Be Wise, Go Kind: Competition, Success, and Failure
Online Retreat with Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche
April 22 – 24
English, Chinese, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Danish
During this weekend retreat, Rinpoche will explore our relationship with notions that drive our everyday lives. Does success in our daily lives translate into sustainable happiness? We think that success offers us more resources, more status, and thus more opportunities for enjoyment. But often the striving that precedes success can blind us to more lasting causes of happiness: knowing oneself, being emotionally resilient, and knowing what’s truly important in our heart of hearts.
Sometimes we say these inner aspects are something that we’ll get around to, “but for now I need to earn more, develop more, achieve more, etc.” It’s as if we think those inner qualities are in competition with our quest for worldly success. And being unable to “make it” feels like failure. Let’s look at our minds and hearts and discover how they can bring lasting, true success by living fully.
Explore the meaning and purpose of life. Get to know yourself and discover deeper insight into reality. Connect with our heart of kindness and learn to live fully. Our annual retreat offers an opportunity to listen, contemplate, meditate and embrace each moment for the benefit of ourselves and others.
Strengthening our Wings of Wisdom & Compassion
Today suffering comes in many forms: war, climate change, social inequality, political division, and more. How can we respond skillfully to the many challenges we face? How can we take actions to reduce our suffering and the suffering of those around us?
The purpose of the annual Be Wise, Go Kind retreat is to offer practical methods for individuals to strengthen their innate wisdom and compassion in order to live those values more fully in the world. Wisdom and compassion are like two wings of a bird that flies freely in a space of freedom, peace, and kindness.
How to change the world?
Nalandabodhi hosted the first Be Wise Go Kind Online Retreat in 2020. At that time, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche pointed out that the opportunity for change can come at the most unexpected time. “We never know when the opportunity to succeed in our life’s goals will knock on our door.” Difficult times, challenges in our society, uncertainty, can all become opportunities to create new beginnings for our world.
It is vital for us to take advantage of every opportunity and truly embrace and appreciate change. How? For this, we need to approach life with wisdom, kindness, and applicable skills. When we have the right balance of these three, we can overcome any obstacle and we can succeed in our life’s goals and live our lives fully.
If we apply the various methods of Being Wise, Going Kind, and Living Fully, we can not only bring more joy and happiness to our own lives and those near to us. We can make it more transformative. We can contribute towards the possibility of changing the world – together.