The Shambhala Community Conversations Team

Dear Shambhala Friends,

Warm greetings from the Shambhala Community Conversations team. We are a growing group of about 35 community members organized around the following mission:

To strengthen community by giving voice to the diverse experiences and aspirations of our sangha, through conversations we design and facilitate.

We are delighted to share with you a Summary Report on 41 open Shambhala Community Conversations we held throughout 2021, which drew 515 Shambhala community members. This report records community perspectives and aspirations on the following key topics in our mandala:

• Sharing Shambhala: Identifying ways of moving forward together across differences in our community.
• Shambhala Practice and Study Paths: Discussing our aspirations for Shambhala’s practice and study paths.
• Shambhala Governance: Mapping our experiences and aspirations around governance, and identifying possible governance models for Shambhala.
• Belonging in Shambhala: Exploring our varied experiences of belonging and not belonging within Shambhala.

While these conversations do not and cannot present every perspective held by someone in our community, we have made our best effort to actively invite all segments of our community, and have been careful to include all perspectives we encountered in the summaries we are sharing.

We hope you will accept our invitation to read any section of this report that interests you, to hear the voices of the community on these key topics. You can also read full conversation transcripts anytime, and you can learn more about our work here.

Warmly,
The Shambhala Community Conversations Team

Dear community members,

Happy 2022! We’re excited to share with you our 2021 Community Conversations Summary Report. This document is a labor of love and a testament to the voices of the community throughout the previous year. It contains perspectives from 515 community members on these key topics:

Sharing Shambhala: Identifying ways of moving forward together across differences in our community.
Shambhala Practice and Study Paths: Discussing our aspirations for Shambhala’s practice and study paths.
Shambhala Governance: Mapping our experiences and aspirations around governance, and identifying possible governance models for Shambhala.
Belonging in Shambhala: Exploring our varied experiences of belonging and not belonging within Shambhala.

Please read any part of the document that draws you, and we are also asking that you all please share the link with 10-15 of your sangha acquaintances who might be interested in reading it. They may later receive a database mailing about the report, but this would be a personal invitation from you.

A few possible approaches:

You could say why these conversations have felt meaningful to you.
You could point to something in the document that might be of particular interest to them.
You could share it with the leadership at your local Center
You could send it to the newsletter person at your Center and ask them to include the link in the next newsletter

We are a grassroots endeavor, and we so appreciate your help sharing the community’s perspectives as recorded in this report. Here again is the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Hyt_z_GZlQ0By0qSEZKYLz3nTZsUfNBC/view

Thank you!

Warmly,
The Shambhala Community Conversations Team