IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider • Wisdom's Melody •   A Teaching I recently had the opportunity to prepare and practice a talk in a teacher training program. My chosen topic was the role of play in Buddhism, a topic I’ve thrown around in my head for many years. Our reference text was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s commentary on the lojong slogans so I thought this was a good opportunity to explore viewing lojo

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider • Wisdom's Melody •   A Teaching According to this year’s Tibetan lunar cycle, the New Year falls in late February. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche adapted this tradition in the west as Shambhala Day beginning in 1978. For both traditions it is a time of spiritual renewal, celebrating cultural traditions (like the delectable dumplings called momos!) & in the days leading up to the

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider • Wisdom's Melody •   A Teaching Happy 2026! Looking back at 2025: Together we gathered for 26 events this past year - not even counting our weekly Wednesday evening meditations. Our podcast was downloaded 2,215 times, and our blog posts were read 5,989 times. Thank you for showing up, listening, and practicing together. Our sangha spans the globe.  While 26% of us are in Pe

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching When we pause and reflect on our lives, we most likely can recall dozens of friends and loved ones who brought color, joy and surprise to our lives: a kind-hearted cafeteria worker or quirky teenage boyfriend; a rambunctious canine or hilarious roommate; a trusted boss or loving parent. Such memories can bring smiles and tears.     Chances are many of those we

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching The seasons are changing in earnest here in Pennsylvania. We are in the bardo (or “interval”) between summer and winter, complete with golden, red, and brown leaves, carved pumpkins, and Halloween decorations. This shift is a reminder that everything is in motion, constantly changing.  Our regular online meditation group has been reading and contemplating Pema

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Our founders Matt DiRodio and Michael Carroll recently sat down together and edited The Wisdom Seat’s chant boo k which we use in our monthly nyinthuns and other events. Much appreciation for their work and dedication! So for those who participate in our nyinthuns, take note of the new version updated in September 2025. On September 11th our communities exper

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching At the end of the month The Wisdom Seat will be offering Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows. As many of you know these vows are a proclamation to formally claim one's identity as a Buddhist. Why would one want to take this leap?  You might ask yourself  "Who needs to join a religion?" Maybe in your study of buddhism you came across the teaching of "egolessness", so yo

Like all things, The Wisdom Seat is ever-changing, and we are writing today to start a dialogue with you, our community, about how we can best shape our organization to serve our precious sangha in the years ahead. Whether you consider Wisdom Seat your sangha, donate time or funds, come to events, or simply read our newsletter, we consider you to be part of The Wisdom Seat community, and we want to hear your voice. We will be soliciting your opinions and ideas in the weeks to

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching OM GATE GATE PARAGATE PARASAMGATE BODHI SVAHA This is Sanskrit. I didn't know I've been chanting Sanskrit for years, and how important the language was to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Did you know Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche often preferred his students go back to the original Sanskrit instead of using Tibetan terms? "He(CTR) even decided, whenever possible, to choos

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching I've just returned from being in a country where I couldn't speak the language. My wife, our 14-year-old, and I went to South Korea to visit our extended family. We spent two weeks traveling around and met about 15 relatives for the first time: aunts, uncles, grandparents, young cousins...and I couldn't converse with any of them. In Korean, I could only say yes

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching I’ve been thinking a lot about equanimity lately. I can be overwhelmed by the news of the day across the globe, and how people are going through unimaginable suffering, loss and fear. There’s a common misunderstanding that being equanimous means experiencing an absence of big emotions, that to feel peace, we need to detach. Buddhism teaches something different

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Steve McCurry, Tofuku-ji Monastery, Kyoto, Japan, 2005. The Great Gift Richard Driscoll Sometimes as practitioners the Dharma turns up in unexpected places or we may see something in a newer, more Dharmic light. Something like this happened to me with an excerpt from the poem, “All Night, All Night” by Delmore Schwartz which I read long ago in my pre-Buddhist d

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching The irony of the Buddhist path  Michael Carroll The Buddhist path is fraught with countless ironies: to journey, one must sit still; to understand reality, one must stop trying to understand; to “ get a grip ”, one must “ let go ”. And of course, the best of all: to attain enlightenment, one must recognize that doing so is impossible.  Such ironies seem tense w

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Pawo Khandro Ling, 2025 Greetings friends and fellow aspiring practitioners! I hope that you are finding workability in the world as it is presenting itself to you. It’s cliché at this point to say that we are in a time of unprecedented change on many fronts – ecologically, governmentally, and personally. And it seems like the pace of change is occurring at a h

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Steve McCurry, Nova Scotia, Canada, 2005 As I was thinking about what to write for this introduction I thought a lot about numbers, namely how we use numbers to track the passage of time. Time is named by numbers. Sometimes we even name a group of numbers with an actual name - in the case of this writing and according to the Gregorian calendar, the 24-hours are

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Steve McCurry, Red Feather Lakes, USA, 2004 Here we are in 2025 - a new calendar year and the traditional time to make resolutions. Resolutions are defined in the dictionary as “a firm decision to do or not do something.” As you reflect on resolutions you have made over the years, how many times have you held to the resolution? Can you even recall the resolutio

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching S teve McCurry, Kyoto, Japan, 2004 The first time I met with Michael Carroll, with what I thought was a secret yearning to have a dharma teacher in my life, was shortly after my mother had died. I couldn’t get her final, difficult, days out of my head. I told him my heart felt like it had broken, and I couldn’t pull myself together. And he said “that’s ok. We

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Steve McCurr y, New York City, NY, USA, 2005 Welcome to November! This is a tense time in the USA, and I had the good fortune to go to the first Wisdom Seat Retreat in October for 8 days of sitting meditation at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (KTD) monastery in Woodstock, NY. There were about 20 of us practicing together, learning about each other, and enjoying mak

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching S teve McCurry, Burma / Myanmar, 2013 Practicing Dharma in Tibetan When I tell my friends and fellow Dharma practitioners that I do most of my Dharma practice in Tibetan they either look at me with puzzlement or concern - why torture yourself? I will try to answer that question by describing my own experience of learning Tibetan and how it became a source of in

IN THIS NEWSLETTER: •   From The Wisdom Seat •   The Wisdom Seat Events •   Programs To Consider •   A Teaching Passed Hands As Buddhist practitioners we are fortunate to live in an age when the authentic Buddhist teachings have “passed hands” from distant cultures through generous teachers directly into our lives. Buddhism has a storied history of such wisdom transmission from culture to culture, and we are indeed carrying on such a tradition in how we translate, pract