The Laughing Buddha Sangha
The Laughing Buddha Sangha:
- Address: 2046 Fourteenth Street Santa Monica CA 90405
- Tradition: Theravada, Sri Lanka Amarapura Nikaya
- Affiliation: Dharma Vijaya Vihara Los Angeles
- Phone: 310 450 2268
- Website: www.zentrance.com
- Spiritual Director: Akasa Levi (Phone: 310 450 2268)
- Notes and Events:
The LAUGHING BUDDHA SANGHA offers a very eclectic "Inquiry into Self" practice combining the calm observation approach of traditional Vipassana Mindfulness with the crazy wisdom irrationality of Zen Non-Duality which short-circuits the obsessive self-absorbed, self-identified mind.
Newcomers: Beginners very welcome! You will be very patiently guided. Newcomers are asked to please inquire first by phone to see if this group is possibly even for you. This sitting group encourages highly inquisitive, unflappable people with a natural, deep love of learning who relish the abstract, and even the absurd - with a genuine taste for the indefinable existential stuff.
Experienced Meditators who are seeking a much deeper questioning into Self - and a de-mystifying, open-minded, caring conversation into Wisdom, Empathy and Spiritual Reality in our Western life-style + some poetry and laughing! Our practice is informed by traditional Theravada Buddha Dharma for clarity of view.
"BUDDHA: The JOYOUS ICONOCLAST" Study Series – offers a much more outside-the-box-Buddhism! Heart filled 'heresy' for a more maverick spirited inner-quest – for nourishing an iconoclast intelligence and compassionate critical thinking with a caring heart thru some refreshing, risky, even radical spiritual considerations of Reality by developing a Dharma informed mind.
The Open Meditation Class is 7:30 to 9:30 PM, Monday Evenings and Includes: Guided Instruction a 35 minute Silent Meditation Dharma text study with Q&A dialogue Metta-style Loving Kindness Meditation with sacred poetry to conclude. The Core Study Group meets with Akasa on Tuesday evening, The Zen-Men Group on Thursdays. Sangha Shabat one Friday evening a month. Please Phone for Details.
Akasa Levi was one of the few Americans of the counter culture generation that lived a decade in Asia during the 70's, to be directly with the last living spiritual teachers of the pre-global era. He was a Buddhist forest monk for six years - trained and ordained into the Theravada monastic lineage by the revered Maha Nayake Ananda Maitreya of Sri Lanka. Originally a Vajrayana initiate of Lama Thubten Yeshe and Zopa Rinpoche at Kopan, Nepal - and later, a Vipassana student of S.N. Goenka and Anagarika Munindra in Bodhgaya, India - and practicing Non-Duality Advaita in satsang with Nisargadatta Maharaj in Bombay. Akasa is a Bodhi-Acharya lineage holder of the Theravada teaching transmission. He is known for his spontaneity and wry unpredictable humor.
For more information call 310 450 2268.
You can also visit his webpage at http://zentrance.com