The first annual International Symposia for Contemplative Studies held in Denver April 26th to 29th was the place to be for anyone interested in mindfulness and brain research. 700 of us from all over the world gathered together to explore this cutting edge endeavor of bringing the best of the West and the best of the East together. None of us had any idea as to how big an event this was going to be!

My original inspiration to go was to connect with people who might collaborate with me in researching the effects of the Five Wisdom postures, originally introduced by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, with which I train people in personal and professional development. It soon became clear that brain research would be too expensive and time consuming. However, phenomenological research could be the place to start. We will be going ahead with this at the Five Wisdoms Institute.

As well, I was looking for possible collaborators to launch Wisdoms@Work in the Boulder/Denver area. This happened quite spontaneously on the last day! Stay tuned.

The symposia was hosted by the Mind and Life Institute, now in its 25th year, which was originally instigated by the Dalai Lama. The purpose was to bring together academics and those interested in contemplative approaches and research in the fields of science, philosophy, humanities, education and spiritual practice. These distinct though overlapping fields focused on advancing our understanding of the human mind and how training the mind through the use of contemplative practices can lead to reduced suffering, enhanced health and cognitive/ emotional functioning, greater happiness, and increased social harmony.

It was a rock-out! Many longtime players were there: Jon Kabat-Zinn, Matthieu Ricard, Richard Davis, Arthur Zajonc, Wolf Singer, Roshi Joan Halifax, Sharon Salzberg, Brother David Steindl-Rast, Barbara Fredrickson, Carolyn Jacobs, Diane Chapman Walsh, Evan Thompson and even Congressman Tim Ryan, to name a few. It was also good to see many of my longtime friends and colleagues from Naropa University. In many ways, Naropa has been at the cutting edge of these discussions for almost 35 years. Obviously, the news has spread!

The day started with Richard Freeman leading yoga followed by mindfulness practice led by several luminaries. The rest of the day was packed with countless presentations, poster displays, in-depth discussions over lunch, and networking.

Also well worth mentioning, was the Contemplative Teaching and Learning workshop held the day before the symposia. As longtime faculty at Naropa University, Contemplative Education is close to my heart. People from the Garrison Institute Initiative on Contemplation and Education were there in full force. I had congenial conversations with Richard Brown, a longtime colleague at Naropa, Mark Greenberg and Patricia Jennings who have developed an annual summer retreat called CARE for teachers.

Last but not least was the inspiration to develop training programs in compassion for those working at Vermont hospitals. In conjunction with that, my friend David Zahn has had the inspiration to capture the empathetic understanding that nurses and doctors have about the subjective experience of patients. We will see how that unfolds.

Taking a retreat, however long, is a precious opportunity to look deeper within ourselves by connecting with life transformative practices.

So how do we bring the awareness and intelligence of the retreat back into our life? This is the crucial question.

If we do not contemplate how we make our transition back to everyday life, our retreat will be a mere blip. In some sense, the transition back is the most important aspect of our retreat – it is the bridge between our truest self and our self that armors itself against the onslaught of life.

One way to ensure a good transition is to engage fully in your retreat. Before you arrive think through your purpose for going. You can even sit still for a moment and set an intention for what you would like to learn.

The reason why I say this is each retreat is different – in its practice, teacher, and duration. Being mindful of the details of your retreat will help you explore the mind/body benefits the retreat offers.

For instance, I have spent much time learning, practicing, and teaching Shambhala Buddhism. This tradition begins with mindfulness-awareness meditation. Retreats focusing on this type of practice likely will be simple, with a focus on settling the mind in the present moment.

Other practices, such as yoga or Qigong, involve movement and breath. At the Five Wisdoms Institute, we teach a unique practice of five postures, developed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and sourced in Tantric Buddhism. The postures work directly with our energetic makeup – how we perceive and communicate with the world.

By the end of our retreats, students have learned to use these postures to explore their energy – where it tends to flourish and where it gets stuck. The key benefit of this training is that it provides the opportunity to embrace who we are so we can develop compassion and potential.

Thinking deeply about your retreat and the purpose for going will help you remember the practice you learn, so that you continue engaging it in your daily life.

Once retreat is over, how do we not resume our ‘same old’ life, but return to our life with a difference?

Our reentry is a very delicate matter. Connecting back to loved ones and our workaday world tends to be quite confusing.

We might feel shaky on reentering the world, leaving behind a warm, protected retreat center to meet a less friendly, speedier world. We might want to hold onto a new sense of calm we gained from retreat, making us resistant to the vicissitudes of life.

We might go through a period of groundlessness – who am I, how do I want to be in the world? We might feel discomfort as a result of opening our hearts, making us feel vulnerable, irritated, and cranky. We might become arrogant, feeling superior because of what we have experienced.

