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A Body-Based Meditation Course with Rose Taylor and Ari Goldfield
April 11, 2015 - April 12, 2015
Saturday, April 11 and Sunday, April 12
9:00 am—5:00 pm both days
(Saturday and Sunday, only)
“We don’t need to get rid of anything; we don’t need to add anything. Simply experience directly what is actually there—this authenticity will liberate you.”
~ the Bodhisattva Maitreya
Mahamudra is a profound and powerful meditation practice with a simple message: Our experience is flawless just as it is. We do not need to try to fix our experience, change it, improve it, or get rid of it. When we let the struggle with our experience simply relax, then our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions feel held and supported by gentle acceptance. Our fear and rigidity gradually dissolve, and we taste the poignancy, sweetness, clarity, and joy that the Mahamudra yogis and yoginis sing of. We become comfortable in our own skin.
This weekend we will explore the foundations of Mahamudra practice in a step-by-step way that develops confidence and direct experience. This will be enhanced and grounded in our bodies through training in lujong, a series of Tibetan yogic exercises suitable for practitioners of all fitness levels. The lujong exercises help us transform stress, anxiety, and physical pain to develop strength, ease, and gentleness in our felt experience. There will be explanations, meditation sessions, and time for questions and discussion.
About Ari Goldfield
Ari is a Buddhist teacher who had the unique experience of being continuously in the training and service of his own teacher, the Tibetan master Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, for eleven years. From 1998-2006, Ari served as Khenpo Rinpoche’s oral translator and secretary on seven round-the-world teaching tours, received extensive instruction from Rinpoche, and meditated under Rinpoche’s guidance in retreats. Ari is also a published translator and author of books and articles on Buddhist philosophy and meditation, as well as numerous songs of realization. He holds a BA from Harvard College, a JD from Harvard Law School, and a MA in counseling psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies. He and his wife, Rose Taylor, currently teach internationally from their home base in San Francisco under the auspices of Wisdom Sun, the practice and study community they established in 2011.
About Rose Taylor Goldfield
Rose, along with her husband, Ari Goldfield, founded and is main teacher for the Wisdom Sun Buddhist community based in San Francisco. She is a life coach, certified by the Coaching Training Institute (CTI) and the International Coach Federation (ICF), and author—her new book is Training the Wisdom Body: Buddhist Yogic Exercise. She holds an MA in Indo-Tibetan Buddhist studies from Naropa University, and spent many years meditating and teaching in nunneries and monasteries in Nepal and Bhutan. She teaches Buddhist meditation, philosophy, yogic exercise and dance, and classical Tibetan language. Rose has written and translated books, articles, and numerous songs of realization, including Khenpo Rinpoche’s book Stars of Wisdom and a chapter in Freeing the Body, Freeing the Mind: Writings on the Connection Between Yoga and Buddhism.
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