with Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi

Saturday, May 7, 2016
10:00am – 5:00pm

Our emotions can lead us to our greatest joys and most painful sorrows. In their most creative capacity, they are guides pointing us towards who we truly are and what is most meaningful in our lives. At their most destructive, we are caught by them: lost in the grip of anger, sadness, fear, or overwhelm. This suffering is something we have all felt, but we can create more space, choice, and ease in the face of it.

The Cultivating Emotional Balance training was sparked during a meeting between behavioral scientists, a neuroscientist, a monk, a philosopher, and the Dalai Lama in 2000, as a new approach to understanding our emotional lives. Combining contemporary scientific research with contemplative practices drawn from Buddhism, the Cultivating Emotional Balance training gives participants new tools for working with emotion.

The full program is a 42-hour training, but in this daylong workshop you will be introduced to some of the key components of this training.

• Understanding how emotions work, and how they can work for and not against us;
• Recognizing and working with emotional triggers;
• Deepening awareness and stabilizing attention;
• Increasing compassion for the self and others;
• Cultivating genuine happiness and mental balance.

All are welcome. This class is open to all levels of meditation experience.

Ven. Tenzin Chogkyi first became interested in meditation after reading "Be Here Now" and "Autobiography of a Yogi" in the early ’70’s. For the next 20 years, her spiritual path was meandering and haphazard, and included several dead ends, until she bought a one-way ticket to India in early 1991 with the intention of meeting His Holiness the Dalai Lama. She then became a student not only of His Holiness, but also of Kirti Tsenshab Rinpoche and Lama Zopa Rinpoche during the year she spent studying at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala and Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu.

After returning to the US, Tenzin Chogkyi worked at various positions within Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s organization, the Foundation for the Preservation of the Mahayana Tradition – director of Vajrapani Institute, co-director of FPMT International Office, FPMT Center Services Coordinator – and also completed several long meditation retreats.

She took novice ordination in 2004 with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and since 2006 she has been teaching at various FPMT centers around the globe. She is a regular teacher at centers in North and South America, India, Nepal, Australia, and New Zealand, and a visiting teacher for the Liberation Prison Project, having taught in prisons in the US, Colombia, Australia, and New Zealand.

She is authorized by the FPMT to teach at both the Foundational and In-Depth level, and to lead long retreats. She is also a certified teacher of Cultivating Emotional Balance, a secular program in dealing with emotions developed by Alan Wallace and Paul Ekman at His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s request.

In December of 2015 she returned to Vajrapani Institute in California as resident teacher. In addition to her spiritual practice, she is passionate about prison reform, animal rights, bringing an end to human trafficking and other modern forms of slavery, and equal rights for all human beings and all species.