts that she was about to “pop off” from complete burnout when a flier advertising the BPT landed on her desk. Four years later, she’s still with Eureka Recycling, meeting challenges with patience and practice. She’s found creative ways to work with corporate polluters that encourage them to explore alternatives that are eco-friendly yet profitable, thereby saving jobs as well as preserving their relationship with and reputation in the community. Susan credits the BPT methods with enabling her to explore skillful ways of relating to institutions and people with very different values in ways that minimize harm while building trust.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche encouraged participants to ask questions, express doubts, and examine the teachings closely to see if they made sense in light of their own life experience. This kind of examination and contemplation thrives in Change of Heart study groups, where folks can review the teachings, help each other come to a better understanding of the methods, and support one another when the going gets tough. These groups keep the spirit of the training fresh and alive.
Candy Palmo works with one such group in Weaverville, California, which assiduously studies each chapter, line by line. They examine their lives and beliefs in light of the teachings, and if they have lingering doubts, they can voice them during a monthly conference call with Lama Shenpen.
In the group that Susanne Fairclough facilitates in Arcata, California, participants become more familiar with the meditations found in the book. Their discussions alternate with brief periods when the mind is allowed to relax into the spacious nature of being. There is also emphasis on viewing one’s experience as a mirror reflecting one’s own mind, and members of the group have shared insights into how their habit patterns obstruct opportunities to benefit others.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-step programs (collectively known as “the Program”) offer a process of self examination and discovery that can lead to release from addiction for those who, through substance abuse, have become what the Program calls “as desperate as only the dying can be.” Shelly D. has been in the Program for 11 years and has found the steps extremely effective. She has attended numerous Bodhisattva Peace Trainings since 2002, has facilitated a Change of Heart study group in Silver City, New Mexico, and aspires to bring the BPT methods to others in recovery communities. Shelly comments, “While the Program helps one negotiate addiction to particular substances, the BPT offers tools for becoming aware of how our experience of reality is informed by our deep habit to fixate on anything we think will make us happy and reduce our suffering. Because the practices are clear, simple, and nondenominational, they are easily work able, even for folks with hangups about religion and prayer.” She considers three or four day retreats in treatment centers and rehabilitation clinics an ideal context in which addicts can work with the BPT principles.
Through these profound practices of compassion and wisdom, Chagdud Rinpoche has illuminated the hearts and minds of many others, inspiring them to help reduce non virtue and increase virtue in the world. May all beings meet with such kindness.
— Tony Simon
The kindness of a buddha is extraordinary, meeting the needs of sentient beings wherever they are on their spiritual path, wherever they are in time and space. H.E. Chagdud Tulku Rinpoche exemplified this remarkable quality when he created the Bodhisattva Peace Training (BPT) for those of all faiths, or of none at all, who aspire to increase their capacity to benefit others. A distillation of the Mahayana teachings on bodhichitta, the BPT presents dynamic and effective methods for cultivating loving kindness, compassion, and wisdom through contemplation and meditation, both during formal practice and in daily life. Through the introduction of a vast and accessible perspective on applied bodhichitta, the BPT has been an open door to the Buddhist path for many new practitioners and a powerful support for existing practitioners, as well as a spiritual foundation for people of other faiths. One way in which Rinpoche manifested his all encompassing and uncompromising commitment to ending the suffering of beings was to make these tools available to anyone willing to use them to reduce non virtue and in crease virtue and wisdom—in their families and communities throughout the world—thereby increasing their capacity to benefit others in the short term and leading to liberation in the long term. Rinpoche envisioned BPT participants, over time, gaining enough knowledge and facility with the methods that they could share them with others, like one candle lighting the next, steadily increasing the light in the world.
Rinpoche offered the first BPT in 1988, and in 1991 authorized Lama Shenpen and Lama Tsering to teach it. In 2001, when Rinpoche articulated his vision for the development of a Bodhisattva Peace Training Institute at Iron Knot Ranch to make the BPT more widely available, Lama Shenpen began to teach it more broadly to youth and adults and to train others interested in offering it in their own communities.
