Spirituality Matters

MONTECITO JOURNAL28 “To love someone is to strive to accept that person exactly the way he or she is, right here and now.” – Fred Rogers Thai Meditation for Trying Times “Spirituality Matters” highlights two or three Santa Barbara area spiritual gatherings. Unusual themes and events with that something extra, especially newer ones looking for a boost in attendance, receive special attention. For consideration for inclusion in this column, email slibowitz@yahoo.com. A s recently as early March, Courtney Purcell’s Santa Barbara Buddhist Meditation Meetup had a full slate of events on its calendar, with gatherings all over town, from the American Buddhist Meditation Temple on Orchid Drive near More Mesa to the foothills and beaches of Montecito, a leap year forest retreat in the expanse at La Cumbre peak to an annual celebration at the Goleta Valley Community Center.

Then came the coronavirus.

So Purcell – who has been practicing Buddhism for more than 20 years and studying various traditions over that span before settling on the Thai Forest tradition – has had to find a way to adapt, coming up with some new practices – including meditation and interviews with monks – to maintain contact and connection with the community. Meditation sessions are taking place every Tuesday evening over Zoom, while Purcell is doing one-onone Q&As with monks from all over the country via the online platform every Friday evening.

Purcell, who with his wife settled in Santa Barbara in 2017 after both had retired from a career in the Las Vegas school system, talked about his practice, why he was drawn to Buddhism, and how the spiritual practice can be especially helpful during the current COVID-19 crisis.

Q. What is it about the Thai Forest tradition that appeals to you?

A. It’s a very austere approach focused on trying to live a way of life as closely as the Buddha himself is thought to have lived, to really emulate that exact approach. It’s very into an intensive meditation practice, a letting go approach to everything, relinquishing not only material possessions but also any sort of emotional attachments. It requires an extremely strict adherence to rules meant to promote mindfulness as well as a sense of restraint, virtue, and morality. It really spoke to me because it matches my personality. It’s very easy for me to follow rules and be very disciplined, rigid and strict.

How does that fit into daily life?

My wife thought that I might want to be a monk, which she said would fully support. I would love to do that. The Buddha developed a lifestyle that is meant to put one in the position to maximize the benefits of the fruits of the tradition. The monastic path sets that up in the best way, and I’d love to have that opportunity. But I also have a beautiful marriage, a great relationship. So at this point I’m balancing the spiritual life with the worldly one.

Many of your events have been held at the American Buddhist Temple, which I’d never even heard of before I started seeing your Meetup events, even though it’s been here for 24 years. How did you get connected?

The vast majority of these Thai temples around the U.S. are insulated, with only Thai and Lao people attending. They’re funded nearly 100 percent by that community and geared to those cultures. When I came here I had an existing practice, but wanted to learn more about theirs, which is very similar. I quickly realized I was the only American that ever went there. Over time I became the Englishspeaking liaison, and we started inviting others into the community. Now I’m actively involved as an unofficial secretary to the head monk, generating content in English and facilitating all the mediation programs.

What’s happening over there now with the shelter in place situation?

They are live streaming, at first only to their community but it’s accessible to anyone. I’ve been encouraging him to post other content and recently he did a mini walk around the avocado grove near the temple on Facebook Live, a mini retreat walking meditation underneath the trees to show people that you don’t have to come to the temple to practice. You can go out to your background or find a park and sit underneath a tree and meditate (just as the Buddha did). You can practice any place, anytime, anywhere.

What is the purpose of the Meetup group, to draw visitors to the temple, or other events?

I am trying to provide a way to continue to be part of the ABMT community and help develop their program while also offering something from the Thai Forest tradition. In trying to be creative, I came up with all those Courtney Purcell at his master’s temple in Las Vegas last year during his temporary ordination period Courtney Purcell and Ajahn Khamjan (ABMT head monk) at the temple in 2017 Pam Anderson Skin Care

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events, just dabbling to see if people would respond and enjoy them. I just want to expose people to the practice. One of the things that Buddha taught us is to develop mindfulness in every activity. It’s great to be in retreat at the monastery spending a whole or half day practicing. But we also need to develop these skills in everything we do. So hiking a mountain in Montecito or walking on Butterfly Beach is an opportunity to engage people, share how we can practice mindfulness in that moment.

Now of course, the gatherings are online.

