Podcast appearances and mentions of Anne C Klein

In this insightful episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken engages with Justin Kelley, Executive Director of Tergar Institute and Tergar Schools. Justin has practiced with Mingyur Rinpoche for nearly 20 years and earned his PhD in Religious Studies from Rice University, where he studied with Dr. Anne C. Klein. Passionate about making Buddhist wisdom […] The post Justin Kelley: Beyond Scholarship: The Meeting of Dharma and Education (#203) appeared first on The Wisdom Experience.

Do not try to savethe whole worldor do anything grandiose.Instead, createa clearingin the dense forestof your lifeand wait therepatiently,until the songthat is your lifefalls into your own cupped handsand you recognize and greet it.Only then will you knowhow to give yourself to this worldso worthy of rescue.- Martha Postlethwaite, “The Clearing”Journalling was my first formal practice. At the age of seven, I opened a spiral notebook with a sunflower painted on the cover (I adored that notebook) and thereafter wrote into the headwinds of my growing years with inexplicable regularity. I smudged the creases along the pinkie line of my left hand through dozens of notebooks. Many of my most formative experiences spilled out over the page, and those that didn't felt passed by like landscapes framed through the window of a moving train.In retrospect, I see how writing was a kind of communion for me — a small clearing in the thicket of daily life where I could tend to my heart in private while cultivating the beginnings of the spiritual practice of paying attention. It taught me about ritual and rhythm, and also about vulnerability and meeting our creative edges with fortitude.My writing practice went dormant at the threshold of adulthood. At the time, if you'd asked, I would have pointed to a kind of transmigration from the written word to yoga and meditation as primary vehicles for inner inquiry. I still believe to every practice there is a season, but over the years I've also questioned if, subconsciously, I put my pencil down to distance myself from the unabashed loops and sweeps of my puerile penmanship.Elif Batuman recently published an essay entitled “I'm Done Worrying About Self-Plagiarism” in which she explores the concept of diachronic writing (as in, writing wherein the growth that is intrinsic to the process is actually reflected in the form rather than edited out): “what if we don't try to erase, from a given text, the fact that a writer was changed by/during the act of writing?” By understanding former iterations of our practice, our work, ourselves, as layers over time, we can recognize the presence of a trajectory, an evolution — and we can also study how those layers relate to each other (hello Internal Family Systems). Which is all to say: where are all your journals tucked away?Michelangelo was once asked how he would carve an elephant: “I would take a large piece of stone and take away everything that was not the elephant.” Perhaps this is the work of any practice (or sadhana, from the Sanskrit root meaning “to sit with truth”). We stay with our subject. We commit our attention and learn the craft of our practice — and, in time, a natural chiseling away of what isn't essential begins to occur as well as the emergence of what is.[For your consideration: Michelangelo began apprenticing at the age of 13. He carved David out of a piece of discarded marble. He was known to work tirelessly, often for 18 hours a day. He also said “faith in oneself is the best and safest course.” These details seem not insignificant.]Keeping company with a large stone is daunting, no doubt. Barack Obama said “nothing is more terrifying than the blank page” (likely a hyperbolic statement given his access to the nuclear codes, but nevertheless…). If we are choosing to expand as humans, our return to any creative edge will almost certainly stir the classical hindrances of insecurity, self-criticism, and doubt. I am not Michelangelo, we may state the obvious. What if I can't find my elephant?We are not the only ones. Here's Errol Morris, a 58-year-old giant of contemporary documentary filmmaking, as recently quoted by David Marchese in the New York Times:“I think my whole life has been dominated by feeling like I'm a fraud of some kind… How is my work different than painting by numbers? Is it that different? Thinking you're a fraud may be similar to thinking that you don't know what you're doing. I don't know, really, what I'm doing.”Working with self-doubt demands sincere courage. First, we have to grow very tired of avoidance as an alternative. We have to remember that the source of our perceived inadequacy is not our ostensible failures, nor is the solution in striving for perfection. Fear doesn't necessarily dissolve with time, but it can be recast. It can sharpen our sense of focus as we lean into and develop trust in our practice over time.Anne C. Klein, a professor and lama in the Nyingma tradition, frames the invitation like this: “To recognize all practices and experiences as backlit by the sun of their own great completeness is to find a horizon that never narrows.”I found myself not long ago unpacking a box of old journals on the floor of a new house. Holding them in my hands again, I was reminded of the significance of my earliest practice — the dignified instinct to create a clearing in the dense forest of my growing years. Blushing and messy as they were, and are, those entries contain small moments of coherence, of song, of light.The Guest House is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Guest House at shawnparell.substack.com/subscribe

