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Los Angeles, CA
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Shambhala Art can be seen as a process, a product, and an arts education program.  As a process, it brings wakefulness and awareness to the creative and viewing processes through the integration of contemplation and meditation.  As a product, it is art that wakes people up. Shambhala Art is also an international non-profit arts education program based on the Dharma Art teachings of the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of Shambhala Buddhism, Shambhala International, and Naropa Institute.  Shambhala Art is a division of Shambhala and is presided over by his son and heir, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. This program is taught by trained and authorized Shambhala Art teachers.

Shambhala Art on Shambhala Online

 

Online Open Enrollment Courses

 
 

Shambhala Art Part 1

This program is available to you whether or not you consider yourself an artist or a meditator. The Shambhala Art teachings celebrate art that springs from the meditative mind. They remind us to appreciate the uniqueness of everyday sensory experience, the art of everyday life. Seeing the simplicity and brilliance of “things as they are” provides the ground for genuine creativity, which is the expression of non-aggression. 

In part one of the five-part Shambhala Art curriculum, we develop meditation as the ground for all creative endeavors. Through a sequence of experiential exercise, we glimpse our capacity for spontaneous creative expression that is independent of agenda or forced cleverness. These glimpses provide the initial confidence that we can rest with ourselves and our world. According to the Shambhala Art teachings, resting with ourselves and our world is the ground for the creative process.

Shambhala Art Part 2

Through meditation we come to see things as they are as opposed to how we think or imagine they are. We discover that everything has a felt presence to it as well as a thought sense that we bring to it. What we create and perceive communicates through signs and symbols. Signs communicate primarily information and the thought sense of things. Symbols on the other hand are primarily about non-conceptual direct experience, the presence and the felt sense of things. Seeing the difference between signs and symbols, thought sense and felt sense, as well as how they work together empowers our creative and viewing processes.

Shambhala Art Part 3a

We have trained in meditation, the natural ordering of felt and thought sense, and seeing things as they are. Now we can now begin to work with the elements of the creative process. In this course we'll explore the universal principles of space, form, and energy.