Hermitage To Host Summer Programming

By ERIC SANTOMAURO-STENZEL
COOPERSTOWN

The Samye Hermitage, a Tibetan Buddhist center on Glimmerglen Road, is set to host its second summer immersion program this year. Participants will “live and learn in a supportive environment that integrates study, meditation, embodiment practices, nature connection, and traditional Himalayan arts,” according to the group.

Starting with arrivals on June 7, the Samye Institute Summer Immersion program for Buddhist Arts and Sciences—with participation options for a week, three weeks, or the full six weeks—is expected by organizers to draw participants from both around the world and the surrounding area.

Samye Hermitage Director Peter Woods pitched the program to those “interested in learning how to work with not only your mind, but your speech and your body” in a way that is “grounded in a contemplative approach.” He added that “it’s not about converting people. It’s really about us learning the tools that we can use to transform ourselves and benefit others,” like meditation, Tibetan medicine, traditional arts, and philosophy.

Teachings aim to combine “Buddhist philosophy and practice with the outer arts and sciences—logic and debate, language and translation, medicine and healing, astrology and geomancy, fine arts and craftsmanship,” according to a flyer. Depending on the program and whether a student lives on the campus, tuition ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars with limited scholarships available.

The final week will bring Phakchok Rinpoche as a seminar teacher, anticipated to draw the largest audience. A spiritual leader based in the Samye Monastery in Tibet, Woods said Phakchok Rinpoche “asked me to come to Cooperstown and to help take care of the center here” around three years ago.

Woods described the vision for Samye Hermitage’s 25-acre campus as a “living laboratory” for “your mind and your learning process.”

Daily program schedules will include personal and group meditations, lessons, service activities, and meals.

Woods, himself a longtime student of Tibetan Buddhism, sees Cooperstown as a perfect college town without a college. Founded in 2009 by the name of “Rangjung Yeshe Gomde Cooperstown,” Woods said the center has “always offered classes to the community for free.” But when it came to thinking of the future of the center as he settled into the job, “the first thought that came to mind was education.”