“Sprouting” Seeds of Wisdom

Dear CCR Community,

This May marked one year since the CCR launched Seeds of Wisdom: our monthly giving option that is designed to give back to you. Over the past year, CCR resident teachers Dr. B. Alan Wallace, Dr. Eva Natanya, and Doug Veenhof have offered a number teachings in response to the deep, important questions arising from the experiences of full-time contemplatives-in-training—which we’ve shared for your benefit via the Seeds of Wisdom Library. Today, we’ll look back on a year of contemplative offerings, and share a recent guided meditation from one of our Seeds of Wisdom sessions with all of you.

Read on to learn more about the new teachings that are available in the Seeds of Wisdom Library, or head straight to our YouTube channel to practice along with a recent guided meditation from Dr. Eva Natanya, excerpted from a full lecture on the union of shamatha and vipashyana. If you haven’t already, we hope you’ll consider joining the Seeds of Wisdom Giving Circle to support both the CCR’s work and your own journey toward genuine well-being.

 

 

While the CCR mission is vast, six words capture its essence: Fathom the Mind. Heal the World.®  We envision a future in which more and more people can access contemplative techniques appropriate to them, to train their minds and cultivate unprecedented levels of genuine well-being from within. It’s in this spirit that we created the Seeds of Wisdom Library, available to those who give monthly and by scholarship, ensuring that all who are interested may benefit from access to these wisdom teachings. 

For those with the financial means, we encourage signing up to offer a monthly gift via the Seeds of Wisdom Giving Circle—through which you provide essential funding toward all of the CCR’s programs. We also offer discounted or free access to the Seeds of Wisdom Library. For monastics and those in long-term retreat anywhere in the world, access is complimentary, and for those whose financial circumstances make it difficult to give, we invite you to complete our scholarship application here.

In gratitude for your commitment to the contemplative path toward genuine well-being, we provide you access to the Seeds of Wisdom Library, through which we regularly share new teachings from the CCR’s resident teachers. The Library also houses engaging college-level courses and public lectures given by Dr. Wallace from the 1980s, ’90s, and 2000s. As someone who has listened to nearly all of these offerings in preparing them for the Library, I can attest that there is truly something here for everyone—whether you’re a beginner who is curious about the intersection of modern science and meditation, or a seasoned practitioner looking to deepen your practice and understanding of Buddhist philosophy. The wisdom shared here is truly priceless, and it has been an honor to play a part in sharing these resources with our Seeds of Wisdom community.

Over the past year, CCR resident teachers have shared a total of eleven new teachings via the Seeds of Wisdom Library, covering a wide range of topics especially relevant for those preparing for or already engaged in long-term retreat, including:

• The delicate balance of practicing shamatha and vipashyana, whether early in one’s path of meditation or much later, when approaching the ideal culmination of each practice 
• The paradox of making the timeless commitment of a bodhisattva while still identifying with the utterly time-bound body, ordinary mind that comprises a single human life, and how Jowo Atisha’s method of introducing ultimate bodhicitta before relative bodhicitta has the power to dissolve this paradox
• Dudjom Rinpoche’s Spontaneous Song of the Indwelling: A Prayer Cried Out from Afar (popularly known as Calling the Guru from Afar)—an extraordinary prayer, but also a song of realization in which Dudjom Rinpoche relays his own enlightened view of personal identity, guru, and reality itself 
• Points of convergence between the Vajra Yoga of Kalacakra and the Vajra Essence of Dzogchen, particularly in the preliminary practices of the threefold isolation (Kalacakra) and settling the mind in its natural state (Dzogchen) 

A number of these teachings also have accompanying guided meditations, which can be downloaded for easy access for future practice sessions. As mentioned above, in celebration of this anniversary, we are happy to share with you Dr. Natanya’s most recent guided meditation featured on Seeds of Wisdom. 

While much of this new guidance is geared toward contemplatives-in-training, there is so much more to explore on the Seeds of Wisdom Library. For those interested in the intersection of modern science and contemplative practice, I highly recommend Dr. Wallace’s course, “Science, Religion, and the Problem of Consciousness,” delivered at UC Santa Barbara in 2001. The course dives deep into many perspectives on consciousness—from Western biologists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of mind, as well as contemplatives and philosophers from Buddhist, Christian, and Jewish traditions. Through penetrating lectures and lively Q&A, Dr. Wallace uncovers the strengths and room for growth that Western science brings to the study of consciousness in a unique voice for the time (you can watch a preview of the course here).

It is our great hope that the resources we share via Seeds of Wisdom will nourish you on your path toward genuine well-being. If you’d like to support the CCR’s work while deepening your practice, I invite you to join the many CCR community members who have chosen to become a part of the Seeds of Wisdom Giving Circle today.

Wishing you wellness and happiness, 

 

Griffin Cunningham

Development & Operations Manager