Applied Buddhist Psychology

The Wisdom of Emotions with Khensur Thupten Tenzin Rinpoche (Hybrid)
2025-03-15 09:00 - 11:00 UTC | Distance Learning
In The Wisdom of Emotions, Khensur Rinpoche Thupten Tenzin will explore the anatomy of emotions, revealing how mental states will shape emotional responses. Drawing from Shantideva’s A Guide to the Bodhisattva Way of Life, he will share profound insights into working with our emotional experiences to foster a balanced and stable response to life’s challenges. Khensur Rinpoche, a revered Tantric master, will demonstrate how Vajrayana practice can help us connect with the core qualities of strong emotions, enabling us to transform them into powerful teachers. Additionally, he will offer practices to help loosen the attachments often embedded within difficult emotions, allowing us to approach them with greater awareness and equanimity.
Saturday, March 15, 2025
9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific (12:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Applied Buddhist Psychology 2: The Enlightened Mind (Hybrid)
2025-02-08 09:00 - 11:00 UTC | Distance Learning
The Applied Buddhist Psychology 2 workshop will train you in practices that will help you generate positive emotions more consistently and neutralize emotional reactivity. Counseling professionals will find this course useful for working with their clients.
Saturday, February 8 at 9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific
Saturday, March 1 at 9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.: Cultivating Resilience in Difficult Times (Live Stream)
2025-02-02 10:00 - 11:30 UTC | Distance Learning
In these complex and volatile times, many of us are finding it difficult to steady ourselves and stay positive. Anxiety and depression are on the rise, globally, and there is a collective angst rippling through societies due to increased worldwide conflicts, economic fears, and environmental decline. In this talk, respected author, Buddhist scholar, and former Tibetan Buddhist monk, Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D., shares his wisdom on facing adversity and cultivating a calm and positive mindset. Drawing from his extensive knowledge of Buddhist practices including Mind Training and Lojong as well as his experience as a young monk living in exile, he will offer his thoughts on these turbulent times and how to hold onto aspiration for the common good and cultivate a positive vision for the future.
Sunday, February 2, 2025
10:00 am – 11:30 am Pacific (1:00 pm – 2:30 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

New Year’s Meditation Retreat (In Person and Live Stream)
2025-01-12 10:00 - 13:00 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
Join Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. for the annual New Year’s Meditation Retreat. In this retreat, you will focus on the past year, learn how to better discern the main teachings that have emerged out of your experiences and incorporate those teachings to set your course for the coming year with clarity and intention. Each meditation retreat begins with a Samatha or mindfulness meditation for centering and calming the mind, then moves into a Vipassana style meditation in which you will focus on the theme of the retreat. This meditation is appropriate for beginners and experienced meditators alike.
Sunday, January 12
10:00 am – 1:00 pm
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Applied Buddhist Psychology 1: Entering the Stream (Hybrid)
2024-09-18 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | CA
The Applied Buddhist Psychology 1 workshop provides an introduction to Buddhist concepts and practices to help foster a sense of self-acceptance, inner peace, and belonging. Counseling professionals will find this course useful for working with their clients.
Wednesdays, September 18 & October 2
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm Pacific (8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.﻿

Psychology of the Bodhisattva (Hybrid)
2024-07-15 09:00 - 11:00 UTC | Distance Learning
The Applied Buddhist Psychology Retreats are day-long courses involving lecture and meditation. These retreats take advanced Buddhist concepts and teachings and apply them in ways designed to help students transform psycho-spiritual imbalance and move to greater levels of realization and understanding about the nature of the self. Counseling professionals will find these retreats useful for working with their clients.
Saturday, July 15 at 9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific
Saturday, July 29 at 9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Advanced Buddhist Practice Instruction (Live Stream)
2024-05-21 17:00 - 18:30 UTC | Distance Learning
This class is for students who have taken Applied Buddhist Psychology 1: Entering the Stream, Applied Buddhist Psychology 2: The Enlightened Mind, The Psychology of the Bodhisattva, The Alchemy of Enlightenment: The Five Wisdoms, and Advanced Meditations with the Paramitas. It offers them the opportunity to review all the lectures and meditations for those classes for six months while meeting with Isa once a month for Practice Instruction. Isa will also offer short lectures more advanced concepts such as The Five Aggregates, The Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, Deity Meditation, and more during the Practice Instruction meetings. The class is designed to help you direct, support, and expand your meditation and practice.
Tuesdays, May 21, June 18, July 23, August 20, September 17, October 22, 2024
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Pacific (8:00 pm – 9:30 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

