Earlier this month, Netanel and Rory traveled to the Fetzer Institute in Kalamazoo, MI, for a final meeting of the current phase of Fetzer’s “Shared Sacred Story” project. Over the past few years, Fetzer gathered nine scholar-practitioner teams to represent different religious traditions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Sikhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, Islam, and Indigenous traditions. They asked Netanel and Rory to lead a team for the Interspiritual ‘tradition,’ which will appear alongside the other traditional religions in the project. Each team wrote a “Shared Sacred Story” from their traditions, and Charis’ Alejandra Warden was also part of the Interspiritual team. It has been a truly wonderful project, made most rewarding by people involved in it, and the deepening relationships and intimate community we have built over the years. We love how our Interspiritual story turned out, and are very excited to share it with you in the next year as it comes to publication in multiple media formats! Till next time…
The Keating-Schachter Center was pleased to co-sponsor (along with the Fetzer Institute) the Venerable Pannavati Bhikkuni at Naropa’s Electric Black Earth Festival, Sunday, April 21, 2024. The Venerable Pannavati from Heartwood Refuge in North Carolina is one of the country’s most important and celebrated Dharma teachers. Speaking to students and festival participants, the Venerable Pannavati talked about the opportunity of the moment—“You can’t learn this in a book; but that’s not to say that you can’t learn it at Naropa, because some things are happening here!” See video from this talk on Facebook.
In November 2023, Charis held our latest Dialogue in partnership with All Souls Interfaith Gathering at High Acres Farm in Shelburne, Vermont. We came together to discuss “Contemplative Living and Life in the World,” where we looked at the practices, structures, and values of contemplative life that may be relevant to the way we live as individuals in our society, and the societal and environmental issues we face together. We also held two public panels where we shared highlights of our discussions and took questions from the community.
Duncan Anderson Ven. Pannavati Bhikkuni Joshin Byrnes Rev. Don Chatfield Rev. Laura Engelken Samantha Krezinski Dr. Rory McEntee Pir Netanel Miles-Yepez Ramon Parish Brenda Salgado Alejandra Warden
In our latest episode, Accessing Our Divine Nature: Exploring Hindu Tantra, we caught up with Nataraja Kallio, a scholar-practitioner of Yoga and Hindu tantra. He is the Chair of the B.A. Yoga Studies program at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, and the co-designer of Naropa’s M.A. Yoga Studies program.
In this episode, we discuss Kallio’s upbringing in an American Hindu spiritual community, his travels in India and meetings with his guru, the origins of Hindu tantra (utilizing “the fecund material of our existence”), the spectrum of tantric deities, the transformation of intense emotions to crack the shell of identity, the pros and cons of asceticism, desire, the story of Shankaracharya and the exploration of the flesh, the story of Shiva and the forest ascetics, authentic and inauthentic tantra, neo-tantra and the western obsession with sex, cultural appropriation, epicureanism and sacralization, the ‘tantric’ dimension of all religions, and the treasure of spiritual friendship.
Is religion coming to an end? No, says religion scholar and interspiritual pioneer Netanel Miles-Yépez, it is an old and outworn idea of religion as “an-end-in-itself” that is coming to an end. “Religion,” he says, “will go on; it is how we relate to it that will change, and must change, if we are to reclaim its genuine usefulness to us.” In The End of Religion and Other Writings, Netanel Miles-Yépez has gathered a collection of his essays and interviews on the nature and purpose of religion, the depths and hope of interreligious dialogue, as well as his writings on Neo-Hasidism and Jewish Renewal from 1999-2019. In these highly original essays, we see the work of a brilliantly creative thinker in the early stage of his career, boldly asserting new frames of understanding for many of the issues spiritual seekers struggle with today.
Nature’s Corner from Charis Mandala Sanctuary
Meet our fox friend who frequently visits us around the property.
Often seen nibbling on berries, the majestic trickster has been caught with a mouth full of rabbit!
The fox likes to remind us of our cleverness and to think creatively when navigating life’s changes.
