Join us for another online retreat! Building on January’s Loving Kindness and Compassion, and our April training in Self-Kindness, we will now learn and practice the profound meditation practice of tonglen.

Tonglen is a Tibetan word that means “giving and taking.” It is an ancient meditation practice that allows us to reduce our sense of isolation and discontentment, and transform them into loving, open-hearted joy. With tonglen, we visualize taking on the suffering of others and giving them back our happiness. While this discipline may at first go against the grain of our ordinary ways of being, it helps us to transform the pain and suffering of both ourselves and others, while developing our inner wisdom and qualities of compassion and generosity.

The Dalai Lama described tonglen in the following way:

We tend to relate to this so-called “self” as a precious core at the center of our being… to the extent that we are willing to overlook the well-being of others in contrast, our attitude toward others often resembles indifference; the point of this practice is to reverse this attitude so that we reduce the intensity of our grasping and the attachment we have to ourselves, and endeavor to consider the well-being of others as significant and important.
– HH the Dalai Lama

Once we reduce our self-obsession, we can begin to be truly kind to ourselves and others. This results in a selfless joy springing forth from our soft heart which has opened up to the needs and pains of everyone. We actively connect with compassion, develop it internally, and learn how to apply it in our everyday life.

For this retreat, we have added new features that are a bit of an experiment for us. We hope these will help and be conducive to your practice and retreat experience:

– On Saturday July 3, Heidi Koppl will have a live zoom session to welcome participants and introduce us to the tonglen practice.
– We have included an introductory video that we suggest watching before you start the retreat on Saturday, July 10 (see https://dharmasun.org/seminars/)
– Two “Connections”: live facilitated group sessions per day (Sun-Tue and Thu-Fri) allowing you to practice together as a community with experienced TTE facilitators. These are timed to best serve the majority of time zones around the world.
– On Wednesday July 14, Heidi will conduct a live contemplative reflection session, in which she will practice with us and answer questions.

This retreat will include recorded videos with instructions from Lama Tenzin Sangpo and Heidi Koppl. You can practice with the videos based on the suggested schedule below. The retreat also includes live Q&A sessions over Zoom with Lama Tenzin and Heidi. This format will allow you to adjust your practice to your own schedule in the course of the week.

This retreat will be offered in English only. Would you like to have it in other languages? Let us know by emailing andrea@tarastripleexcellence.org.

REGISTRATION

Registration for the retreat will remain open until Saturday, July 17. Recordings will be available until Saturday, August 7.

In order to access the teachings, all participants must already be registered at www.dharmasun.org. Registration to DharmaSun is free.

The suggested donation amount for this retreat is: $108 USD
Tara’s Triple Excellence relies on your generosity to be able to make retreats and teachings like this available online.

REGISTER NOW

Suggested Online Retreat Schedule

All teaching sessions below will be videos that you can watch on your own time. The Live Q&A Zoom Sessions are listed using Central European Summer Time. Click here to convert to your own timezone.

Saturday, July 3
5.30 pm CEST (Vienna) – Live zoom session with Heidi Koppl will welcome participants and introduce them to the topic of tonglen.

Before July 10 (and from July 3)
Watch these introductory video on your own time:
Lama Tenzin Sangpo: Introductory points on how to practice: Click here.

Day #1 Saturday, July 10
3:30-4:30 pm CEST (Vienna) – Live introductory remarks and Q&A with Lama Tenzin and Heidi Koppl
Daily Practice (video 1) – Introduction to Tonglen and first meditation session (2.1)

Day #2-4 Sunday July 11 to Tuesday July 13
Daily Practice (videos 2-4)
8:00-9:00 pm CEST (Vienna) – Connections: live, facilitated group zoom session
8:00-9:00 pm EST (New York) – Connections: live, facilitated group zoom session

Day #5 Wednesday 14 July
8:00-9:00 pm CEST (Vienna) – Live contemplative reflections session with Heidi Koppl
(Only one session for all time zones)

Day #6-7 Thursday July 15 & Friday July 16
Daily Practice (videos 5 and 6)
8:00-9:00 pm CEST (Vienna) – Connections: live, facilitated group zoom session
8:00-9:00 pm EST (New York) – Connections: live, facilitated group zoom session

Day #8 Saturday July 17
3:30-4:30 pm CEST (Vienna) – Live Q&A with Lama Tenzin and Heidi Koppl, and farewell