THE POWER OF A GOOD HEART

Paulina Franco and Timothy Lowenhaupt

Pau Franco and Tim Lowenhaupt are both certified teachers of the Asian Classics Institute, and have each taught many ACI classes to students around the world.

Our Lam Rim teaching here in Guadalajara focuses on the power of a good heart. Taking what we have learned about this power and how to get it, Pau and Tim will help us look into the connection that developing a good heart has to mental well-being.

Are you frustrated, stressed, or angry? Are you wrestling with addictions and obstacles? Do you worry a lot or feel guilty all the time? Do you find it difficult to process the challenges of life or find yourself falling into similar patterns of emotional distractions or despair over and over?

By exploring the deep connection between a kind heart and mental well-being, you will gain a deeper understanding of the importance of self-compassion, self-acceptance, and the power of giving to others what we wish to receive for ourselves.

One of the major themes of this class will be how to search into your own self to unravel unconscious patterning, to look at the casual nature of this patterning, and the seeds to begin to overcome many of these challenges. It takes wisdom and courage to dive into our negativities and face them head on, and both Pau and Tim have spent years on this journey and wish you share their trials and successes with you.

Teachers:

Timothy Lowenhaupt

Paulina Franco

Tere Pirosanto and Alex Rivas

Tere Pirosanto is a certified yoga teacher with the Yoga Studies Institute, and Alex Rivas is a certified Asian Classics Institute teacher. Together they will bring us insight on what it means to have a teacher, especially in a world where the independent self is highly prized.

Tere and Alex will also explore how we can go about finding a teacher, what are the causes to find a teacher, and how a teacher is “empty” of having any special qualities in them that doesn’t come from your seeds.

Where can we start? We first can start by looking at every circumstance that life presents to us, good, bad, or indifferent. Each of these moments can be a teaching “moment” for us; we can find a teaching in every flower and every bad driver, in our most beloved relatives or our worst enemies, in every movie we see or song we hear. And certainly we can cherish the teachers who bring us the dharma, diligently preserved by many generations of teachers and translators.

While it might be a natural human tendency to cling to our own specific teacher who brings us the wisdom to transform our lives today, it is always a mistake to cling. As one of the highest teachers of our day has said, "The measure of a life well-lived is how well you learned to let go."

Tere and Alex will lead us through a meditation that will help us let go of over-identifying with the teacher who brings wisdom to our lives, and to focus instead on that wisdom itself that brings the teacher to us. We will practice how to become living examples of teachers ourselves, and how that can help shape and positively transform our world.

What doubts do you still have about finding your teacher or having a teacher? Prepare these questions to ask these teachers in the QA.

Teachers:

Alex Rivas

Tere Pirosanto

Connie O'Brien and John Brady

Senior Asian Classics Institute teachers Connie O'Brien and John Brady are both three-year silent retreat veterans who married soon after their retreats ended. Combined with their many years of spiritual exploration and teaching experience, this gives them a special ability to share real-life insight into what it means to transform lovers and spouses into spiritual partners.

Using the power of a kind heart as inspiration, Connie and John will lead us through a powerful meditation on what it means to work with your spiritual partner to practice wisdom beliefs. They will discuss how to turn a plain, everyday partner into an extraordinary, spiritual partner. Many of us have questions about whether a partner can be a spiritual partner if they don't share our beliefs, and Connie and John will help us grapple with this issue. And they will guide us through what to do and how to do it once we have found our spiritual partners. Hearing their stories, and learning tips and techniques they teach us, we will learn about how to improve our hearts as we work with our spiritual partners.

This topic can bring up a lot of questions of how to successfully live our romantic lives with a vision to serve the whole world. Ask these teachers about your most difficult relationship challenges to get the advice you need to live love to the fullest.

Teachers:

John Brady

Connie O'Brien

Venerable Sunam and Venerable Gyelse

Ven. Sunam and Ven. Gyelse between them have many years of practice, study, and teaching in the Gelugpa tradition of Geshe Michael Roach. As nuns in this Buddhist tradition, they have practiced and organized many rituals and have trained many students in ritual traditions. Both are certified Asian Classics Institute teachers and have taught many students internationally.

We are privileged to have their teaching during this Lam Rim. Together, Ven. Sunam and Ven. Gyelse will explain the intricacies of the fire ceremony that is traditionally performed at the end of a Lam Rim, and also at the end of many other important Buddhist activities such as deep retreat. Sunam and Gyelse will lead us in a meditation of what it means to honor and pay homage to the tradition that encourages us all to become enlightened for the sake of all beings.

No one is perfect, and doing a fire puja is a loving offering ceremony to apologize for any mistakes we've made and to burn all our obstacles and obstructions. We make a big ceremonial fire and throw many traditional substances into it to clear us of our bad seeds. Geshe Michael teaches us that the smoke from our fire vaporizes into the environment and eventually reaches all parts of the universe and touches every being in it. So our prayers and our offerings reach all beings.

Learn about the fire ceremony, what it means, and how to do it. Learn how participating in a fire ceremony changes us and our world for the better.

There will be a live Q&A session with the teachers during the class, so you can interact with them and other participants and get all the questions that are most dear to your heart answered.

Teachers:

Venerable Sunam

Venerable Gyelse

Alix Rowland and Janice Sanders

Alix Rowland and Janice Sanders are both certified Asian Classics Institute teachers. They have been friends for many years, and both run successful businesses in the state of Colorado.

