Thursday evenings
September 24–October 22, 2026
6:00–7:30p
You’ve got the meditation app. Maybe you had a streak going before you dropped it. This is five weeks, in a room, with other people who don’t know what they’re doing either. No badges. Nobody optimizing your calm for you. We start from Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s Rebel Buddha and learn to actually sit and pay attention to our minds, which is harder than it sounds. You leave with fifteen minutes a day you’ll actually do. It’s not on your phone.
Details
In this introductory course we aspire to give the students confidence in meditation as a practice and to support them in creating a fifteen minute (or longer) daily meditation practice that they will want to continue when the course is completed. The course also offers students engaging and beneficial experiences of studying and reflecting on the essence of the Buddha’s teachings as a support for their lives and of meditation in the context of a sangha community.
We will use Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche’s book, Rebel Buddha, as a guideline for basic Buddhist tenets and the practice of meditation. Students are welcome to purchase Rebel Buddha, but it is not required.
Format
This course will be onsite at Nalanda West.
Questions?
Please contact practice.seattle@nalandabodhi.org if you have any questions about this course.
Text
Rebel Buddha is available for purchase from the Nalanda Store and at your favorite bookstore. Copies of readings will be provided for those who do not purchase the text.
Facilitator
Karunika Diane Biray Gregorio (she/they) has been meditating since 1994. She’s queer, unschooling her neurodivergent kid with her co-parent, living in an intentional cohousing community, and caring for her elderly mother. She doesn’t meditate because things are calm. She meditates so she can keep showing up for the people who need her to, and to live a full and meaningful life, not just survive. Diane has had the good fortune to be a student of Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, author of Rebel Buddha and founder of Nalandabodhi, for over two decades, and was appointed a meditation teacher there in 2020. She also has a Ph.D. from Harvard and leads the work of Emotional Rescue, which teaches people the resilience skills a lot of them wish someone had shown them before their last burnout.
The “Karunika” title: In 2021, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, with the support of the Nalandabodhi Acharyas, Lamas, and Mitras (the most senior group of designated teachers in Nalandabodhi), appointed over eighty long-time students to serve in a newly created supporting teacher’s role to assist in guiding our sangha members and to help share with the general public Nalandabodhi’s unique approach to spirituality. The Sanskrit term “Karunika” means “one who has compassion.” Possessing a wide range of backgrounds and sets of individual expertise, as well as formidable experience in the study and practice of the Buddhadharma, the Karunikas offer programs on themes connected to the paths of study, meditation, and mindful activity and on the “five fields of knowledge”: healing, the arts, language and communication, logic and epistemology, and the inner science of mind.
Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu., October 22, 2026
6:00 pm - 7:30 pm
Location Nalandabodhi Seattle @ Nalanda West
