Lama Liz Monson is teaching a year-long course at Barre Center For Buddhist Studies titled “Writing Liberation: The Buddhist Practice of Spiritual Autobiography.” Lama Liz, when recently interviewed about this class, described it as “a program where we explore that process [of writing the rang rnam, or the ‘self-liberation life story’] and take the time to look deeply into our own life experiences as occasions for reflection and liberation. It’s not hard to see, if we’re truly dedicated to our paths now, how most significant events in our lives have been stepping stones in one way or another along a spiritual path—or have been part of that spiritual path all the way along.”

This course includes three 5-day residential retreats at BCBS (November 2021, April and October, 2022) and online monthly writing sessions and check-ins.

For more information and to apply, please click here: buddhistinquiry.org/writing-liberation. Applications Close: August 29, 2021

This course explores writing spiritual autobiography as a liberative practice. For centuries, Buddhist practitioners, like others on diverse spiritual paths, have used the practice of writing spiritual autobiography as a powerful tool for increasing self-knowledge and awareness; for overcoming self-deception; and for bringing into view the journey of the spiritual self from suffering and ignorance to clarity, peace, and liberation. Particularly in Buddhism, writing a spiritual autobiography can be understood as a self-reflexive act through which the writer strives to find meaning in and metabolize the events of her life as transformative experiences along the path to fulfilling her deepest human potential. Together, we will explore how bringing into being a narrative spiritual self through writing can provide us with an imaginative arena within which to grapple with the struggles, sufferings, joys, and fruitions of the soteriological journey.

Here is the interview with Lama Liz in BCBS’s Insight Journal:

Technologies of Transformation: The Power of Spiritual Autobiography