3121 Fruitvale Avenue, Oakland, California 94602, United States
Call Ami at 415 840 6719
Thich NHat Hanh
The Only Way Out, is the Way In
From Plum Village website:
"Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh is a global spiritual leader, poet, and peace activist, renowned for his powerful teachings and bestselling writings on mindfulness and peace. A gentle, humble monk, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called him “an Apostle of peace and nonviolence” when nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Exiled from his native Vietnam for almost four decades, Thich Nhat Hanh has been a pioneer bringing Buddhism and mindfulness to the West, and establishing an engaged Buddhist community for the 21st Century."
OUR FINAL JOURNEY
Living in a community of support, kinship, and spiritual growth
Friday February 23, 2024: 1:00 pm – 2:30 Pm PST
Description
In which kind of community would we like to live if we needed more support in our later years? Would it not be a community in which we felt supported in terms of being valued, feeling a kinship with respect to our spiritual journey and continued emotional growth?
While we may wish to continue living at home as we live into our later years, many of us will at some stage spend our final years at a care home. This may be due to increased forgetfulness and/or physical frailty; few will have the around the clock family support needed to be taken care of at home. Would we not wish for ourselves to live within a community that upholds our values, respects the wisdom of our years and cares for our continued life journey and spiritual development? What kind of
supportive environment would we need to create where spending our final journey at an eldercare community would not be seen as a lesser alternative to home care but actually valued for the support and love that it could provide?
The “Elder Ashram” aspires to be a model and practice of care grounded in the ancient wisdom traditions of all life, human and non-human. This view understands service as joy and, paraphrasing Gandhi, ‘the best way to find ourselves.’ Creating an Elder Ashram is to understand that human beings’ deepest awareness and growth can take place in our final days. For this phase to be supported we need to create a supportive environment and corresponding mindset.
This webinar will describe the building and running of an Elder Ashram in Oakland, California, its gifts and challenges. It is hoped that it can provide a model of eldercare which can serve as a blueprint for a spiritual understanding of life and of service grounded in the wisdom traditions of many of our old cultures.
Facilitator
Nader Shabahangi, Ph.D., For most of his adult life, Nader Shabahangi has devoted his time to establishing eldercare communities in which his German grandparents would enjoy living. It is his way of expressing gratitude to his grandparents for having been so loving and caring to him growing up.
He now manages his latest eldercare community calling it Elder Ashram. He is a licensed psychotherapist and contractor. His love for the humanities, literature, and poetry, earned him his doctorate from Stanford University.
Registration
Don’t Waste Your Aging, a four-part series:
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
Part One: Learning to Love Your Aging
The sages of the world know that true security lies within us
only. It is not our outer possessions but our inner center
which gives us strength to weather the ups and downs of life. Yet, society and our educational institutions teach us to focus on outer security, on money and things. With almost all of
Part One: Learning to Love Your Aging
The sages of the world know that true security lies within us
only. It is not our outer possessions but our inner center
which gives us strength to weather the ups and downs of life. Yet, society and our educational institutions teach us to focus on outer security, on money and things. With almost all of education directing us to get to know our outer world, we do
not learn about our inner world. Consequently, we talk about
our careers, the value of our achievements and our status, we
talk about savings, investments, social security, and other
insurances. Rarely do we reflect on the security we receive
through knowing and feeling our inner world.This world we
explore though our inward journey. It is the task of our
second half of life to embark on the inward journey. During
this time, with the many life experiences we have made, we
learn now how to search for our inner ground. We search for
security we can find within. In the second half of life, we can
reconnect with who we really are. We begin to unfold the
larger meaning of our existence. The inward journey is a
move from role to soul. Those who embark on the inward
journey find their aging exciting and deeply satisfying. It is a
journey of experiencing, again, our connectedness with all,
with what Carl Jung calls the anima mundi, the soul of the
world. It is a time to deeply understand how we belong to a
larger Self.
February 2nd, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
Part Two: Faces of Aging
In contrast, those of us who stay with the outer journey and the
fragile security it offers, often find themselves without much
aliveness in their later years. For them aging is to be avoided,
feared and even a disease to be undone. Such an attitude of
avoidance and fear presents a weighty burden on our everyday
being a
Part Two: Faces of Aging
In contrast, those of us who stay with the outer journey and the
fragile security it offers, often find themselves without much
aliveness in their later years. For them aging is to be avoided,
feared and even a disease to be undone. Such an attitude of
avoidance and fear presents a weighty burden on our everyday
being and consciousness. Rather than enjoying the moments we do
have, even cherishing our aging and later years, we deal with the
voices of our outer and inner critics who put us down, make us feel worried and anxious. To counter such an attitude, even celebrate our aging and later years, Elder Ashram would like to be a learning community to help us focus on unfolding our inward journey. We'd like to emphasize the amazing opportunities that lie ahead in our elder years. Elder Ashram would like to be a community that makes
room for us to explore what we mean by soul. With a beginner’s
mind, we'd like to ask again the big questions. Helping us with
these big questions, do the teachings of the wisdom traditions. These old traditions offer us many millennia of time-tested experiences and teachings.
February 23rd, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
February 23rd, 2024 1pm - 3pm
Part Three: Shifting Values
It is sad that the teachings of the wisdom traditions are rarely part of our educational offerings any longer. Thus, it ought not surprise that many of us have forgotten these teachings or else deem them unimportant in today’s outer-oriented and technocentric world. At Elder Ashram we believe that elders, their
Part Three: Shifting Values
It is sad that the teachings of the wisdom traditions are rarely part of our educational offerings any longer. Thus, it ought not surprise that many of us have forgotten these teachings or else deem them unimportant in today’s outer-oriented and technocentric world. At Elder Ashram we believe that elders, their many years of
accumulated knowledge and lived experiences, are a tremendous
resource – not a liability – from which we as individuals and as
society can benefit greatly. To shift our attitude from liability to
resource requires us to shift our values as to what we deem
important in life. Do we value speed over slowness? Achievements over joy? Individual pursuits over communal health? Prosperity over poverty? Intellect over feelings? Youth over old age? Doing over being? Shifting our values is difficult work. It requires of us a letting go of many of the societal, cultural and parental constructs we have
been given along our way. When we reach our second half of life,
we often discover that all those constructs do not serve as well any longer.
March 15th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
January 19th, 2024 1pm - 3pm
February 23rd, 2024 1pm - 3pm
Part Four: From Role to Soul
Dr. Connie Zweig in her landmark book The Inner Work of Age, coined the term From Role to Soul. The shift from role to soul is the shift from the outer to our inner
journey. Not doing but being takes on a priority. Not the pursuit of more things and accolades matter, but the deepening our ability to be still, co
Part Four: From Role to Soul
Dr. Connie Zweig in her landmark book The Inner Work of Age, coined the term From Role to Soul. The shift from role to soul is the shift from the outer to our inner
journey. Not doing but being takes on a priority. Not the pursuit of more things and accolades matter, but the deepening our ability to be still, content, and aware. To be aware is to notice. To notice, in turn, requires us to enlarge our perception to what we have often overlooked in our busyness. To shift from role to soul foremost requires of us to slow down, to take time for our inner work. We ask: how does what I perceive resonate in my body? We notice how we embody our words, notice how and what we do. We become more aware of what makes us content and fills us with joy and notice what takes away from our sense of aliveness. We befriend time. Our inner and outer worlds join and we hold attention in stillness.