Lion's Roar

  • Meditation
  • Buddhist Wisdom
  • Life & Culture
  • The Magazine
  • Buddhadharma
  • Store

Lion's Roar

DONATE SUBSCRIBE
  • Meditation
  • Buddhist Wisdom
  • Life & Culture
  • The Magazine
  • Buddhadharma
  • Store

Buddhist nunnery brings meditation outdoors in Portland, Maine

by Haleigh Atwood| March 22, 2018

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

“I wanted to bring the dharma to people through diverse venues, rather than ask them to find the monastery,” says Khenmo Drolma, Abbess of Vajra Dakini Nunnery. She’s offering outdoor “pop-up meditations” in Portland, Maine.

Khenmo Drolma (center) at an outdoor walking meditation. Photo courtesy Khenmo Drolma.

In 2016, members of the Vajra Dakini Nunnery decided to leave the isolated mountain ranges in Vermont and relocate to Portland, Maine. During this transition, Abbess Khenmo Drolma began offering meditations in open spaces around Portland. She calls them “pop-up meditations.”

“The simplicity of using available open spaces in Portland immediately excited my imagination,” Drolma says. “I wanted to bring the dharma to people through diverse venues, rather than ask them to find the monastery.”

While Vajra Dakini searched for a permanent structure, Drolma was able to schedule pop-up meditations in parks, farms, neighborhoods, and other borrowed spaces.

This past summer, a series of pop-up meditations invited people to meet on four separate evenings in four different parks to explore a series of meditation postures: standing, walking, sitting, and lying down. Collectively, the series provided a foundation for calm abiding meditation and mindfulness.

“Buddha taught outside,” Drolma says. “When I refer to mind as being like the sky or the ocean waves, and we are sitting looking at the ocean, there is a fresh newness to how we understand the simile.”

Meditation at Fort Allen Park Gazebo in Portland, Maine. Photo by Corey Templeton.

The idea for pop up meditations came when Bhante Suddhaso, co-founder of Buddhist Insights, invited Drolma to teach in New York.

Buddhist Insights holds meditation classes in unconventional locations, such as parks, museums, beaches, and even streets. This allows the meditators to connect with monastics, and make friends with their environment. In 2016, Buddhist Insights organized a day-long loving-kindness “street retreat” meditation in the New York City Subway.

“Teaching loving-kindness in the subways was so direct and visceral as all kinds of sentient beings passed before us,” Drolma says.

Photo courtesy Khenmo Drolma.

Drolma compares her pop-up meditations in Portland to the early Tibetan monks who walked through towns and were routinely asked to sit down and teach. Reviving this simple tradition, these meditations have become a means to make the dharma easily accessible.

“I continue to lead traditional teaching on weekends and in retreats, but I will always keep the door open for these spontaneous requests,” says Drolma.

More information about pop up meditations is available on the Vajra Dakini Nunnery website.

  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pinterest (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)

Can you help us at a critical time?

COVID-19 has brought tremendous suffering, uncertainty, fear, and strain to the world.

Our sincere wish is that these Buddhist teachings, guided practices, and stories can be a balm in these difficult times. Over the past month, over 400,000 readers like you have visited our site, reading almost a million pages and streaming over 120,000 hours of video teachings. We want to provide even more Buddhist wisdom but our resources are strained. Can you help us?

No one is free from the pandemic’s impact, including Lion’s Roar. We rely significantly on advertising and newsstand sales to support our work — both of which have dropped precipitously this year. Can you lend your support to Lion’s Roar at this critical time?

SUPPORT LION’S ROAR

Haleigh Atwood

About Haleigh Atwood

Haleigh Atwood is the editorial assistant for Lion's Roar. She has also written for Montecristo Magazine, J-Source, and CBC Nova Scotia Information Morning. Find her on Twitter @HalEAtwood.

Topics: Breaking News

Related Posts...

The Garden Path
by Cheryl Wilfong
Awake in the Wild
by Mark Coleman
Iron Fist meditating.Meet Iron Fist, Marvel’s controversial “billionaire New York Buddhist monk martial arts superhero” (Updated)
by Rod Meade Sperry

Welcome to LionsRoar.com

By Lion's Roar Staff

We’re glad to have you here. But first: who are “we”? You may very well know us as the publishers of two Buddhist magazines, the Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma. Then again, you may not know us at all. Either way, please allow us to re-introduce ourselves: We’re the Shambhala Sun Foundation. We [...]

  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Advertise
  • Subscriber Services
  • Privacy
  • BUDDHIST DIRECTORY
  • About Us
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
TEACHINGS
  • Chan & Zen
  • Nichiren
  • Pure Land
  • Shin
  • Theravada & Insight
  • Vajrayana & Tibetan
  • More…
LIFE
  • Death & Dying
  • Difficult Times
  • Everyday Life
  • Food & Eating
  • Love & Relationships
  • Wellness & Psychology
  • More…
EXPLORE BUDDHISM
  • By the Numbers
  • FAQs
  • For Beginners
  • Glossary
  • How to Meditate
  • The Buddha
  • More…
NEWS
  • Breaking News
  • Climate Change
  • Contemporary Art
  • Current Events
  • Politics & Society
  • Teachers & Centers
  • More…

© 2021 Lion's Roar | Email: [email protected] | Tel: 902.422.8404 | Published by Lion's Roar Foundation