This episode of the Wisdom Podcast was recorded live as a Wisdom Dharma Chat with special guest, Anne C. Klein. Anne is a professor and former chair of the religion department at Rice University. She is also a lama in the Nyingma tradition and a founding director and resident teacher of Dawn Mountain, a center for contemplative study and practice […] The post Anne C. Klein: Being Human and a Buddha Too (#174) appeared first on The Wisdom Experience.

When Anne C. Klein (Rigzin Drolma) first read that everyone, including her, was already a buddha, she was so shocked that she put down the book she was reading. Now, as a professor of religious studies at Rice University and a teacher at Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism in Houston, she continues to grapple with the relationship between our buddhahood and our humanity. In her new book, "Being Human and a Buddha Too: Longchenpa's Sevenfold Mind Training for a Sunlit Sky," she takes up the question of what it actually means for each of us to be a buddha, as well as what happens to our humanity when we seek awakening. In this episode of Tricycle Talks, Tricycle's editor-in-chief, James Shaheen, sits down with Klein to discuss how she has come to understand buddhahood, the difference between wholeness and perfection, and why she believes that we are all backlit by completeness.

Hear more from Anne C. Klein on cultivating compassion and kindess.

Both Anne C. Klein/ Lama Rigzin Drolma and Harvey Aronson/ Lama Namgyal Dorje teach in this episode. Given close to the December holidays, Harvey celebrates by giving a Buddhist perspective on the Christian "Sermon on the Mount" and Anne follows up with a complimentary quote by Jigme Lingpa

This is a very special episode featuring Anne C. Klein, PhD, aka Lama Rigzin Drolma; Professor of Religious Studies at Rice University, Buddhist Studies scholar and Tibetan translator, author, and Tibetan Buddhist teacher. It was such an honor to discuss Dr. Klein’s groundbreaking book, Heart Essence of the Vast Expanse Foundational Practices and the Transmission of the Longchen Nyingthig. We speak frankly and deeply about Nundro; its practice and relevance for Western Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Dr. Klein also generously shares her rich history of engagement with Buddhist academia and her long-standing relationship with Tibetan Buddhism as a practitioner and guiding teacher of Dawn Mountain Tibetan Temple and Institute. May this episode be dedicated to the welfare and benefit of all beings everywhere.Anne Carolyn Klein is Professor and a former Chair of the Department of Religion, Rice University, where she helped developed a contemplative studies concentration for graduate students. Co-founder of the Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism. She is a Lama in the Nyingma (ancient) Buddhist tradition. 

Lama Tenzin Samphel gives a lesson in his native Tibetan language about teaching, dharma itself, practice, and why it's important. Lama Rigzin Drolma/ Anne C. Klein translates into English.

In this special episode of the Wisdom Podcast—recorded live as a Wisdom Dharma Chat—host Daniel Aitken speaks with Anne C. Klein (Lama Rigzin Drolma), professor of religion at Rice University and a founding director and resident teacher of Dawn Mountain, a center for contemplative study and practice in Houston. Anne brings us into the world […] The post Anne C. Klein: Finding Wholeness in the Dzogchen Path (#104) appeared first on The Wisdom Experience.