Sometimes, the deeper we have gone, the sadder we are upon leaving. The openness we have felt is like having a love affair and leaving is heartbreaking. We might have increased idealism and immediately try to turn insight into action by designing a self-improvement plan.

Having experienced a new depth, it is important to realize we have a choice after our retreat: we can do anything with either a neurotic or a wisdom twist.

Reflect on what feels best.

Let’s look at some more ways to work with the transition.

Don’t make a big deal. In making a big deal of retreat, we actually lose its essence. We feel we ‘got it’ so we want to record it, put it in a box, and label it. We name it and hold on to it as my precious experience.

If we do this, the vividness of the experience will be replaced by concepts. The truth is, even big moments need to be seen as ordinary. Then, they will translate into life and there will be continuity. Try not to talk about your retreat too much; rather, share your experience in simple ways, mostly by just being!

Reenter slowly. Do as little as possible. This will allow you to return with mindfulness and awareness. Take the time to pay more attention to the details of your life. Be ordinary – stay in the moment. In this way, we take care of ourselves and we have continuity between the retreat and everyday life.

Protect your open heart from shutting down. You can remember your intention, or purpose, for going on retreat. You can utilize the practice you learned during retreat to stay open. And you can use anything that triggers you to close down to remind yourself to stay open.

Most importantly, maintain a practice of mindfulness awareness. Sitting meditation, even for ten minutes each day, will create continuity between your retreat and your everyday life. It is foundational. You also can take walks, staying in the moment and paying attention to your sense perceptions. Let go of preoccupations. I like giving people homework, awareness practices, of which there are many, to cultivate in everyday life.

Seek out teachers who incorporate the transition into their retreats. When I lead an intensive retreat, I create a safety net. I make sure my staff and I are available after the program ends. It might happen that someone feels his or her personal intensity only after the retreat is over, so I find it good practice to be able to provide extended support.

In summary, here are some guidelines for the transition:

• Contemplate and reflect on the purpose of your retreat, as well as its practices and benefits
• Recognize the choice that your retreat provides in transforming your life
• Reenter slowly
• Keep your heart open
• Seek teachers who help with your transition

Over time, the vividness of our experience will fade. Then it’s time for another retreat. See you there!

The Five Wisdoms — passion, richness, activity, clarity, and spaciousness — act as a kind of checklist that enhances our ability to create beautiful, useful and imaginative gardens.

Garden design in the Western world has been enriched by successive waves of influence from the east. For more than fifty years, Japanese garden design has had enormous impact on how we see our outdoor spaces. More recently, Chinese Feng Shui has affected garden arrangements and their relationship to the house and their surroundings.

Although one would not think of the snow-swept ridges of the Himalayas as a place to learn about gardens, an extremely useful way of relating to garden design has now come to us from that region.

Known in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition as the Five Buddha Families, and less literally translated as the Five Wisdoms, this practice offers a way of organizing and understanding the complex of aesthetic, cultural and practical issues surrounding any design problem.

The Five Wisdoms are used in Tibetan Buddhism for understanding one’s relationship to life. This practice gives expression to the often hidden energetic qualities that exist in any situation, from one’s own personality to the natural world.

The Five Wisdoms — passion, richness, activity, clarity, and spaciousness – act as a kind of checklist that enhances our ability to create beautiful, useful and imaginative gardens.

PASSION is the desire to have a garden in the first place; one’s love and appreciation of the natural world, and the longing to be part of it. In terms of design, it is the principle that creates a sense of invitation- that magnetizes and engages you- that draws you in.

Passion is the skillful design of views into the garden, gateways, arbors and pathways, and the creation of a sense of mystery and romance that makes you long to be in the garden. It results from the skillful interplay of seduction and reserve. It is a quiet, elegant quality that, at the same time, suggests wildness and abandon. A garden without passion, without a sense of invitation and love, is a sad place indeed.

RICHNESS is satisfaction of that longing; it provides fullness of experience through colour and texture, earthiness, scents and a sense of place. It is the feeling of hospitality that every successful garden needs. Richness is grounded in enjoyment of the present, but also projects a sense of potential – of ripening, blossoming, continuing on. Create richness in your garden with mounded beds, layers of plantings, yellows and golds, and depth and multiplicity of experience that goes beyond one’s ability to take it all in.

ACTIVITY is associated with the effectiveness of the design in terms of practical functions. How well is the garden designed to provide growing conditions for each of the plantings? How easily can the garden be maintained? How appropriate is the layout for access from one place to another in the different seasons? How well are activities such as dining, play, resting accommodated?

