COURSE 4: INTRODUCTION TO TANTRA - WISDOM IS ALREADY PRESENT

Mondays, August 22nd – October 10th, 2022
7:00pm - 9:00pm ET

The Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhist path contains practices and frameworks that are incredibly useful in understanding and working with our human emotions.

The tantric path also has many interesting teachings about visualization, sacredness, viewing the world as an inherently beautiful and amazing place, and dealing with death as a practice of awakening.

While Tantra has a very liberated approach in discussing the interconnection between wisdom and neurosis, sanity and confusion, it is actually a very grounded, rigorous, and compassionate path all about how to be a decent human.

This new eight-week course with Senior Buddhist teacher and longtime Vajrayana practitioner Ethan Nichtern, is the fourth course in our Yearlong Buddhist Studies program. It will begin with a theoretical introduction to Vajrayana (Tantric) Buddhism, along with an experiential exploration of some of the fundamental practices associated with Buddhist Tantra.

Founded on the firmly established aspirations of self-liberation and compassion for all beings (Dharma Moon's Yearlong Buddhist Studies Courses 1-3), this course explores the Tantric or Vajrayana teachings as understood in the Indo-Tibetan and other schools of Buddhism.

Topics will include The Three Yanas, Nature of Mind meditation (Mahamudra and Dzogchen), Visualization as Meditation Practice, The Five Wisdom Energies, and an exploration of the often difficult topic of what it means to work with a "Guru" as opposed to other models of the student-teacher relationship.

Ethan Nichtern is a Senior Buddhist teacher, author, and lecturer. For the past 19 years, Ethan has taught meditation and Buddhist psychology classes and workshops around New York City, North America and Europe, along with working with students privately.

He was formerly on the part-time faculty at Eugene Lang College at New School University and has lectured at Brown, Wesleyan, Yale, NYU, FIT, Antioch and other universities, and as well at many other meditation/yoga centers and conferences around the country and world.

Ethan is the author of the acclaimed book The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path and his most recent book, The Dharma of The Princess Bride: What The Coolest Fairy Tale of Our Time Can Teach Us About Buddhism and Relationships. He is also the author of One City: A Declaration of Interdependence, and the Novella/poetry collection, Your Emoticons Won’t Save You.

He founded and served as executive director (2007-11) of the Interdependence Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to secular Buddhist practice and transformational activism and arts.

Ethan primarily studied in Shambhala and Tibetan traditions, as well as Theravadan and Soto Zen Buddhism. Ethan is an avid yoga practitioner. He served as Shastri, or Senior Teacher-In-Residence, for the Shambhala Meditation Center of New York from 2010-18.

In 2018, Ethan launched his podcast, The Road Home, available on iTunes and Stitcher.

Ethan has been featured on CNN, NPR, ABC/Yahoo News, The New York Times, Vogue.com, Business Insider, Nautilus, and Vice to discuss Buddhism and meditation in the 21st Century. His articles have been featured on The Huffington Post, Beliefnet, Shambhala Sun, Tricycle Magazine, BuddhaDharma Magazine, and Reality Sandwich as well as other online publications.