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Love in Action: The Altruistic Spirit of Christ and Buddha
December 19 - December 22, 2024
Andrew Harvey, Ph.D.
Robert A.F. Thurman
Andrew Harvey and Robert Thurman are great old friends who have been sharing their insights and passions for over 30 years and who taught a very galvanizing course on the Shift Network on the Buddha and the Christ. Both of them are aware that humanity has come to its defining evolutionary ordeal manifesting through its narcissism and hubris a ferocious global dark night which threatens its extinction. Both are also aware that this terrible situation, unprecedented in its intensity and scope, offers extraordinary possibilities for radical spiritual growth and for a creative re-visioning of all human structures through the next level of embodied divine consciousness.In this weekend retreat, Bob will present the vision that he has brilliantly revealed in book after book of how the teachings and practices of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism help us to create a new way of being and doing everything. He will speak of the great transformative ideal at the heart of Mahayana Buddhism—that of the Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who dedicates his or her whole life, in life after life to the liberation of all sentient beings. Drawing on his own inner experience and his long and profound friendship with the Dalai Lama, he will demonstrate how seekers on all paths now need to be inspired by this magnificent vision to rise in joy and focused calm to put love into action to transform society, save democracy, build economic and political structures of sustainability and provide radiant guidance to generations to come.Drawing on three decades of exploration of Christian mysticism and his own visionary relationship with the greatest Christian mystic of the 20th century—Father Bede Griffiths—Andrew will present his profoundly aligned vision of the message of Jesus as a call to all beings to embody Christ consciousness in its grandeur and passion and put it into dynamic sacred action. He will also explore the great secret at the heart of Christian mysticism, what he calls the transfiguration process that is the divinizing of heart, mind, soul and body lived by Angelus Silesius, Sarafim of Sarov and Father Bede Griffiths himself, among many others. He will relate this secret to the vision of other great evolutionary mystics, such as Aurobindo and the Mother, in order to show how our global dark night is potentially the birth canal of its re-incarnation on a massive scale.Bob has the highest respect for Christian mysticism and recognizes Jesus as a Bodhisattva. Andrew has been initiated into Mahayana Buddhism and honors the Bodhisattva ideal as a noble interlinked counterpoint to that of the Christed embodied divine. Andrew and Bob will engage in dialogue demonstrating the thrilling parallels between the two visions while also teaching them separately from the depths of their mutual traditions. What they hope to achieve is the clearest possible offering of a way forward, a way that marries profound inner sacred practice with wise urgent sacredly-inspired activism.In this retreat, you will receive three divine gifts: a vision of engaged enlightenment to aspire to with your whole being, maps towards that enlightenment derived from the deepest Mahayana and Christian traditions, and sacred practices both simple and transformative that you can start using now to inspire yourself in our grim age to be joyful and compassionate agents of transformative change.UPDATE: We will be joined by two special guest presenters, U of New Mexico Adjunct Professor and acclaimed author of Wild Mercy and Ordinary Mysticism, Mirabai Starr, and Eastern Orthodox Christian scholar/practitioner/author, Mark Arey. Mirabai and Mark will join in several discussions to contribute added dimensions to the dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity on the main themes of the retreat.Click Register Now above if you wish to register to attend in person at Menla. If you cannot attend in person and wish to join virtually/online, please click here to register for virtual participation.ScheduleThursday, December 19
ABOUT THE TEACHERs
Andrew Harvey, Ph.D.
Andrew Harvey is a poet, novelist, mystical scholar, lecturer in comparative religions, and one of the most celebrated translators of Rumi. He has taught at Oxford, Cornell, Hobart and Smith Colleges, California Institute of Integral Studies, and UCS. The honors he has received ...
Robert A.F. Thurman
Robert Thurman is Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies at Columbia University as well as co-founder and President of Tibet House US and it's Menla Retreat & Spa. A world-wide lecturer on Tibetan Buddhism, activist for the plight of the Tibetan people, translator of Buddhis...
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