How well does the garden accommodate wildlife – the birds, bees, dragonflies, squirrels and chipmunks, spiders and frogs – the apparent and hidden business that occurs in all seasons everywhere, the teaming qualities of the garden.

CLARITY is found in the distinct ordering of the parts – a sense of sharpness in the garden’s organization, perspectives, and lines. Clarity allows for an intellectual understanding of how the different elements balance each other.

Natural landscapes have their own kind of clarity resulting from the forces that created them. In gardens, clarity often is expressed through man-made structures, and through delineation of paths, or the edges of beds. It is reflected in the types of planting, fencing, or repetition of motifs. Express clarity through surface qualities, rather than depth – lines and textures, as well as reflections and directions that define the garden’s shape.

SPACIOUSNESS is the container within which the other principles operate. It is the sense of simple accommodation, peaceful receptivity and contentedness that allows the activity of the garden to take place within a context of openness and essential timelessness.

The physical shape of a garden’s space is an important and often ignored element of garden design. An urban garden is often defined by its fencing as a rectilinear box- finite, and so not spacious at all. The designer’s role is to reshape the space so that it has a sense of the infinite – a sense that it can accommodate whatever needs to be accommodated and still feel open and receptive.

Working with these principles can be an enlightening experience. Each of the Five Wisdoms has its counterpoint – the confused, or inauthentic expression of its particular quality. Just as, in personalities, desire can become neediness, in a garden passion can be expressed as kitsch, schmaltz or cliché; richness as a hopeless jumble; clarity as sterility or obsessive orderliness; activity as function without form; and spaciousness as dull emptiness.

Balancing the qualities with one another, weaving them together in a conscious way, is a powerful antidote to the inauthentic, and the mere examination of a garden design in terms of these qualities provokes awareness of ways in which the inherent wisdoms can authentically be expressed.

Different types of gardens will have more or less emphasis on one or another of the principles, giving each garden its own character. An English country garden may emphasize passion and richness, and an urban courtyard, clarity and activity, but all qualities must be present and alive in a successful design.

The acknowledgement and balancing process that the Five Wisdoms provokes can enrich, clarify, and open up the design process, and help to create a garden that is both passionate and effective.

~

Clive Russell

I was born in England, grew up in western Canada, and always had a love of the arts. I graduated from University in 1967 with a degree in architecture and joined a firm in Montreal, known for urban and regional planning, as well as building design.

Meditation became a daily practice for me in 1979, after attending a talk by Chögyam Trungpa. I appreciated his skill and directness, empirical observation of the mind, and conscious training in helping people live more fulfilling lives.

In the late eighties, I was fortunate to experience Maitri Space Awareness programs, designed by Chögyam Trungpa, which heightened awareness of the qualities of the Five Buddha Families, or Five Wisdoms.

One of the programs was specifically designed for those of us in the arts, and was taught by Irini Rockwell and Helen Berliner. From that time I have been conscious, to a greater or lesser degree, of the interplay of these ‘wisdoms’ in my creative work.

I practiced architecture and planning for about 30 years before discovering garden design. Over the past fifteen years my partner, Sheree Rasmussen, who founded our company, Inside and Out Garden Design, and I have won 17 Awards of Excellence from our trade organization, Landscape Ontario.

We also have an online garden design company, Earth City Landscapes, and a rural base where we have a large organic garden where we are engaged in ecological restoration, as well as landscape and community arts projects.

Using the Five Wisdoms to Build a Sustainable Product

This past August, in Venwoude, the Netherlands, the Five Wisdoms Institute delivered a five-day seminar on sustainability and leadership. The seminar was hosted by Experience Integral, which aligns disciplines, such as the natural sciences, economics, politics and psychology, with the more subjective aspects of individuals and cultures. 

One goal of the seminar was to design sustainable organizations based on three principles: take care of yourself; take care of each other; take care of the environment. Below, Miriam van Groen describes her group’s process.

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Our goal was to develop a sustainable product in a half hour, each team member representing one of the five wisdom energies. My energy was Buddha – an energy I am not familiar with in my daily life. For that reason, I decided to try it out.

Many of us struggled to let go of our ‘product’ ideas. We had difficulty letting our colors shine. A few of us, including myself, were partially ‘rainbowing,’ or taking on multiple colors. I wanted to make sure everyone was included in the design process, which reflects ratna energy (yellow). I also wanted to have something to present on time – something that better than the other groups, which reflects karma energy (green).

In the end, our group made a good pitch, but the process was not smooth. We presented an application that calculates and helps reduce ecological footprints by combining GPS information for travel and product information for purchases. Given the size of the footprint, the app suggests sustainable products and services to fit different lifestyles.