Every living being is naturally luminous, and yet that luminosity is obscured by a dim unknowing. Anne C. Klein/ Lama Rigzin Drolma shares the power of good intention to optimize the process of un-obscuring our luminosity, and Shantideva's three offerings to sustain those good intentions.

This guided meditation led by Anne C. Klein, was one of the opening meditations of our 2019 Yeshe Tsogyal retreat. Focused on guiding your awareness through the body, this meditation also gently touches on the presence of the dakini, a taste of the greater visualizations that followed throughout the retreat. 

Episode 12: The stillness of the mind is like a vast quiet ocean, movement is like the waves. Anne C. Klein will guide you to settle into mental clarity in this guided meditation. 

Harvey is a psychotherapist and a teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, who received the title of Lama, Vajra Master from his teacher in 2010 and in a teaching context is known as Lama Namgyal Dorje. Dr. Aronson's academic and spiritual path places him in an informed position to speak about the intersection of the both Buddhism and psychology; so much so that his book, Buddhist Practice On Western Ground, does just that. His treatment of culture, in general, and the differences between Tibetan and “Western” culture is an enlightening endeavor for any reader of his work, as it calls the reader to interrogate the patterns of their culture. Any participant of therapy will often hear their therapist urge them to “feel their feelings” with the implication that they have been “cut off” from their ability to be informed and signaled by one means the psyche communicates – through the body and with the feelings. He states that much of what the psychotherapist is working to do is to invite the individual to feel and experience what they were denied the validity of experiencing through their development. Harvey roots his exploration of the differences between Buddhism and Western psychology within a transformation that occurred in his life while teaching as a professor of Buddhist studies. As a young professor, Dr. Aronson learned that he would not get tenure and then began to experience a series of panic attacks, which sent him seeking a therapist. This process brought to the foreground the differences between the two and also sent him down the path of psychotherapeutic practice. Another core aspect of Harvey's work is developmental theory as it relates to the Western practices of child-rearing and the implications that the cultural approach to parenting may appears to contribute and inform both how Westerners begin to understand themselves and also express their feelings and also how therapy treats the potential injuries that occur as a consequence – noting that, no matter the culture in which we develop, there will usually be some kind of wound as a result. Harvey states that many of the wounds that we endure through life are relational in nature and therefore the relational aspect of psychotherapy may meet the wound on the ground of its origin. Bio: Harvey B. Aronson, holds a BA in Chemistry from Brooklyn College, an MSW from Boston University, and a PhD in Buddhist Studies from the University of Wisconsin. He has studied extensively with prominent teachers in the Geluk, Dzogchen and Theravada traditions in India, Nepal and the United States. Harvey is the author of Buddhist Practice on Western Ground and Love and Sympathy in Theravada Buddhism, and a recognized scholar of the intersections between traditional Buddhist practice and Western therapeutic modalities. Harvey, and his wife Anne C. Klein, both hold PhDs in Buddhist Studies with a long, shared history of learning from the highest lamas of Tibetan traditions, and they founded Dawn Mountain in 1996. As practitioners, scholars, translators and gifted teachers, they serve Western seekers of all stripes and have fostered a strong community of advanced students that reaches from Houston to Portland, Oregon; Berkeley, California; Bloomington, Indiana; Ithaca, New York; Copenhagen, Denmark and beyond Harvey and Anne have been practicing and studying together in Asia and the west since 1970. They received the title of Lama, Vajra Master from their teacher in 2010 and in teaching context are known respectively as Lama Rigzin Drolma and Lama Namgyal Dorje. www.dawnmountain.org Learn more about this project at: www.thesacredspeaks.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesacredspeaks/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesacredspeaks Theme music provided by: www.modernnationsmusic.com Song of the week: New Age, by Cut Throat Finches www.cutthroatfinches.com

