Dathün Creativity and Aspiration

Reflecting on her recent dathün, Jenny Bruce was inspired to create a message. During the retreat, she watched a video featuring Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, titled "Building Enlightened Society."


At the end of the video, Rinpoche said, "This world needs your help very badly."  Jenny says, "Those words came to mind a number of times during my trip back to Buffalo and as I returned to work."


Jenny set to work on creating a poster: "The words remind me to engage wholeheartedly in whatever I am doing." With regards to the poster, Jenny aspires the words inspire others to engage in this world.

Jenny Bruce lives in Buffalo, New York, and works at the food co-op on the corner of her street. She first encountered Shambhala in January 2007. The Buffalo Shambhala Group had two members at the time and has since grown to 15-20 meditators who practice every week. This past fall she began to explore the art of letterpress printmaking.


About Dathün: Dathün, Tibetan for "month session," is a one-month group meditation retreat, and one of the most important training programs in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. The program is open to anyone and is a very powerful introduction to and deepening of mindfulness-awareness meditation (learn more). Karmê Chöling hosts 3-4 full dathüns each year and also offers half-dathüns.

Radiating Our Best Intentions to the World - 100,000 Aspirations at a Time

Today, The Sakyong Foundation, in collaboration with Karmê Chöling, is launching ‘100,000 Aspirations,’ an online community (website and Facebook) to support the Stupa that Conquers All Directions.

Currently being built at Karmê Chöling, at the request of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the stupa embodies wisdom and compassion in the world.

The goal of 100,000 Aspirations is to energize the stupa with the best intentions of 100,000 people and to enable a large community – within and beyond the boundaries of Shambhala – to engage in its construction. (The stupa is architecture that promotes peace – for people of all cultures, religions and backgrounds to enjoy.)

In support of this effort, Acharya Pema Chödron has provided a brief video teaching about the power of aspiration. She has auspiciously offered the first aspiration, followed by other great teachers and members of our community.

We’re counting on you and our Shambhala community to help us create the momentum to magnetize 100,000 aspirants! Offer an aspiration and share this project with your friends and networks. Your aspiration will be placed in the stupa!

Making an aspiration does not require a donation, but we hope that you will choose to deepen your connection with this project by making a financial contribution. You can make a donation at www.100000aspirations.org.

The most important way you can help us reach our goal is to make an aspiration and share the vision of manifesting peace and creating a better world with your family, friends and colleagues!

Building the stupa is the beginning of an expansion project at Karmê Chöling – to reach more people and practitioners with deep meditation programs and trainings.

Please join us by offering an aspiration at: www.100000aspirations.org

Or www.facebook.com/100000aspirations.