NWDA News

From the Executive Director:
Join the Fun of Creating Community Through NWDA

Practicing traditional Japanese drumming at the November “Celebrating the Sangha” event, in Seattle.

Ananda said to the Buddha, “This is half of the holy life: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.” The Buddha replied, “Don’t say that, Ananda. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When one has admirable people as friends, companions, and comrades, they can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path.” This has been a rewarding autumn for us at Northwest Dharma Association. The Buddhist Recovery Summit in Lacey, Washington, was a reunion of old friends and new friends, practitioners, teachers and clinicians in the thriving Buddhist Recovery movement. Freeing…

Dharma in Canada

Forthcoming Trans Buddhist Anthology Shows
Trans Identity and Healing in and out of Sanghas

Kevin Manders and Elizabeth Marston, relaxing in November, 2017 in backyard of The Beehive--the collective house where Marston lives in East Vancouver, British Columbia.

For the past two years the two of us — Kevin Manders and Elizabeth Marston — have been working on an anthology of essays by trans, genderqueer, and non-binary Buddhists, relating their experiences of gender to the dharma. We met in Vancouver, B.C. (the un-ceded territory of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations people) – in an anarcho-Buddhist sangha a few years ago, and we’ve been working on the anthology since literally the first day. It seemed like such an obvious need. We’d both experienced a double-layer-cake of isolation: both as Buddhists who happened to be trans, and as…

Compassionate Action

Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Portland
Takes Action, Based on Buddhist Compassion

On June 4, 2017, when the alt-right group “Patriot Prayer” staged a rally in Portland, several thousand anti-fascist groups came out to meet them. BPFP held a sit/stand/walking meditation near the point of confrontation.

Buddhist Peace Fellowship of Portland (BPFP) is a vehicle for Buddhist activists to take practice off the cushion and into the streets, in the name of justice. That can mean sitting in silence during potentially violent confrontations. It can mean blockading traffic along with activists from Black Lives Matter and Don’t Shoot Portland. It can mean a die-in, a vigil for a black child murdered by police, or picketing outside a fund-raiser for the Portland Police Department. The original 40-year-old Buddhist Peace Fellowship has chapters across the United States, and the Portland chapter is a vigorous one. Portland members step…

Dharma Arts

Nalanda West Brings Tibetan Thangka Painting Master, to Teach and Create in Seattle

Tibetan thangka painter R.D. Salga is known for his precise hand work, and for his adherence to the rigorous forms of the sacred art form.

Renowned Tibetan painter R.D. Salga has arrived to teach people the ancient tradition of creating Tibetan deities on cloth, called thangka painting, at Nalanda West in Seattle. Nalanda, named after the former paramount Buddhist monastic university of ancient India, is bringing this similarly ancient thangka painting tradition to the Pacific Northwest. In October Nalanda West and Salga opened his studios to the public, an opportunity for people to meet the artist and to see some of his work. It was here in his new studio, in a small house behind Nalanda West, that I met Salga. His diminutive stature and…

Dharma Education

Cultivating Mindfulness for High School Kids
Can Start With Just Putting Down the Phone

Students doing an activity in noticing emotions when having to work with others.

Seattle public schools Roosevelt High School and Ballard High School are implementing a year-long high school mindfulness curriculum, making them pioneers in this arena. The staff at Roosevelt was particularly interested in implementing a well-being curriculum after two students died by suicide. The pattern to which staff is responding, of students feeling increasingly inclined to depression and anxiety, and reporting increasing stress, has been growing at schools across the United States. In October the New York Times reported on rapidly increasing stress among young students, citing an American College Health Association study that concluded that 62 percent of 2016 college…

Prison Dharma

A Wealth of Prison Dharma Activities
Buoy Inmates at Monroe Correctional Complex

In April, His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche visited inmates at the Twin Rivers Unit (TRU).

During 2017 Buddhist practitioners from around the Western Washington served the needs of prison inmates in expanding ways. These efforts touched people in many prisons across Washington state. Highlights included gathering dharma books for prison libraries, bringing distinguished Buddhist teachers to prisons, including one who did prison time himself, and making possible annual Buddhafest events at several prisons. Volunteers offering these many forms of dharma transcended boundaries of lineage and tradition. For instance at the Monroe Correctional Complex, 30 miles northeast of Seattle, volunteers have come from Chagdud Gonpa Amrita, the Chenrezig Project, Dai Bai Zan Cho Bo Zen Ji,…

Sangha News

Dza Kilung Rinpoche Sangha Building Temple

Construction crews raising the primary timbers, during the fall of 2017.

A Tibetan Buddhist temple is rising in Washington state to provide the Western seat for Dza Kilung Rinpoche, an important lama in Tibetan Buddhist tradition. His organization is called Pema Kilaya. The new temple, which will incorporate many traditional Tibetan design elements, is being built near the town of Clinton on Whidbey Island, northwest of Seattle. We hope to complete the facility in 2019. Dza Kilung Rinpoche, a lineage holder of the Longchen Nyingtik tradition of the Nyingma school, has for many years taught students from modular buildings on the property. The new temple project was made possible by one…