Why is Buddha’s coming out process relevant to LGBTQIA’s today? Please join us for a special Queer Dharma group with a provocative talk by Craig Warren Smith a longtime senior teacher of Shambhala, who will also share intense mind/body exercises that will help us to glimpse the feminine and masculine qualities that are within our minds.

Buddha is fully and completely OUT. Rejecting his father’s control, Siddartha escaped in search for a way of life that conformed with his own inner truth. But “coming out” of his household was only the first step. The handsome young man studied under mentors and, each time, he disrupted their control. Sitting under a tree, watching his mind, he at last found full freedom.

This story indicates what Queer Dharma is all about. Each of us, not just those in the LGBTQIA communities, must disrupt the expectations and customs handed down to us and must “come out,” aided by the discipline of meditation, to find who we really are, and the life that really works for us.

$10 suggested donation

Craig Warren Smith, is a longtime senior teacher of Shambhala, who founded Queer Dharma in New York fifteen years ago. A former leader in the gay rights movement in the Stonewall era and for the past 40 years a teacher of Mindful Meditation. He recently returned from Asia and is a visiting lecturer at The University of Washington. for more info: http://www.digitaldivide.org/principals

Seattle Queer Dharma: http://seattle.shambhala.org/program-details/?id=289552