NOVEMBER 2026 NEWSLETTER
IN THIS NEWSLETTER:
One of my favorite dharma activities (besides, of course, being on the board of The Wisdom Seat) is being part of the planning team for the Three-Yanas Retreat. Truly, organizing a month-long retreat is not for the faint of heart! But I wholeheartedly look forward to this work. When I reflect on the “why’s”, it’s always the joy of sangha that arises first. Some of the best guidance I’ve received were from fellow practitioners, both old and new to the path.
There’s a reason why sangha is one of the three jewels: we need each other. To take refuge in the sangha is an active practice. As members of a sangha, we are not only accountable for our personal growth but also for contributing to an environment that supports the growth of others. In this way, sangha is an antidote to the “me-ness” that is the root of suffering. If we fall out of practice or need to pause for an extended time, sangha is the channel that keeps us connected to the path. The WhatsApp group of the Three-Yanas 2026 cohort continues to buzz with activity since the summer - vajra siblings across multiple time zones coordinating time to practice ngondro and study together, sharing news of the good and the bad, supporting and cheering for each other literally all over the world.
Sangha also holds a mirror to our growth. It’s one thing to be still and aware alone on our seat, but our actions speak when in the company of our communities. We do not expect each other to be perfect, yet we hold each other accountable with compassion. As householders, it’s challenging to maintain a consistent spiritual practice on a daily level. By having a connection with a community of like-minded people, we are more likely to be disciplined yet gentle to ourselves with our own practice.
Communities of both lay people and monastics keep the dharma alive. In a world of constant emails and messages, I often find out about a retreat or program through sangha members before seeing it online. In addition to our long-standing community happenings such as our nyinthun and Wednesday night meditation, consider joining us on our annual retreat at Karma Triyana Dharmachakra, November 28th-December 6th, 2026.
Additionally, I and many friends of TWS are faculty for Dorje Denma Ling’s online Mahayana course I will be co-teaching the module on Lojong (January 7-February 18) with Lynn Friedman and Molly DeShong. We also have our Lojong class led by TWS board member Jacqui Merrell.
-Al San Valentin
Notes from Bill
We just published Joanna Rotté's conversation with Shechen Rabjam Rinpoche, recorded in Halifax during Rinpoche's August visit. Thank you to Vivian and Rinpoche's team for helping this come together. This is on our Youtube Channel.
For Werma practitioners, we will now be holding an in-person retreat in February here at Pawo Khandro Ling - there is a link to RSVP below then we will get proper registration up.
We are putting a lot together for the end of 2026 and planning ways to practice together in 2027 and 2028 already. Lots to do! If you'd like to be involved, you are welcome. Please reach out.
-Bill Moriarty
The Wisdom Seat Retreat 2026
Nov 28th - Dec 6th
We invite you to join us for this in-person annual retreat at the Karma TriyanaDharmachakra monastery in the delightful upstate New York Catskill Mountains. Michael Carroll will be leading this 8-day practice intensive designed to help us deepen our mindfulness-awareness meditation and integrate it into our daily life.
The Power of Mind: The 7 Points of Mind Training
Select Tuesdays 6:30pm EST
Join us for an in-depth exploration of lojong, or mind training, starting May 19, 2026. Using the text The Power of Mind by Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche as our base, we will meet Tuesday evenings to practice and discuss the text.
Wednesday Meditation
Wednesdays 6:15pm EST
Ongoing sitting meditation practice. Zoom only. Every Wednesday, 6:15–7:30pm Eastern Time.
Word by Word: Exploring the Dedication of Merit with Michael Carroll and Bill Moriarty
Nov 12, 2026 7-8pm EST
Michael Carroll joins Bill Moriarty to slow down the dedication of merit we say at the end of every practice, word by word: what each word means, and why we say it.
Embracing the Wisdom of Death, Dying and Illness
Monday, Nov 9, 2026. 630-730 EST
Please join us for an open discussion on death and dying. There is no agenda, specific topics or desired outcomes, but rather an open discussion to share inner reflections on death and dying.
Winter Werma Retreat at Pawo Khandro Ling
February 12 - 21, 2027
Save the date: Winter Werma Retreat with Michael Carroll. In person at Pawo Khandro Ling, for those who practice the Werma sadhana. Details coming soon. Please RSVP if you're interested. It doesn't commit you to anything.
Karmê Chöling
Mahamudra Stepping Stones: Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso's Teachings Further Explored
Start: Nov 17, 7:30pm ET — End: Nov 24, 9:00am ET In-Person at Karmê Chöling
With Andy Karr and Scott Wellenbach A continued exploration of Khenpo Tsültrim Gyamtso Rinpoche's Mahamudra teachings, further exploring the material from Mahamudra Stepping Stones. Prerequisites: all Tantrikas and Sadhakas who have received Pointing Out Instruction are welcome to participate in this program.
Katog Choling
Annual Pandey Norbu Shedra
Saturdays and Sundays, November 7-8, 14-15, and 21-22, 2026, 11:00 a.m.-1:00 p.m. and 2:30-4:30 p.m. (CST) Live Webcast
Teaching by Khentrul Rinpoche. Based on a four-stage approach to the Buddha's teachings drawn from the treatise of the omniscient Longchen Rabjam: turn your mind toward the dharma, turn the dharma into the path, dispel confusion through the path, and transform confused appearances into the wisdom of timeless awareness. This text covers the entire scope of the path, from the sutras through the tantras, offering an overview of all stages of practice.
