Bringing Up Boddhisatvas
The science and spirit of mindful caregiver
10 week live online course with Dr. Chris Willard - Starting late fall 2023!
Join award winner author, psychologist, Harvard Medical school faculty and father, Dr. Christopher Willard in this ten week interactive course. Over the course of our time together, we will explore parenting and caregiving at the intersections of the Buddhist wisdom and contemporary neuroscience, to raise a generation of adults with Buddhist Values that are more relevant than ever to the 21st century.
In our small cohort, this transformational program will help us uncover our families’ deepest values. We will live these ourselves and share them with our children to grow up more compassionate, caring, mindful and resilient. By the end of the course you’ll have put wisdom into practice, and find yourself in a close community of like-minded caregivers.
Each week includes a series of short video or audio to watch or listen on your own time, a guided journal with prompts, and a live discussion with other caregivers facilitated by each week Dr. Willard. Small group and dyad activities will help us deepen our parenting practice and connections, while the larger group discussion will support questions and provoke reflection in and change in our parenting.
Explore a different topic from Buddhist values, with the contemporary neuroscience, along with action points to bring your practice “off the cushion.”
1. The Power of Generosity – Cultivating a generous heart in our families and communities, from generosity of sharing the privilege we have, to a boundaried generosity of wisdom, kindness and spirit.
2. Mindful Ethics for the 21st Century- what can wisdom and science tell us about sex, drugs and rock and roll? A lot it turns out, especially as we take stock the values we grew up with, and the ones we want to shed and add going forward.
3. Simplicity– The Koan of Less is More : How sorting our material consumption, emotional baggage, and our environmental footprint all cultivate harmony and wise consumption in a consumer society. What’s more, we can put an end to the worship of “busy-ness” that plagues so many families in the modern world.
4. Wisdom – What Wisdom is in the Beginner’s Mind? Can we build ourselves a better brain? Cultivating wise and compassionate perspectives on our experiences will serve ourselves and our children well as we discover the neuroscience of wisdom.
- Honesty and Integrity: What Sets Us Free: Young people face more temptations that ever to wander from a path of integrity. How can we find and live in integrity according to our deepest values in a culture that pushes adults and young people to take ethical shortcuts?
- Persistence: How The Buddha Discovered Growth Mindset: What are the conditions under which adults and children alike keep moving toward goals that matter, and don’t give up in the face of an overwhelmingly challenging and complex world?
- Honesty and Integrity: What Sets Us Free: Young people face more temptations that ever to wander from a path of integrity. How can we find and live in integrity according to our deepest values in a culture that pushes adults and young people to take ethical shortcuts?
- Persistence: How The Buddha Discovered Growth Mindset: What are the conditions under which adults and children alike keep moving toward goals that matter, and don’t give up in the face of an overwhelmingly challenging and complex world?
- Compassion: Karma and The Kindness Contagion: Perhaps less than a mindful world, what we need is a compassionate world. What do both science and traditional spirituality have to teach us about cultivating compassion, and the benefits of doing so?
- Equanimity: Finding Balance in a Broken World: If we’re only as happy as least happy child, how do we roll with the 10,000 sorrows and joys of caregiving? How and when do we let go? These questions and more guide us through our final week.