Tuesday is the virtual version of what I was doing at an Ayurveda center in Ventura, which has been the most flourishing community, standing room only since the first event, so I’m just keeping that going. As I’ve seen people get incredibly creative in generating content online, I came up with the idea of doing a series of interviews with Buddhist monks. I’ve traveled enough to know many who I thought would be interested in talking with me and doing live Q&As. We started last Friday with the abbot of a Thai temple in Tucson, and this Friday (April 10), it’s an American man who lived for decades as a zen practitioner in Japan before finding his way to the Thai tradition and monastic path. So he’s still in training. I imagine we’ll bring out some wonderful things from his history.

Next week (April 17), I’ll talk with the abbot of a Vietnamese zen monastery in Baton Rouge, where I’ve done retreats, because the world should hear more about his approach, not only in practicing Buddhism but also the monastic life, which is very reminiscent of Thich Nhat Hanh’s tradition. On April 24, I’ll interview Ajahn Khamjan Khrueasui, the head monk at ABMT. Then on May 1, I’ll talk with a monk who is living at a monastery in Florida, which will be my first opportunity to interview someone from my Thai Forest tradition. I plan to continue for at least the next six weeks, or longer if we’re still isolating.

Before we go, can you offer your own idea of the Buddhist perspective on what’s happening with the virus?

The Buddha ultimately teaches us that we should work to let go of absolutely everything, not only pleasant things. It’s not that we have aversion to what’s happening, but we accept it as what it is. We let go by recognizing our lack of control, relinquishing our need to control. With this situation, it behooves us to listen to the most reliable information about how we can take care of ourselves and help the community, and make good choices, but also recognize that the situation will play out as it will.

The Buddha taught us in his famous

four noble truths – the first one is that there’s suffering in the world, which we are seeing very directly now. The second one is that the problem is in our minds, in our attachment to the outcome and what happens when we fail to recognize where we have no control and become frustrated. So (the virus) is a phenomenal opportunity for us to get to know the nature of what it means to be stressed out, anxious, worried, and panicky and how to approach these experiences not with a sense of dread or aversion but instead seeing it as an opportunity to see our own reactivity and our relationship to the world. I have been using this time to amp up my own practice even more. For me it’s been a sublime period of intensive practice, with all kinds of opportunities to be with my fear and worry. One minute my mind is upset and anxious and the next minute it’s calm and peaceful. It’s a chance to look at why that is happening.

(Visit www.meetup.com/SantaBarbara-Buddhist-Meditation, www. facebook.com/abmtofsbca and www. facebook.com/khamjankhrueasui to access events.)

More Streaming Buddhism: BodhiPath Beckons

Resident teacher Dawa Tarchin Phillips launches a new three-week course over Zoom on Thursday evenings, offering “What the Buddha Taught” as a way to explore your own life’s journey in light of the Buddha’s wisdom from the perspectives of personal maturation, liberation, awakening and service. The 7-9 pm sessions April 9-23, accessed via Zoom at https://zoom.us/j/746572464, include periods of meditation as well as lecture. No admission charge but donations appreciated. Zoom over to BodhiPath’s other activities – Tuesday Meditations 6-7 pm, Book Club and Writing Group at https:// zoom.us/j/582915912. Meanwhile, Phillips’ annual Spring Retreat, slated for April 27-May 1 with the theme “Finding Inner Peace, Genuine Happiness & Lasting Freedom,” will also be streamed over Zoom. For information and registration, visit https://2020springretreat.eventbrite. com.

Virtual Meditating with Mahakankala

The downtown Santa Barbara center has finally also migrated over to online offerings, with resident teacher Kadam Keli Vaughan teaching and guiding meditations via Zoom several times each week. Featured are “Search for the Self: Buddhist Meditations on Emptiness” from 6-7 pm on Wednesdays, “Learning to

• The Voice of the Village • MONTECITO JOURNAL 29 ©2019 Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties is a member of the franchise system of BHH Affiliates LLC Montecito | Hope Ranch | Santa Barbara | Goleta Your Montecito and Santa Barbara Real Estate Agent DRE 02024147 RDouglas@bhhscal.com | 805.318.0900 RachaelDouglas.com Love” from 6:30-7:30 on Thursdays, and “Meditation for World Peace & Healing” from 10:30-11:45 each Sunday. Mahakankala has also moved its Heart Jewel Prayers and Foundation Program over to Zoom. Visit https://meditationinsantabarba ra.org. Access to Alexis in our Anxious Times

Santa Barbara native Alexis Slutzky has spent decades as a wilderness guide, mentor, MFT, reclamation practitioner, and council trainer who also specializes in indigenous wisdom traditions, rites of passage, depth psychology, ritual and ceremony and community exploration. Her grief work – which has brought people from both far and wide to retreats at Arroyo Hondo Preserve and elsewhere to spend time in nature and ritual to find inner healing – has become even a bigger salve for the community ever since the Thomas Fire and Montecito debris flows.

