“If we transform our mind, everything we experience is transformed.”
–Mingyur Rinpoche
In this six-week online course, we will learn how to transform all experiences, even difficult thoughts and emotions, into sources of joy. In this first level, with Tergar Instructor Edwin Kelley as our guide, Mingyur Rinpoche will teach us how meditation can transform the way we relate to stressful situations and challenging emotions, and how to embrace all aspects of life with mindful awareness.
Tuesdays, 25 February to 1 April 2025, 6:30—8:30pm - Melbourne-Time
Note - Those wishing to take JOL1 at an earlier time can enroll in the online program with Tergar Instructor Myoshin Kelley beginning on January 6 with Tergar Washburn - Details here.
Meditation enables us to transform all experiences, even difficult emotions and painful thoughts, into sources of joy. The modern world has become fascinated with the practice of meditation. With all the hype and glossy images on magazine covers, it would be easy to think that meditation is about sitting in the right posture, using a special technique, or forcing the mind to be calm or relaxed all the time. But the real power of meditation isn’t in the method. It’s in shifting our perspective.
The key to this shift in perspective is awareness. In this 6-week workshop series, we will learn to transform our experience by exploring sensations, thoughts, emotions, and even awareness itself as supports for meditation.
This program offers step-by-step instructions that will benefit those new to meditation and inspire those who have an existing practice. The schedule for this workshop series includes video teachings by Mingyur Rinpoche, presentations by Tergar Instructor Edwin Kelley, as well as guided meditations and discussion. It is suitable for people of all faiths, as well as both beginning and experienced meditators.
This program offers step-by-step instructions that will benefit those new to meditation, or wishing to explore Mingyur Rinpoche's style of meditation.
The schedule for this workshop series includes video teachings by Mingyur Rinpoche, presentations by Tergar Instructor Edwin Kelley, as well as guided meditations and discussion.
For those of you who have taken JOL1 before, it is always helpful to revisit this material, as this level is so essential that it can be very helpful to take it no matter where on the path one is.
IMPORTANT - Please plan to come to all six sessions. People who do not attend the first session will not be able to attend the rest of the workshop series without permission from the course facilitators. If you are unable to attend, please let us know as soon as possible.
Edwin Kelley
Edwin Kelley attended his first meditation retreat near Perth, Australia in 1975. He later pursued a career as a public accountant and in 1992 went to Burma to undertake a six-month period of intensive meditation practice with meditation master Chanmyay Sayadaw. While practicing in Burma he ordained temporarily as a Buddhist monk.
In 1994 he was hired as Director of Operations by one of America’s best known meditation retreat centers, the Insight Meditation Society (IMS), in Barre, MA. Eighteen months later he was appointed Executive Director of IMS and served in that capacity until 2003 when he resigned to pursue further long-term intensive meditation practice.
Edwin first encountered Vajrayana Buddhism in Dharamsala, India in 1993 and became a student of Mingyur Rinpoche in 1998. He has a post graduate diploma in Buddhist Studies from the University of Sunderland in the UK.
In 2009, Edwin and his wife Myoshin, moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to help establish the global Tergar Meditation Community, where he then served variably as Executive, and Co-Executive Director, and CFO, until retiring from his administrative role with Tergar International at the end of 2022. He now lives on the Sapphire Coast in southern NSW, Australia.