The exercise allowed us to get a glimpse into our energy and how our group dynamics changed under time pressure. The other groups seemed to have more harmonious processes, which showed us what is possible when the energies combine their qualities to reach a common goal.

How to Build an Organization Focused on Sustainability

This past August, in Venwoude, the Netherlands, the Five Wisdoms Institute delivered a five-day seminar on sustainability and leadership. The seminar was hosted by Experience Integral, which aligns disciplines, such as the natural sciences, economics, politics and psychology, with the more subjective aspects of individuals and cultures. 

One goal of the seminar was to design sustainable organizations based on three principles: take care of yourself; take care of each other; take care of the environment. Below, Foreno van der Hulst describes what it was like to use the Five Wisdoms to build a sustainable organization.

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During the Embodying Integral Sustainability seminar we explored and experienced the Five Wisdoms in action. We formed in a team and each team member embodied the qualities of one of the wisdom energies.

Our assignment was to envision a new sustainability project and present it to the wider group. Our project combined clean drinking water with sustainable energy production. We experienced benefits of having all wisdom energies explicitly present.

Many leaders use Vajra energy (holding the vision) and Karma energy (being focused on time and efficiency) together. We noticed that having these two energies separate brought balance to the team. One person could really focus on vision, while the other made sure we stayed productive and on time.

The team member holding Padma energy helped us stay internally engaged and reminded us think about how our project connects with the needs of local communities. Ratna energy helped us invest time and energy on teaching each other about our particular fields of expertise, as well as the local resources of the region and our partners.

Finally, our team had to make sure to engage the person holding Buddha energy. We found this energy could be overlooked easily, but engaging it brought new ideas, insights and perspectives to the project.

Working with the Five Wisdoms was a powerful and effective way to divide team roles and allow all the team members to bring their wisdom to the table. Having all of the energies present allowed us to design a robust project in a short amount of time, in a very fluid way.

Five Wisdoms = Evolutionary Intelligences for Sustainability of the Human Hive

This past August, in Venwoude, the Netherlands, the Five Wisdoms Institute delivered a five-day seminar on sustainability and leadership with Barrett Brown, Co-Director of Integral Sustainability Center, and Marilyn Hamilton, author of ‘Integral City: Evolutionary Intelligences for the Human Hive.’

 The seminar was hosted by Experience Integral, which aligns disciplines, such as the natural sciences, economics, politics and psychology, with the more subjective aspects of individuals and cultures. One goal of the seminar was to design sustainable organizations based on three principles: take care of yourself; take care of each other; take care of the environment.

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Experience Integral invited a powerful group of practitioners to the Embodying Integral Sustainability Conference. Integral City incorporated the Five Wisdoms into the program, providing leaders a new way to work with spiritual practice, energy and collaboration.

The Five Wisdoms were introduced by Irini Rockwell, a student of Chögyam Trungpa. Irini has spent years translating the Five Wisdoms from Buddhist tradition, making this system for cultivating authentic presence accessible to westerners.

What did we learn?

Irini began each day with meditation and a physical practice that helped us open (and stay open) to our potential. Each morning after Anouk Brack, founder of Experience Integral, guided us in an embodiment centering practice, Irini guided us through an embodied sense of spaciousness.

Chögyam Trunga designed postures for each wisdom energy – to help practitioners directly relate with energy. The ‘Buddha posture,’ associated with the color white and feeling of space, invites openness and simplicity. Starting each day with this posture increased our receptiveness and feeling of ‘possibility.’

As we moved into each day, Irini introduced the other four wisdoms. Everyone was invited to notice his or her dominant and sub-dominant energies, as well as any masks he or she might use to adapt to life conditions. Moving from one energy to another, in group exercises, we formed and re-formed in waves that broke into lively exchange as we experienced different energies arising.

We reflected on past patterns, of how we have been manifesting energies. We then contemplated how we might use the Five Wisdoms in our life and work, how we might fully explore who we are.

With this inquiry, we noticed our natural affinities with other participants and our relationship to each of the Five Wisdoms.

On the last day, we moved into our sustainability work with an invitation to notice how the Five Wisdoms inform organizational design as defined by the Integral City master principles: take care of yourself; take care of each other; take care of the environment.

Each leader developed a Sustainability Business Canvas and self-organized into one of three groups, based on the three principles. We brainstormed possible organizations, missions and goals aligned with each principle. We discovered we used the Five Wisdoms in different combinations and sequences to align organizations with each principle (more to follow in future blog postings).

 It was most satisfying to recognize the Five Wisdoms as an evolutionary intelligence and we are deeply appreciative of Irini Rockwell as the ‘Wisdom Leader’ who guided us to awareness, practice and application.