The Mahasukha Kula Retreat Scholarship Program
May 4, 2011 Dear Retreat Advocate,
Thank you for reading Awakening Journal, your resource for retreat. We invite you to support a unique scholarship program – one that promotes the highest of spiritual practices to change our world for the better.
The Mahasukha Kula Retreat Scholarship Program will support students of Tibetan Buddhism who will be undertaking silent meditation retreats of varying lengths – from three weeks to three years, three months and three days.
A large group of Western students under the guidance of Venerable Sumati Marut are currently entering the final phase of one of the most comprehensive and rigorous teacher-training programs in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition – a formal curriculum of 36 courses based on the authentic scriptures used in Tibetan monasteries for centuries. Completing deep retreats will place these students among the most qualified teachers of Tibetan Buddhism in the world.
Scholarships will be awarded to people who can demonstrate a financial need and dedication to helping others. Applicants must show their commitment to serving their spiritual teachers and people from all walks of life. In many cases, they have sacrificed their jobs and personal comfort to study and meditate deeply enough to have the realizations necessary to teach others purely and accurately.
Deep retreat has the potential to produce a person who is incapable of hurting others, even in thought. What kind of an effect could such a person have on the world? We make our greatest impact when we have a pure mind and intention, and the purpose of retreat is to create this type of mind. With the right motivation, the incredible challenge of self-imposed solitude, silence and meditative discipline works as a powerful incubator to transform practitioners into spiritual guides capable of showing others how to satisfy both their immediate needs and their ultimate desire for happiness.
The authors of the 36-course program, Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally, are proof of the power of retreat. Since completing their own three-year Great Retreat in 2003, they have dedicated their lives to teaching others the art of realizing happiness. They founded organizations such as the Diamond Cutter Institute and the Yoga Studies Institute to reach beyond the traditional Buddhist audience worldwide, and established Diamond Mountain – a free educational institution where they offer the teachings they received from a lineage that includes the teacher of the present Dalai Lama.
More than 40 of Lama Marut's advanced students will soon begin their own long-term retreats to prepare themselves to serve others selflessly.
Since every movement of our heart and mind has an effect on our world, our ability to care for others depends on the most subtle and instinctive ways that we think, feel and respond at every moment. By investing in the potential to transform this way of living, we create our own belief in it, and give it even more power. By donating to support these students we are acting right now to do no less than reduce the murder rate, fix the global economy, and end famine and war.
Thank you for considering supporting this genuine effort to cause a radical transformation of the world.
To donate or for more information, please visit www.aci-la.org/retreat-scholarship