Onsite Enrichment Activities
Sessions 1 & 2
July 19 – 26 and July 28 – August 5, 2025
(English only)
Health and Healing
Lujong
Drawing the Awakened Heart
Debate
Space Awareness
Enrichment activities will be offered onsite only due to the interactive nature of these courses.
See schedule here.
LUJONG
Lujong, or body training, is a series of fifteen physical exercises developed by the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche to help us enhance our health and synchronize our body and mind, thereby increasing energy and pliancy. The wakefulness that we develop from these exercises can bring a quality of meditation to ordinary activities throughout the day.
Science of Creativity and the Arts:
Drawing the Awakened Heart
This course is an opportunity to enhance ones practice through the science of the creative arts, another way to connect to the awakened heart of bodhicitta. Beginning and Continuing Thangka Drawing Skills is suitable for anyone with interest, regardless of artistic talent or skills. This studio course will be tailored to the different levels of skill and experience of the participants.
The thangka skills presented will range from learning how to create the iconometric graph (Tib. tikse), which is the basis for all thangka painting, to drawing out a representation of awakening, starting with Shakyamuni Buddha. Once completing the drawings of Shakyamuni Buddha, participants can then begin a refined line drawing, coloured drawing or even a painting. Additionally once the class activities have been completed, participants can move toward drawing bodhisattvas such as Khadiravani (Green) Tara or Manjushri, or continue refining their skills of drawing the Buddha. There is also the opportunity for participants to receive individual attention and guidance. Returning participants can repeat the activities with the class or continue with previous drawings.
Beginning and Continuing Thangka Drawing Skills is an especially nice complement to the Summer Institute’s shedra and gomdra studies as it brings the body into the sphere of the contemplative activity of awakening on many levels. This course incorporates the class contents from both SCA 540 Studio 1 and SCA 550 Studio 2. Click here for details about SCA 540 and SCA 550.
YULIA LINDEROVA
Science of Creativity and the Arts:
Celebrating the Three Prajnas: Our Nitartha Thangka
As part of our 30th Summer Institute celebration, Stephanie Johnston will offer a guided tour of the deep significance of our Nitartha thangka.
At the center of the Nitartha shrine is the “Nitartha Thangka,” also called “The Six Ornaments and the Two Jewels.” It was commissioned by Nitartha’s visionary founder Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. Encapsulating the lineage of the buddhadharma in its various streams and on multiple levels, it depicts what Nitartha embodies and offers. Make a deeper connection to this powerful visual as part of our 30th year and celebrate the continuity of awakening.
Time and date: one talk, time and date to be announced soon.
STEPHANIE JOHNSTON
Developer of Nitartha's Science of
Creativity and the Arts courses
DEBATE
Join Nitartha faculty members in this lively and interactive activity. You will be led through a process of using the ideas presented in your shedra courses to play with them in a clear way by defining, analyzing, examining and exploring their meaning. You will then learn how to reformulate those study topics in the context of debating them. By learning to use the principles of debate, you can gain more certainty in the views that are taught in your shedra courses.
SPACE AWARENESS
Space Awareness is a series of physical and vocal exercises derived from the Mahamudra and Dzogchen traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, as presented in the West by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. These exercises utilize the body as a means of clarifying mental confusion and taming the mind, allowing you to access a greater awareness of outer and inner space. The workshop format of the course enables you to gain an experiential basis from which to investigate Buddhist approaches to concepts such as “space” and “ego” while discovering how they can correct physical and mental imbalances. Class exercises will help you to develop a sense of well-being and an appreciation of yourself and others in the context of a live and ever-changing space.
Click here to read about the connection between Space Awareness and Mahamudra!
Times: 2:00 - 3:00 pm every other day, beginning on Sunday July 9, 2023
FACULTY
MITRA LEE WORLEY
HEALTH AND HEALING FOR MEDITATORS:
DRAWING FROM THE TIBETAN TRADITION
This course is based on teachings from the Tibetan tradition as taught by Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche and the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, as well as from western medicine.
We will begin with the topic of intrinsic health. Then, we will explore our inner abilities of natural balance and awareness. These abilities enable us to skillfully chart a healthy course for ourselves and others. We then continue by exploring the role of dualism in our health, such as hot and cold in our bodies, inflammation and sluggishness. After that, we will explore systems of healing in Tibetan Meditation as examples of the previous principles, such as its division of phenomena into three, four or five aspects, such as earth, water, fire, wind and space.
FACULTY
DR. PHIL WEBER