Last month I was lucky enough to attend a fantastic weekend workshop by Sasha Pubants.
The last time I saw Sasha I was roughly a year ago, sitting opposite him in Base Santi Maha Sangha exam.
While that was a actually a lot of fun, it was nice this time to be able concentrate purely on trying to absorb as much as possible of what he was saying!
The topic this time was "Shine and Lhagthong with Emphasis on practices in the context of Semdzins of Santi Maha Sangha".
Sasha clearly has a huge wealth of knowledge and he didn't seem to be holding anything back. The Friday evening set the scene and started big, covering a lot about how Dzogchen is structured. He particularly noted how lucky we are the perspective that Rinpoche presents Dzogchen to us is not at all common, and how unique and valuable it is.
The Saturday started by delving into Shine and Lhagthong. I particularly remember Sasha recounting a memory of when he was swimming with Rinpoche and how the movement of the water gave him a profound insight as to how the two principles relate to each other. He put a lot of importance on to using terminology precisely to avoid confusion.
After that we moved on the various Semdzin practices. Sasha would explain the basic principles, he would (patiently!) answer our questions, we would practice.
It really helped to make a lot things I had been a little fuzzy about come in to focus.
All the way through the weekend, a clear sense of the passion he feels about Dzogchen came across in every word. I left felt re-enthused about the practice and full of practice advise about how to proceed.
I look forward to having him back in the UK in the hopefully not too distant future!