The Five Aggregates: Who am I? (Hybrid)
2024-04-20 09:00 - 11:00 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
In this class, Khensur Rinpoche Thupten Tenzin, assisted by Isa Gucciardi, PhD, breaks down the nature of the self by defining each of the five aggregates – Form, Feeling, Perception, Mental concepts, and Consciousness. Form begins with understanding the physical body. Feeling begins with exploring the nature of emotional response. Perception begins with exploring how we understand experience through the five senses. Mental concepts focus on how we compose our thoughts and develop intention and personal will. And the exploration of consciousness helps us understand how we hold awareness of our situation based on the first four aggregates. These lectures are offered in Tibetan by Khensur Rinpoche with translation by Niyma Tsam.
Saturday, April 20, 2024
9:00 am – 11:00 am Pacific (12:00 pm – 2:00 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Applied Buddhist Psychology 2: The Enlightened Mind (Hybrid)
2024-02-12 17:00 - 19:00 UTC | Distance Learning
The Applied Buddhist Psychology 2 workshop will train you in practices that will help you generate positive emotions more consistently and neutralize emotional reactivity. Counseling professionals will find this course useful for working with their clients.
Tuesday, February 12 at 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm Pacific
Tuesday, February 26 at 5:00 pm – 7:00 pm Pacific
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Advanced Meditations with the Paramitas (Hybrid)
2024-02-10 11:00 - 12:30 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
This meditation intensive is designed to deepen your understanding of the Paramitas specifically and of the enlightened state generally. The understandings that can emerge from these meditative processes have the potential to inform your everyday practice in powerful ways. You will be able to expand your capacity to hold a stable, sustainable connection to higher consciousness when engaging with ordinary reality matters.
Saturday, February 10
11:00 am – 12:30 pm Pacific (12:00 pm – 1:30 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Year End Meditation with Isa Gucciardi (Live Stream & In Person)
2023-12-16 10:00 - 13:00 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
﻿As the year comes to a close, we have the opportunity to come together reflect back over the last year and set intentions for the coming year. This class is a combination of sitting meditation and guided meditation designed to help you understand the challenges of the past year in more depth and guide you in setting a course forward with purpose and intention.
Saturday, December 16, 2023
10:00 am – 1:00 pm Pacific
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.﻿

Winter Solstice Drum Circle (In Person and Live Stream)
2023-12-10 17:00 - 18:00 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
Our drum circles are held four times a year on the solstices and equinoxes. The focus of our circles is on healing for individuals, the community, and the earth. Ours is the longest running drum circle in the San Francisco Bay Area, having started in 1998.
The format for the circle includes calling power, drum circle meditation (or journey), healing circle and closing circle. Please note that this is not a jam or free form drumming (except for the calling of power). We follow an ancient practice of altering consciousness using a repetitive beat. There are no counter beats, harmonies, or melodies.
You do not have to be experienced in drumming or shamanism to attend. If you have a shamanic journey practice, you will be able to journey during the drumming circle, though experience with the shamanic journey is not required. If you are interested in learning more about journeying, you can find information about the Sacred Stream’s Shamanic Journey class here: The Shamanic Journey.
If you have a drum or rattle, please bring it. Some drums and rattles will be available to borrow.
Sunday, December 10, 2023
5:00 pm – 6:00 pm
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Worlds Beyond Death (In Person and Live Stream)
2023-11-18 09:00 - 16:30 UTC | Foundation of the Sacred Stream Center, 2149, Berkeley, CA, United States
This powerful workshop focuses on the transition of spirit from form into formlessness. Through teachings, meditations, and practices drawn from shamanism and Buddhism, this highly experiential workshop helps bring the often uncomfortable issue of death into a compassionate field where greater understanding can unfold. Taught only once every two years, this workshop offers insights into the experience of death from a variety of perspectives and assists participants in exploring their own attitudes and expectations of death.
Saturday & Sunday, November 18 & 19, 2023 (in person & live stream)
9:00 am – 4:30 pm Pacific Time &
Thursday, November 30, 2023 (live stream only)
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Visionary Experience: Exploring the Intersection of Buddhism and Shamanism
2023-10-07 08:00 - 14:00 UTC | Distance Learning
This course will help you to understand and develop your own visionary capacities through the lens of two ancient traditions where visionary experience has been the cornerstone of practice and self-development for thousands of years. You will learn about the general history and practice of both traditions and then focus on learning different methods of developing and attaining visionary experience, and honing your inner vision, in each of them. These are grounded, yet expansive methods which you could apply in your personal or professional life. This class is particularly helpful if you are trying to organize your capacity to understand and develop your visionary skills, and is suitable for visionaries at all levels of development.
Pre-Workshop Instruction + Meditation starts Saturday, October 7, 2023
LIVE Workshop starts Saturday, October 21, 2023 @ 8:00 am – 2:00 pm Pacific (11:00 am – 5:00 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

The Highway of the Conquerors: Teachings on the Mahamudra (Hybrid)
2023-09-24 10:00 - 12:00 UTC | Distance Learning
The Mahamudra is a direct method for looking beyond our thoughts to the very nature of the mind. These teachings seek to reveal the mystery of our experience by offering different ways of understanding the mind, the self, and the nature of reality. In this class, this task is approached both conceptually and through meditation with the guidance of Khensur Rinpoche Thupten Tenzin. Thupten Jinpa, PhD., is a sponsor of this workshop and will also contribute an important lecture. Isa Gucciardi will assist with practice instruction.
Sundays, September 24 & October 22, 2023
10:00 am – 12:00 pm Pacific Time
Additional Practice Instruction with Isa on:
Tuesday, September 12, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm Pacific Time
Saturday, November 11, 1:30pm – 3:00 pm Pacific Time
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.

Applied Buddhist Psychology 1: Entering the Stream (Hybrid)
2023-09-18 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Distance Learning
The Applied Buddhist Psychology 1 workshop provides an introduction to Buddhist concepts and practices to help foster a sense of self-acceptance, inner peace, and belonging. Counseling professionals will find this course useful for working with their clients.
Mondays, September 18 & October 2
5:00 pm – 7:00 pm Pacific (8:00 pm – 10:00 pm Eastern)
Registration and additional information via sacredstream.org.
