Releasing into Presence: Meditation, Mantra, and Movement with Chandra Easton

In this class, we’ll experience the benefits meditation, mantra, and movement have to offer our body, mind, and soul. Classes will be relaxing, rejuvenating, and fun, enhanced by community and collective practice. Weaving together mystical stories, meditations, mantra, movement and singing chants, Chandra offers practices that facilitate releasing into presence with ease and comfort. All are welcome.
Meditation: Experience a richness of techniques for developing shamatha, calm abiding, and vipashyana, insight. These will include mindfulness of breathing, an especially effective approach to soothing the body and calming the discursive mind, and more advanced techniques called “settling the mind in its natural state” and “awareness of awareness.”
Mantra: Explore mantra recitation and chanting, both with and without musical accompaniment. Chandra will share a variety of mantras and melodies from the Buddhist and Hindu tradition, including melodies from her 21 Taras Collective project.
Movement: Practice gentle and accessible yoga and/or meditative movement/dance to bring more comfort and ease to your meditation and life.
One Tuesday each month (dates TBD), Chandra will be joined by various musical guests to facilitate a deepening of devotion through sound, mantra, and kirtan.
Dorje Lopön Chandra Easton is a teacher, writer, and translator of Tibetan Buddhism. She has taught Buddhism and Yoga around the world since 2001 and co-translated Sublime Dharma: A Compilation of Two Texts on the Great Perfection, published in 2012.
In 2015, she was given the title of senior lead teacher, Dorje Lopön (Varjāchārya), by Lama Tsultrim Allione and Tulku Sang-ngag Rinpoche. She is on the Tara Mandala Board of Directors, Executive Council, and the Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion Council, which addresses the under-representation of people from different cultural, racial, sexual orientation, and social backgrounds in the Dharma and at Tara Mandala.
She is currently writing a book on the twenty-one Taras in Buddhist Tantra. She is collaborating with musicians, Nina Rao and Genevieve Walker, on their joint project, the 21 Taras Collective, which aims to bring the 21 Taras alive through mantra, music, and meditation. She lives in Berkeley, CA.
Visit www.chandraeaston.com to learn more

[@chandraeaston21]

Berkeley Alembic: Release into Presence
Narayaṇi Prayer from the Devi Mahatmya, verse 12
Śaraṇāgata dīnārtha,
paritrāṇa parāyaṇe,
Sarvasyārti hare devi,
nārāyaṇi namostute
I bow to Narayaṇi, the Goddess
who takes away the afflictions of all.
She is the refuge of the downtrodden,
and she is the [very act of] turning toward the Supreme
Śaraṇā - refuge | āgata - having arrived | dīnārtha - because of being downtrodden |paritrāṇa - completely saving | parāyaṇe - turning toward the Supreme | Sarvasyārtihare devi - the Goddess who takes away the afflictions of all | nārāyaṇi namostute - I bow to Nārāyaṇi.