International Women's Day Observation The Monument Quilt display on Chapel grounds, 10am-8pm Twilight Meditation inside Chapel, 6-7pm The theme for International Women’s Day in 2018 was “Press for Progress” – the worldwide campaign calls for changing stereotypes, promoting positive visibility of women and celebrating the achievements of women. Responding to this theme and the #MeToo movement, the Chapel hosted a small display of The Monument Quilt, a quilted collection of stories from survivors of rape and abuse. The Monument Quilt is organized by FORCE, a Baltimore-based activist collective dedicated to upsetting rape culture. In the evening we hosted a Twilight Meditation facilitated by Claire Villareal from Dawn Mountain Center for Tibetan Buddhism, along with Shanti Flagg, FORCE's Studio Director, sharing quilting stories from the many woman all over the U.S. who are survivors of sexual and domestic abuse. Join as we unite in advocacy and support of women around the world. Shanti Flagg was onsite before and after the meditation to answer questions about FORCE and The Monument Quilt project and to guide visitors in contributing a message to be added to the project. About the presenters: FORCE: Upsetting Rape Culture is a creative activist collaboration to upset the culture of rape and promote a culture of consent. FORCE designs communications campaigns to generate media attention and get millions of people talking. The organization gained national attention for their viral panty prank, where they pretended to be Victoria’s Secret promoting consent themed slogans on underwear. Today, FORCE is most widely known for The Monument Quilt, a quilted collection of stories from survivors of rape and abuse. Learn more at upsettingrapeculture.com Shanti Flagg is an artist and has been a collective member at FORCE for 3 years. She directs the operations of their studio headquarters in Baltimore. The project Shanti primarily works on is the Monument Quilt. She coordinates volunteers in the studio to create the quilts, and she works with the Monument Quilt Leadership Team to plan the culminating display of the Quilt on the National Mall. The Monument Quilt creates public healing space for survivors of rape and abuse. Claire Villarreal PhD, a native of Fort Worth, TX, has been practicing and studying Buddhism since 1997. She completed her undergraduate studies, including two years of Tibetan language study with Dawn Mountain co-founder Anne C. Klein, with a bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies at Rice University in 1999. Next she traveled to Thailand, where she trained with Theravada Buddhist monastics, and she has spent time in India and Nepal practicing and studying Tibetan Buddhism. Returning to Texas, Claire has taught mindfulness in a variety of settings in Fort Worth and Houston since 2004. She defended her dissertation, on the interface between contemplative practice and philosophical developments in Tibet, at Rice with Anne as advisor in spring of 2015. She administers Dawn Mountain’s programs, teaches meditation, and practices kung fu.

Episode 1: Join us for the first meditation of our new series!  Anne C. Klein/Lama Rigzin Drolma begins this practice by guiding us to settle the mind in the body and breath, then connect with a moment of deep love.  We then imagine magnifying that love, feeling it reflected to us by a figure (perhaps […]

Episode 2: In the first teaching of the series, Anne C. Klein/Lama Rigzin Drolma introduces the central theme of our true buddha-nature being covered by our habit patterns.  Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths explain how we cover our deepest, already-wonderful nature with constricted senses of self.

Episode 1: This new series kicks off with an introduction to the series and a meditation led by Anne C. Klein/Lama Rigzin Drolma.  We rest in the deep belly (dan t’ien in Chinese) and relax into the clarity of our own mind, experienced as an orb of light containing the sound OM. 

Episode 3: Anne C. Klein/Lama Rigzin Drolma leads a practice on Amitabha, the buddha of infinite light.  For teachings on Amitabha, see our previous podcast episode.  To download the text to chant along with this episode, see https://dawnmountain.org/prayers/.

Episode 2: In this episode, taken from a teaching from our Enlightened Heart Teaching Tuesday series, Anne C. Klein/Lama Rigzin Drolma explains that Amitabha (the focus of Pure Land Buddhist traditions of East Asia) also plays a significant role for many Tibetan Buddhists.  We can understand Amitabha as a person, a force, even an aspect […]