The first class introduces the three doors of body, speech, and mind: stillness, silence, and spaciousness. Through drawing your attention inward and resting your attention on these doors you can find a sense of inner refuge that has qualities of spaciousness, awareness, and warmth. Becoming familiar with this refuge is the foundation of our training, and your capacity to abide within it is deepened and strengthened in all subsequent sessions. We will cover both formal seated practices and informal practices. Recommended reading is the first half of Awakening the Luminous Mind and pages 1-28 of Spontaneous Creativity.

The second class builds on the foundation of inner refuge and focuses on the fundamental ways our recognition of the inner refuge is obscured: through aversion, attachment, and ignorance. We reflect on our awareness of these patterns in our life and introduce the practice of the Nine Breathings of Purification (practice of channels and winds) to release these patterns and support a relationship with the sacred body. The source book for these teachings is the first section of Tenzin Wangyal’s Awakening the Sacred Body.

The third class introduces the chakra system of the body and continues to explore the principle of inner winds that hold habitual patterns and obscure our recognition of our natural mind, source of compassion and positive qualities. Through the practice of Tsa Lung (yogas of breath and movement) we increase our awareness of the subtle energy centers in order to clear habitual patterns and connect to openness, supporting us to be able to live life and respond to others in a more authentic way. The source book: Awakening the Sacred Body.

The fourth class explores the dimension of speech. We engage the power of sound and silence through the meditation practice of the Five Warrior Syllables. We will pay particular attention to the way we experience sound in order to help clear obstacles that prevent us from being fully present. This will support the emergence of positive qualities such as the warmth of well-being and compassion for self and others. The book Tibetan Sound Healing will be referenced. Read pages 31-79 in Spontaneous Creativity.

The fifth class focuses on personal reflection and identifying patterns of habitual response and obstacles to compassion in relation to oneself. We explore how pain becomes our path to compassion, and particularly self-compassion. We discuss pain body/identity, pain speech, and pain mind. Through the Nine Breathings, Tsa Lung, and the Five Warrior Syllables practices, we explore becoming conscious of these limiting experiences of self, and hosting these patterns, while abiding in open awareness.

One important aspect of your journey in the Compassion Project is to engage the process of transformation, the practice of bringing presence to a separate and limited sense of self – a pain identity – with compassion. You will be encouraged to reflect in three areas of your life: your relationship to yourself, your relationships with family and close friends, and your relationship to your professional life and community. In month five, we focus on the first area, relation to self. Throughout the next month, using formal and informal practices of the 3 Doors methods, you will be asked to articulate the progression of your practice by reflecting on the suffering of separation and any obstacles to self-compassion, finding support in your formal and informal practice to bring presence to these experiences, and noticing any shifts or changes you experience in your life as you bring challenges into practice. We provide a four-step template to guide this process, and ask that you apply it to one pain identity in relationship to self. We will reference pages 76-79 in Spontaneous Creativity.

The sixth class focuses on increasing familiarity with the transformative power of our practices. We now focus on being present to family pain and challenges in our close relationships. We reflect on the presence or absence of compassion in those relationships, hosting the collective relationship and family pain body as it lives in us. As we bring presence to pain, we open to the warmth of compassion that becomes available. This month you will be asked to identify one pain identity in the area of family, bring this to formal and informal practice, notice any changes in your life as a result, and articulate this process through the four-step template.

In the seventh class you will be supported to focus your reflection and practice on a pain identity that arises in your professional life or in relation to institutional and societal pain. You will explore your relationship to organizations, to media, to information about the collective, and to the visions that you carry of this larger sense of “other.” Recognizing your pain body, speech, and mind and practicing with this pain as an opportunity or door, you will explore how to bring pain to the path and to experience compassion. This month you will be asked to identify one such pain identity in the area of work and society, bring it to both formal and informal practice, noticing any changes in your life as a result, and articulate the process through the four-step template.

This will be a day of group retreat consisting of three 3-hour sessions of practice throughout the day, deepening our relationship with the practices. The meditation sessions will be guided and there will be opportunity to share experiences that come up.

In our eighth class we articulate the process of hosting the pain body, pain speech, and pain mind as we encounter them in our relation to self, family, institution or group. Choosing one pain identity to stay with for this class, we engage the practice of stillness, silence, and spaciousness to experience the pain and allow it fully. We acknowledge the support of group practice to host our pain with openness, awareness, and warmth, and to be present to its dissolution, recognizing a fresh and new space. It is the recognition of openness (wisdom) which allows for the emergence of the healing quality—compassion. We explore the power of intention in our meditation practice as we engage the phrase: “In liberating my own being may I benefit others.” Read pages 101-118 in Spontaneous Creativity.

In the ninth and final class we review the principles of the path of The 3 Doors Compassion Project. We review the basic concepts of the three doors, what the doors access in terms of the inner refuge; what is pain identity, pain speech, and pain imagination, and how pain becomes the path to liberation. We are reminded of the 4-step template for processing transformations and the invitation to continue to journal and give voice to our practice. We take this time to express the fruits of our experiences through our nine-month journey. We end by dedicating the merits of our time together, including loved ones, colleagues who are injured, ill, oppressed, forgotten, or people who have recently died, by bringing them to mind and hosting them in the warmth of compassion.