Calm Abiding and Insight Meditation on the Five Elements

A Hybrid Weekend Teaching by Lama Lodru Rinpoche

Saturday, April 15 and Sunday, April 16  (10 am – noon & 2:00 – 4:00 pm each day) 

$120 ($75 low income) for the weekend

Calm Abiding Meditation provides training to quiet our inner agitation, allowing us to experience a stable state of tranquility. On that basis, Insight meditation trains us to look at the nature of the mind from which thoughts, emotions and sensations arise.

The Five Elements meditations were introduced in the West by the First Kalu Rinpoche. Five Elements Calm Abiding utilizes symbolic representations of the elements (earth, water, fire, air and space) as the basis of a sequential meditation.  Not only is this an effective way to calm the mind during everyday life, it also lays down a pathway for one to follow at the end of life, as the elements of the body sequentially dissolve.

Five Elements Insight utilizes these same symbolic representations, but in a subtly different way. Beyond the symbols being a focus for the mind, we can train in seeing that the one performing the meditation, that which visualizes the symbols, and the symbols themselves – are all the mind. This may deepen one’s experience of emptiness – the nature of mind.

Lama Lodru Rinpoche leads and teaches at KDK Center in San Francisco. He has taught the Shangpa and Karma Kagyu lineage teachings since 1978, and has nine satellite centers, of which KSC Ashland is one. Lama Lodru guided three cloistered three-year retreats, and was the founding Spiritual Director of KSC Ashland.