Alix and Janice will help us understand how to use many of the teachings that we are learning to make our own businesses successful. Sometimes, there appears to be a big gap between what we learn in class and what we do in our day-to-day work. But this is not the case. Yet it can be difficult to make the leap between classroom learning and day-to-day practice.

Focusing on exchanging self and others, Alix and Janice will give us case studies of how they have personally applied these ideas in real-life business situations. They will share stories and techniques that we can each apply to our own business challenges. And they will point out how to recognize when your practices have been successful, and what that success can look like. They will lead us through a special business-centered meditation.

There will be a live Q&A session with the teachers during the class, so you can interact with them and other participants and get all the questions that are most dear to your heart answered.

Teachers:

Alix Rowland

Janice Sanders

Sofi & Venerable Kading

Sofia Arellano and Ven. Kading are both certified teacher/lecturers at Asian Classics Institute, and both parents. Together they span several generations, and in this class they will share with us their consolidated years of parenting experience, informed by timeless wisdom.

We will begin with a meditation on what it is to be a parent, what the joys are, and how we can transform any temporary challenges we might encounter on the parenting journey into lasting joys.

Parenting can be demanding and overwhelming at times, but this class will provide participants with tools and strategies to cultivate a sense of inner peace, contentment, and strength amidst the difficulties. Through engaging discussions and personal stories, attendees will explore advice on how to manage stress, prioritize self-care, and develop a positive mindset. In an interactive class environment, we will learn to embrace a harmonious balance between our parental responsibilities and our personal well-being.

Don’t forget to bring your most pressing questions to this session about how to make your own parenting effective utilizing this ancient wisdom or if you’re planning on starting a family, what you can do to prepare yourself for this most beautiful human experience.

Teachers:

Sofia Arellano

Venerable Kading

Alex Rivas and Aldo Arzapalo

Our culture is too often driven by anger: aggression, competition, and the idea that one person can't win unless the other people lose, are regarded as virtues, however erroneous and counter-productive that actually is.

Asian Classics Institute certified teachers Alex Rivas and Aldo Arzopalo will share life lessons they have learned and put into practice from years of study, about how to harness patience and use it. Anger is a corrosive emotion that can destroy you and applying the antidote to anger--patience--will help you achieve a state of balance that will free you.

We will investigate the similarities and differences among these three qualities--anger, equanimity, and patience. You will learn and discuss tools for identifying the roots of anger, noticing it when it starts to happen, and stopping it more and more completely in your own life as you use and practice with these tools.

When you get good at this transformative practice, your meditation will begin to soar and bring you to a state of balance that will transfer out to your day-to-day life. We will find all the causes necessary to relieve your life of these negative emotions and also produce an effective meditation that can help you go deeper into all aspects of your life.

Both Alex and Aldo have done extensive deep retreat, and come prepared to ask them difficult questions on how they have used these practices to eradicate their negative emotions.

Teachers:

Alex Rivas

Aldo Arzapalo

Tim Lowenhaupt

Four years ago, ACI Executive Director Timothy Lowenhaupt became managing director of Adobe Grand Villas, a high-end resort experience in Sedona, Arizona. Working with this company as a karmic laboratory, Tim helped the hotel double its revenue from $1.2M to $2.4M. And he helped improve the guest experience as well as the profitability. Most recently, Adobe Grand Villas received Trip Advisor's coveted #1 Small Hotel in the United States award in 2023.

In this class, we'll start with a meditation on what success means to you, and what obstacles you may be having to achieving success in your chosen wish. We will discuss the apparent “how” and the karmic “how” of turning a relatively unknown hotel into the most sought-after accommodation experience in Sedona (and the United States!). And we'll help you apply the results of this test case to your own life. Finally, how can timeless wisdom aid you in becoming a living example of success, even if it seems impossible to you at the moment?

Come prepared to ask some of your most difficult business related questions and meet others who are looking to achieve wild successes.

Teacher:

Tim Lowenhaupt

Venerable Jigme and Lucia Pichardo

Asian Classics Institute Senior Teacher Ven. Jigme Palmo and ACI Mexico teacher Lucia Pichardo will bring their years of teaching experience and decades of life wisdom to helping us deal with issues of anger.

Although it might seem counterintuitive, Buddhists will tell you that the way to eliminate anger in your heart, whether it seems to be coming from you or at you, is patience. Why is patience, a quality that can seem meek, mild, and passive, actually so powerful and so beautiful? How can it effectively do away with an angry environment--parents, children, colleagues and spouses that seem to be angry at you? How can it improve the quality of your life by helping you live in peace and harmony instead of being constantly strangled by the hatefulness of angry feelings?

We'll begin with a meditation on patience. Ven. Jigme and Lucia will guide us through the calming, beneficial pathways in our minds that lead to expansive peace. They will help us see how stopping anger with patience, at the very moment even the slightest irritation arises, is a tool that each of us can use.

We will delve into the profound effects of anger on our mental and emotional states, as well as its impact on our relationships. We will explore how patience can serve as a powerful antidote to anger, enabling us to respond to challenging situations with clarity, compassion, and inner calm.

What questions do you have about your own anger or your own growing capacity to hold yourself in patience? Don’t be shy to ask them!

Teachers:

Venerable Jigme

Lucia Pichardo