Rinpoche stressed the importance of compiling and publishing his BPT teachings as an introduction for people unfamiliar with the teachings and as a manual to support those attending the trainings. Lama Shenpen finished Change of Heart: The Bodhisattva Peace Training of Chagdud Tulku in 2003, and a generous grant is making it possible to disseminate books free of charge to at risk youth and adults around the country. Over the years, a growing number of participants have taken the teachings to heart and are applying them in their daily lives. These are some of the stories of those fulfilling Rinpoche’s vision.
The Ghetto Film School (GFS) is an organization in the South Bronx that provides educational, artistic, and career opportunities in film and video to local youth. GFS students will travel to Iron Knot Ranch for an immersion in the principles and practice of the Bodhisattva Peace Training, as well as instructions on how to work with the teachings after the training. Each student will then make a short film documenting the way the principles of bodhichitta are reflected in their community.
The films will debut at the GFS Annual Public Screening at Lincoln Center, New York, and will also be widely distributed through GFS networks to national film festivals, television and web platforms, and schools and youth service organizations with free copies of Change of Heart included as a study guide.
The brutal reality of domestic violence is an intense context for the practice of compassion and equanimity, but Ellen Pence steps squarely into it. She’s the director of Praxis International in Duluth, Minnesota, a nonprofit organization that works to eliminate violence in the lives of women and children. Due to the successful track record of Praxis in training advocates for battered women, responders within the system such as judges, prosecutors, police, and facilitators of groups for men who batter, the federal government now requires that anyone receiving federal funds for domestic violence work in rural areas be trained by Praxis. So when
Ellen speaks about the impact the Bodhisattva Peace Training has had on her approach to training and curriculum development, we see the principles of good heart filtering into diverse segments of society, from Wyoming ranch country to Lakota reservations in the prairies to remote villages in Alaska.
Many of those Ellen works with are facilitators of groups for men who batter. She used to exclusively address the batter ers’ lack of remorse and anger, but now the training also focuses on the facilitators’ own judgments and frustration and provides tools for them to work on their own minds. Meditation is one such tool that has led many facilitators to realize that the poisons of their minds only obstruct their attempts to help these men.
The BPT methods have also helped Ellen’s work with police officers in improving their response to domestic violence calls. Now that she is addressing her own bias and aversion, she is better able to help officers reflect on their shortcomings, thereby supporting them in their work without abandoning the needs of the victims of violence.
Chuck Derry, cofounder of the Gender Violence Institute, also works with law enforcement departments by providing domes tic and sexual violence training and policy development in ru ral and tribal areas of Minnesota. Initially, his organization’s relationship with law enforcement was often delicate or even conflicted. But the BPT has given Chuck a greater understanding of the officers’ concerns and frustrations, and consequently their interactions have become more open and trusting. Now when Chuck works on a policy with the police, it is more likely to actually be implemented and make a difference in the lives of battered women and their children.
Drawing from Quaker traditions, Friends for a NonViolent World in Saint Paul, Minnesota, provides programs that help prison inmates learn nonviolent skills and mobilizes grass roots, nonviolent citizen coalitions to participate in electoral politics. Its director, Phil Steger, was looking for tools to transform his anger, fear, and fatigue, as well as to cultivate in himself the peace and joy he encouraged in others. He explains that “the most formidable obstacles to my being an effective peace maker reside not in other people, in the media, or in the administration, but in my own mind.” As a practicing Catholic, he sought spiritual practices that would supplement his religious life without replacing it.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training offered methods unlike any he had encountered before; they suited his life’s activity and goals by opening his heart, addressing the roots of violence in his own mind, and being easily applied even in moments of heated conflict, making them invaluable to his work. “When so much is beyond my power to control, it is bracing to experience even an inch of freedom and peace that no piece of propaganda or presidential action can take away.” During campaigns, Phil trains citizen activists in tonglen and equanimity meditation to ensure that their efforts are genuine and effective, and transcend the facile strategy of trading one set of opinions and prejudices for another.
The Bodhisattva Peace Training principles are also being discussed in academic settings, from social work to communications and political science departments. Mari Ann Graham, director of the Masters in Social Work Program at the College of Saint Catherine/Saint Thomas University in Saint Paul, has found the principles and methods to be especially valuable in conflict mediation and problem solving with colleagues and students in what can often be a politically charged and polarized atmosphere. Mari Ann is so convinced of the value and efficacy of these teachings on applied bodhichitta that she considers them more important than her Ph.D. education.
