In the West today we are exposed to virtually all of the world's perennial traditions. We have been able to augment this ancient wisdom with our scientific advances in neurosciences and psychodynamics. There is a panoply of spiritual methods and technologies available to help us investigate and transform our minds. We're more sophisticated and precise about gaining insight into who we are beyond our social conditioning.
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What lags behind is our ability to embody and actualize these realizations in the pedestrian, everyday dimensions of our lives. We reach illuminated heights while meditating or taking psychedelics, yet we are continuously challenged to find the relevance of these experiences when we return to our humdrum routines, are faced with emotional crises, or experience normal expressions of universal impermanence.
How do we connect these heightened states with our daily challenges in responsibilities? How do we see the sacred with the mundane?
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In this workshop, we will look at how the face of Buddhism has transformed and adapted to our values and cultural norms in the West over the last sixty years. Specifically, we will explore how the lessons about spiritual materialism and spiritual by-passing learned in Buddhism can inform encounters with psychedelics and their transformational potential.
The exercises and meditation will focus on finding the continuity of refuge in stillness, silence and spaciousness, the qualities that underly a clear and engaging life.
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Tickets
$30 in advance
$35 at door
Rev. Konrad Ryushin Marchaj, Sensei is a Zen priest in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, and a Dharma heir of the late John Daido Loori, Roshi. Ryushin Sensei was the Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Born in Warsaw, Poland, he immigrated to the United States in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from Yale University in 1976. He received his medical degree from Albany Medical College in 1980, working first as a pediatrician in Portland, Maine, and then serving in the US Navy as a physician for three years. He then returned to Albany for postgraduate training in psychiatry. After completing his residency, he served as medical director for a community psychiatric outreach program, the Mobile Crisis Team, which served Albany County’s disenfranchised and homeless population. He entered full-time residential training at the Monastery in 1992. In addition to his roles as the Monastery’s Abbot and Director of Operations, he explored contemplative practices in higher education, collaborating with several liberal arts educators and administrators in the Northeast to look at ways for college students to engage religious practice as part of their education. He has been practicing Buddhism since 1983. Drawing on his background as a physician and psychiatrist, Ryushin’s infectious interest and thorough training in the workings of the mind, combined with his skill at translating complex concepts into the accessible, everyday language, characterize his unique teaching style.