Westchester Meditation Center
If You Meet a Buddha, Draw Them!
November 15, 2026, 10 am - noon ET Online only via Zoom
A brief experience with Sacred Geometry featuring Special Guest Michele Laporte. We are all familiar with the idea that using our hands to draw or trace forms can supply its own kind of understanding by allowing these shapes to connect with our minds in a visceral way, through feeling. So in this short workshop we will also try that approach, making a simple drawing of a Buddha head or a seated Buddha form. For all skill levels; no artistic experience necessary.
Westchester Meditation Center
WMC Annual Winter Retreat
February 19 - 26, 2027 (ET) Held in person at the Garrison Institute
A week-long immersive retreat is a powerful way to deepen our relationship to meditation and see its benefits. With a settled mind, we can tune into our innate wellbeing and our open heart. Mindfulness-awareness meditation, fully understood, can directly support overcoming our fixed, inflexible patterns, and allow the emergence of a more stable attitude of acceptance and kindness. We hope you can join us in exploring and fine-tuning these qualities that our world needs more than ever. Scholarships available. Separate shrine rooms for Vajrayana practitioners.
Dorje Denma Ling
Contemplative Arts: The Magnificent Display of Awake Mind
September 20, 2026 - October 24, 2027, 3:00 pm ET one Sunday/month Online
The series showcases professional artists who devoted themselves to the pursuit of mastery in the contemplative arts, both as the core of their artistic expression and as part of their spiritual path. The series will survey Japanese disciplines such as Ikebana (flowers), Kyudo (archery), Bugaku (dance), and calligraphy, as well as contemporary western arts such as theatre, dance, music, poetry, film, design, and photography.
Wisdom's Melody
Falling Through the Cracks
Our possibilities are infinite in this nowhere. A bardo is an opportunity.
By Elizabeth Brownrigg
Bardo is a Tibetan word that means a transitional state between one thing and another. Bar is "in-between." Do is "thrown." We are cast into unease, neither here nor there. Our possibilities are infinite in this nowhere. A bardo is an opportunity.
In the Tibetan tradition, the bardo between the death of this life and the birth of the next one can be terrifying. We experience hallucinations that arise from our harmful actions in the previous life.
Elizabeth Brownrigg
These apparitions might offer insight and guide us to liberation from suffering, or we might cower in fear and choose a more comfortable path, which leads to a not-so-happy next life where maybe this time around we'll actually learn something.
Every day contains bardos: the liminal world before dawn; the unsettled time of dusk; the pause between breaths; the blank page.
We used to play Earth at summer camp.
Instructions:
1. On a clear moonless night, out in the country where the sky is full of constellations, lie on the grass. No, not with your face in the grass. Lie on your back.
2. Feel yourself as part of the surface of Earth.
3. Feel yourself slowly rotating with the planet.
4. You are hanging over the chasm of space; invisible threads of gravity are all that keep you from drifting away, past the stars, forever.
Triff/shutterstock.com
You’re not right-side up. The sky is not above you. Where are you, exactly Which way is up, or down?
Every life is a succession of bardos: the beginning of love; the end of love; the failure; the job application; the doctor's waiting room.
We can choose our bardos. The uncertainty of travel beckons. No matter how carefully we plan our trips, there have to be surprises. I love lurching over the surprisingly flooded road in Costa Rica, or calling on my minute Italian vocabulary in the Tuscan neighborhood where no one speaks English.
diy13/shutterstock.com
I've grown uncomfortably accustomed to the fact that I will never know the answers to many questions. I was idly Googling an old friend one day when I came across the image of her gravestone. She had died 35 years before. Whenever I had thought about her, I had imagined her life continuing in some place, in the ways that I thought it would probably continue. In reality, she was nowhere at all. I don't know what happened to her; I don't know anyone who would know; her death didn't make the news. I could, I suppose, launch an intense search, hire a detective (?), pay for detailed records. But I won't. I'll stay in this unease of not knowing, where every scenario I invent for her is wrong.
Grief. My mother died when I was twenty-six. I had never experienced so deep a loss. I was completely ill-equipped to handle it. My family was thrown into sorrow. Every solid thing that I thought I knew fell apart into shadows. There was no way out. There was no fix. Most of you who are reading this know about this long anguished time during which you make different choices born of wisdom or panic.
A year later, I left my sad marriage that should have ended long before. I had spent my life until my mother's death not making choices. I followed this and that. I followed what I was supposed to do into marriage. Then I stayed because I didn't know how to choose to leave. My great loss shocked me into making a dangerous choice, away from miserable security, and into who knows what.
As I was walking to work that day, a truck passed by me on the street, moving a house to a new place.
Source: billybellhousemoving.com
"That things are empty, free, and devoid of arising,
not knowing this, beings wander in the cycle of existence.
Thus the compassionate one helps lead these beings
to these truths through hundredfold means and reasoning."
—Sutra quote from The Essence of Eloquence
Comments