Julie Andrzejewski, professor of Human Relations and MultiCultural Studies, teaches a class called “Change Agent Skills” at Saint Cloud State University in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. In the arena of civil and social rights, the channeling of outrage and anger into protest and confrontation has often been used to respond to and reverse societal injustices, which makes what Julie teaches unique. She witnessed in her classroom that fixating on social oppression only implanted in her students the bias and myopia that characterized the very systems and institutions they were trying to change. She has therefore shifted the emphasis of her curriculum from confrontation to compassion. She now instructs her students not to blame others, but to examine their own motivations and notice how they get in the way of the changes they want to see in the world. This approach has been well received by her students, even inspiring some of them to attend a BPT themselves.
Godfrey Mnubi is one such student. Born and raised in Tanzania, he intends to return home after completing the master’s program in Social Responsibility at Saint Cloud State. Urban areas in Tanzania are experiencing a massive influx of homeless and poverty stricken youth who leave their rural homelands to find jobs in the city. Godfrey plans to help youth remain in their communities by providing job training and other services. He believes that the BPT methods will increase his effectiveness in facilitating compromise between communities with different values and will help make accessible a wisdom that’s been lost among the youth of Tanzania. A practicing Roman Catholic, Godfrey was taught the importance of loving your enemies and “turning the other cheek,” but he never learned how to actually do it. Having completed the training, Godfrey now thinks he has a chance.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche would often use the example of the peacock to illustrate the activity of a bodhisattva. A peacock can ingest what is poisonous to other animals, transforming the substance into colors that are both brilliant and beautiful. Susan Hubbard is CEO of Eureka Recycling in Saint Paul, a nonprofit curbside recycler for more than 275,000 people and their 60,000ton yearly share of recyclables. Their fleet of biofuel operated trucks is just one of their many innovations in sustainable community service.
Susan recounts that she was about to “pop off” from complete burnout when a flier advertising the BPT landed on her desk. Four years later, she’s still with Eureka Recycling, meeting challenges with patience and practice. She’s found creative ways to work with corporate polluters that encourage them to explore alternatives that are eco-friendly yet profitable, thereby saving jobs as well as preserving their relationship with and reputation in the community. Susan credits the BPT methods with enabling her to explore skillful ways of relating to institutions and people with very different values in ways that minimize harm while building trust.
During Bodhisattva Peace Trainings, Chagdud Rinpoche encouraged participants to ask questions, express doubts, and examine the teachings closely to see if they made sense in light of their own life experience. This kind of examination and contemplation thrives in Change of Heart study groups, where folks can review the teachings, help each other come to a better understanding of the methods, and support one another when the going gets tough. These groups keep the spirit of the training fresh and alive.
Candy Palmo works with one such group in Weaverville, California, which assiduously studies each chapter, line by line. They examine their lives and beliefs in light of the teachings, and if they have lingering doubts, they can voice them during a monthly conference call with Lama Shenpen.
In the group that Susanne Fairclough facilitates in Arcata, California, participants become more familiar with the meditations found in the book. Their discussions alternate with brief periods when the mind is allowed to relax into the spacious nature of being. There is also emphasis on viewing one’s experience as a mirror reflecting one’s own mind, and members of the group have shared insights into how their habit patterns obstruct opportunities to benefit others.
Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and other 12-step programs (collectively known as “the Program”) offer a process of self examination and discovery that can lead to release from addiction for those who, through substance abuse, have become what the Program calls “as desperate as only the dying can be.” Shelly D. has been in the Program for 11 years and has found the steps extremely effective. She has attended numerous Bodhisattva Peace Trainings since 2002, has facilitated a Change of Heart study group in Silver City, New Mexico, and aspires to bring the BPT methods to others in recovery communities. Shelly comments, “While the Program helps one negotiate addiction to particular substances, the BPT offers tools for becoming aware of how our experience of reality is informed by our deep habit to fixate on anything we think will make us happy and reduce our suffering. Because the practices are clear, simple, and nondenominational, they are easily work able, even for folks with hangups about religion and prayer.” She considers three or four day retreats in treatment centers and rehabilitation clinics an ideal context in which addicts can work with the BPT principles.
Through these profound practices of compassion and wisdom, Chagdud Rinpoche has illuminated the hearts and minds of many others, inspiring them to help reduce non virtue and increase virtue in the world. May all beings meet with such kindness.
— Tony Simon