Not that she was any more emotionally prepared for the power of the pandemic than others, but she’s using what she refers to as a time of transition to take even deeper dives into what serve as salves. “Given how many of us may be experiencing fear, outrage, grief, anxiety, this time calls us to utilize and engage all the tools we have for presence, collective care, equanimity, creativity, self regulation, connection, and the capacity to show up in relationship,” she wrote in an email.

Now, of course, Slutzky has migrated her practices online in the era of COVID-19, offering several weekly events, including Meditation: Being with Grief and Uncertainty through the Mindful Heart Programs from 9-10 am on Fridays, Awakening Earth Community Council: Forum for Being Human in times of Cultural and Ecological Initiation on Wednesdays from 4:30-6 pm, and Women at the Well, held every other Monday from 6:30-8:30 pm. The latter two offerings are though Slutzky’s own Wild Belonging umbrella.

The community council represents as an extension of the Awakening Earth Series held at Yoga Soup, and serves as a place to come together by a virtual fire to unite in a shared context of love for the world and common care for people and planet, and to build connection and courage for bringing forth what is most alive in response to a world in need of creativity and love. All are welcome to offer and receive presence and listening and explore our basic humanity in these times. The theme will vary each session through a format that starts with a short meditation, an exploration of the theme and then sharing one-by-one in simple practices to listen to ourselves and each other.

Women at the Well is an online forum for women-identified people to drop in, connect and remember the ways of communion, deepening and awakening. “It’s an experiment in this time of virtual connection, to see how we can support one another in growing our capacity to show up with open fierce hearts to stand for the life of our children and earth in whatever ways we are called in this time of transformation, healing and change,” Slutzky wrote.

Admission to all of the above events is free, although a voluntary donation for those who aren’t financially challenged themselves is more than welcome. Meanwhile, the Awakening Earth Series continues on Yoga Soup’s virtual platform with a two-hour workshop from 3-5 pm on April 27 with “Belonging & Collective Care” ($20). Visit www.wildbelonging.com.

Slutzky will also be participating in events the next two Sundays through Insight LA Meditation Center, including Being with Grief with husbandand-wife Dr. Radhule Weininger and Dr. Michael Kearney, also of Santa Barbara (April 12) and Tending Our Grief with Weininger (April 19), both 2-5 pm featuring sliding scale admission of $10-$35. Visit https://insightla.org. Plus, she’s started to post videos and writings to her Facebook page (www.facebook.com/alexis.slutzky) to address the current climate during the coronavirus crisis. Pacifica Moves Platforms During Pandemic

Pacifica Graduate Institute has amped up its availability of offering immersion in depth psychology to prospective students over the last several years, marketing its programs, information sessions, and campus visits all around town and beyond. Now as the coronavirus turns its Carpinteria campuses into deserted spaces, Pacifica has created a series of virtual events designed to provide a rigorous intellectual experience that connects with the soul to transform how you see the world. The intent is to demonstrate how its degree programs offer a soul-centered “intelligence” integral to what is being asked of all of us in this increasingly complex world.

The schedule starts this Saturday, April 11, at 3 pm, with Oksana Yakushko, Ph.D., the Professor and Chair of the M.A./Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology with Emphasis in Depth Psychology exploring how the program might serve in becoming a depth psychologist who aspires to become an astute relational clinician, a critical human science scholar and an engaged citizen-activist. Wednesday, April 15, at 3 pm brings “The Archetypal Artist and Creativity in the 21st Century: A Guide to Pacifica’s M.A. Engaged Humanities,” in which a conversation between Mary A. Wood, Ph.D., and Susan Rowland, Ph.D., Co-Chairs and Professors in the program, explore what it means to be creative in a time that calls for resilience, enormous adaptability, the capacity to innovate and to reinvent the self as well as vocation. This conversation introduces this unique opportunity and outlines its special relevance to times of crisis as well as a way of rebirth and renewal of learning as well as the soul.

The periodic and popular Pacifica Experience goes virtual next, with a live online introduction to Pacifica’s various degree programs designed to give prospective graduate students a comprehensive introduction and orientation to the distinctive educational features of the school. Despite the virtual visit, prospective students will still be able to hear from Pacifica alumni about their experience and what they are doing with their degrees, learn more about admissions procedures and financial aid, attend breakout sessions in specific programs of study and engage in ongoing dialogue and community exchange throughout the day with faculty. Call (805) 879-7305 or visit www.pacifica.edu. •MJ