By Ross Hunter

Well, the weekend intensive is over. Acharya Eric Spiegel has left, kind of. It should be possible to write a nice, tidy article about the content of the weekend program. But I don’t know if the program has really ended, I think it’s one of those that go on for a long time after. And I still feel the great impact of having the man in town.

One of the participants, a week later, told me there just aren’t words to describe how powerful his presence was. Instead, she had been holding close some of his words from the program, a fragment of profound guidance that touched her, and wouldn’t leave.

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(Originally published in Garuda View - Fall 2006 - Vol. 5 No. 3)

October 20 marks the beginning of Austin Shambhala Center’s “Year of Living and Dying” with Acharya Eric Spiegel teaching a weekend program, “A Warrior’s Approach to Death: A Practical Exploration of Buddhist Teachings on Fear and Fearlessness.” A year of opportunities for participants to explore their own reaction to dying and death will follow.

Imagine, an opportunity to

• be mindful of our habitual tendencies to fear, avoid, and ignore death;
• explore the nature of ourselves and the world as insubstantial and impermanent;
• develop kindness to ourselves through contemplating the possibility of our own death;
• extend our awareness and kindness to others because they experience the same journey of life and death, fear and ignorance, as we do;
• and examine the teachings on letting go.

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By Ross Hunter

Acharya Eric Spiegel began his weekend program with a public talk this evening, Friday, October 20, and all of us who attended seemed awestruck to hear him. He has never been in Austin before, this is the first time many of us have met him - and what a fabulous, fabulous teacher.
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This Friday evening come to the Austin Shambhala Meditation Center and join Acharya Eric Spiegel, master Shambhala teacher, who is in Austin to instruct in our weekend program, A Warrior’s Approach to Death: A Practical Exploration of Buddhist Teachings on Fear and Fearlessness.

Friday evening’s public talk is FREE (donations always welcomed). Here is a chance to look death in the face - we know from every experience and every teaching that when we cease to deny the inevitability of death our lives become stronger, more vibrant, more vital - and still we deny it. Let’s look again. (more…)