Getting in Touch with our Pure Nature

Ven Thubten Jamyang is an accredited facilitator of 16 Guidelines for Life Levels 1 and 2 who lives at Nalanda Monastery in southern France. He is also a psychologist and a carer. He offers workshops in English and Croatian. Recently he ran a 16 Guidelines course for volunteers living at Nalanda Monastery. He describes his experience here:-

“I decided to offer 16 Guidelines to volunteers at Nalanda because we needed to offer them something besides Dharma. Not many of them came here for the Dharma. They came with different motivations. Universal education is suitable for all seekers. Those who don’t know why they came, and those who are looking for some answers.

The course ran on Saturdays for 8 weeks with each session lasting just over two hours. It was quite a small group of six participants. I decided not to allow people to “drop into” sessions without completing the whole course. I felt that this was important for maintaining the group’s stability.

At the very beginning, I stressed the importance of practising between sessions, and to my delight, they enthusiastically embraced the “homework.” I began by sharing a little of my own story so that participants got to know me a bit. Being open encourages a spirit of openness in the group. This helped to create safety and trust within the group.

The group was harmonious and not too big for me to handle. They had enough time and space to ask questions and to share their experience all within the time limit for each session. I could see that with bigger groups, I would probably need to shorten some discussions. It helped that the group was already working together as volunteers and was in fact one of the best volunteer groups we have had at Nalanda.

Our sessions took place in the afternoon just after lunch so sometimes we felt a bit sleepy. Halfway through the course, I had the idea of asking someone who knows tai chi to offer this to the group during the middle of the session. The 10 minutes of tai chi worked very nicely and was appreciated by the volunteers. Personally, I found that I felt more energetic after that short exercise.

I have also noticed participants filling out their learning logs throughout the course. It is another way to integrate their learning and to reflect.

After the 8 sessions were completed, the group continued meeting each week for discussions on the 16 Guidelines. These weekly discussions and sharing will continue until the time when the volunteers move on from Nalanda. Actually, few of them became Basic Program students at Nalanda.

I plan to continue offering the course to volunteers each year in the same pattern as before. Perhaps opening the course up to those outside the Monastery who are not volunteers providing they can commit to completing all the sessions.

Another option for those who live outside the Monastery is to offer the course over 2 days with the support of another facilitator, for example as a weekend retreat.

One of the volunteers, Omar, shared his experience of the course:-

“I’ve very much enjoyed the 16 Guidelines course in its ability to present wholesome and relatable content. You don’t need to be a Buddhist to understand the shared values we can adopt that can unite all of us as a human family. The class has been a healthy reminder to get in touch with the divine, pure nature that we all carry through our everyday life.”

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