Weekend courses Buddhist Psychology in Amsterdam

	Ondy Willson

By Ondy Willson

This season we continue with our weekends on Buddhist psychology. These weekends can be followed as a series, or as stand alone courses. The aim of these weekend courses is to offer the opportunity to any student of Buddhism to consider how to practise the Dharma in the challenging situations we find ourselves in, within society. Buddhist psychology is profound yet practical, and offers effective and accessible methods for transforming difficulties and problems into personal and professional successes. For a belief system that traditionally encourages renunciation of all worldly concerns, it paradoxically provides us with a clear path for living in the world, with others as a means for reaching self-actualisation and fulfilment.

All courses will have western psychology links to positive psychology, learned optimism, emotional intelligence, neuroplasticity, understanding symbolism, ethics

Good Psychology

This weekend will focus on the Buddhist view of the nature of mind, and lead us to deepen our understanding of how and why we think and feel the way we do. With our views based on misunderstandings and our actions rooted in insecurities and low self-esteem, it is inevitable that we create problems for ourselves and others. By strengthening our self- awareness and deepening our understanding of humanity, we can develop healthier and happier lifestyles.
Concepts: nature of mind, emptiness, impermanence, delusions, noble eight fold path/the 6 perfections - especially ethics, generosity and patience

Dates: November 12 and 13
Time: 10.00 – 17.00
Requested contribution: € 80,- including tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

 

How to love your neighbour

With Christmas approaching this course will offer ways of practising the gentle arts of love and compassion. Love, a carelessly over-used word that so often turns to hate, and compassion that too frequently morphs into compassion-fatigue, can be practised and perfected and enjoyed when properly understood. Over the weekend we will consider the true meaning of these words and how both Jesus and the Buddha, and indeed all other great spiritual leaders and practitioners, encourage us to love the unlovable and cherish the despicable. If you want to truly have a good time at Christmas with friends and family (who may also be strangers and enemies), then this course is an essential gift to yourself.
Concepts: four immeasurables, equanimity, samsara, rebirth and karma

Western Psychology links to positive psychology, learned optimism, emotional intelligence, neuroplasticity, understanding symbolism, ethics

Dates: December 17 and 18
Time: 10.00 – 17.00
Requested contribution: € 80,- including tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

 

Avoiding Temptation & Seduction – or how to live in the world of illusion

Buddhist teachings guide us through a path that is littered with shiny obstacles to our spiritual progression. Like magpies, we fill our nests with possessions and crave the materialistic and hedonistic delights that the world says we should want, get and have. We strive to attain power and pleasure, led to believe that these are the route to life fulfilment. But as practitioners living in a society that constantly encourages us to want, want, want and buy, buy, buy, how should we respond to such attractive offers? Are they the source of all pleasure and delight or the source of all our problems? This course will seek to find the truth of whether we are living the dream… or just dreaming.
Concepts: eight worldly dharmas, path of renunciation, six perfections.

Saturday and Sunday, January 14 and 15
Time: 10.00 – 17.00 hrs
To help cover our costs: € 80,- includes tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

 

The Buddha as a Role Model

The story of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni’s life has been handed down through the centuries, examined, explored and retold a thousand times, in many different traditions. To a contemporary Buddhist practitioner, does it really matter what he did and why? Does his story hold any relevance to our own? This course will seek to deepen our awareness and understanding of the Buddha’s life, and whether it is just a good tale, or whether his quest should be an ever present influence and inspiration to our own.
A central aspect of this course will be to consider our own lives as quests and explore how we can utilise the symbolism of a quest to guide us.
Concepts: precious human rebirth, refuge, examples of the path in the life of Buddha.

Saturday and Sunday, January 28 and 29
Time: 10.00 – 17.00 hrs
To help cover our costs: € 80,- includes tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

Dieting with Buddhism – or how to lose the weight of the world from your shoulders

Losing weight isn’t easy for any of us. It requires will power, determination, strong motivation and discipline. Once we’ve lost the weight, we then have to watch what we eat! There’s no quick fix and no miracles. So why should we think that making our minds fit is any different? It’s not, it’s the same! The practice of meditation, developing mindfulness and incorporating healthy and constructive ways of thinking into our lives is hard work. We have overindulged ourselves with life, and developed unhealthy emotional habits. Relationship problems, work issues, physical ill health all pile up in our minds and we become heavy with the burdens of stress, anxiety, depression and destructive tendencies. But with hard work comes rewards. Attend this course and we guarantee you will lose some of the weight on your shoulders….or your money back!
Concepts: the practices of meditation, mindfulness, 4 powers, purification. 

Saturday and Sunday, February 18 and 19
Time: 10.00 – 17.00 hrs
To help cover our costs: € 80,- includes tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

From Self to Others - or how to free the mind from self-centredness

This course focuses on The Eight Verses of Thought Transformation, a text by the Kadampa Geshe Langri Tangpa. It aims to consider the thoughts and emotions that tie us to the attitude that puts our selves before others. By examining our ordinary view, fuelled by low self-esteem that constantly demands feeding, we are able to develop the extraordinary practices of bodhicitta and wisdom that free us from our mental obsessions. The course will include the contemplation and practice of Lama Zopa Rinpoche’s "The Everflowing Nectar of Bodhicitta".
Concepts: bodhicitta, thought transformation, mind training, emptiness.

Saturday and Sunday, March 17 and 18
Time: 10.00 – 17.00 hrs
To help cover our costs: € 80,- includes tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

 

37 Steps to Becoming the Dalai Lama

This course will take as its inspiration the text The Thirty Seven Practices of a Bodhisattva and the living example of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. The text was written in the 13th century by Gyaltse Ngulchu Tokme Zangpo, who was an extraordinary scholar and practitioner. This wonderful text is a clear guide on how to nurture the mind, so that it will ripen into the fruits of bodhicitta and wisdom. Accompanied by a commentary given by H.H. Dalai Lama, we can consider how the Tibetan Mahayana tradition offers us an achievable and clear path to ourselves becoming extraordinary.
Concepts: Lam.Rim, bodhicitta, mind training, six perfections, emptiness.

Saturday and Sunday, March 24 and 25
Time: 10.00 – 17.00 hrs
To help cover our costs: € 80,- includes tea and soup, bring your own sandwiches

Ondy Willson

Born in Cape Town in 1951, Ondy grew up in the south of England. In 1980 she took refuge with Geshe Jampa Tekchog, then sold up her home and gave up her job to be near him. Since then she has received teachings and initiations from many high lamas including H.H. Dalai Lama, Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche. In 1983 she did her prostrations retreat in Bodhgaya whilst receiving teachings from H.H. Ling Rinpoche and Tara Tulku.

Ondy was Head of Belief, Philosophy and Ethics in a large English high school, and contributed to primary and secondary school educational books on religious & moral issues and spirituality, specialising in Buddhism. She went on to develop 'Inner Management' courses and started her own consultancy. She teaches the dharma for Yeshe Buddhist Group, which she founded in 2001. In 2009 she published her story of the Buddha’s early life, “Ten Thousand Days of Summer”, Book One of a trilogy. She is currently working on the second book. Ondy is also a storyteller and Drama teacher, offering workshops to children of all ages.

Ondy has recently spent 3 months teaching at Tushita Meditation Centre in Dharamsala, N. India, and will spend a significant amount of time touring and teaching in 2012, returning to teach in India at Tushita and Root Institute next Autumn. Her teaching style combines head, heart and humour with the emphasis on making Buddhism relevant for contemporary life. Her partner is Andy Weber, the Tibetan Buddhist Iconographer and Buddhist Art teacher and they have two grown children.