Vision: East is East and West is West

For 2500 years, Buddhist practitioners have been using meditation and other practices to cultivate the natural health and sanity of the mind, and to manifest such qualities as wisdom and compassion in their lives and their worlds.

More recently, the last 100 years have seen an unprecedented development in many fields of science in the west. Western wisdom, in the form of medicine, psychology and the physical sciences have completely transformed our lives and our views of the world.

Currently the western world is experiencing a tremendous continuous growth in interest in Buddhism as people have tried to both understand the Buddhist view of the nature of mind and apply the practices of meditation to their own lives. Upaya is an organisation founded to develop and organise programmes and teachings which transmit the wisdom and practices of ancient spiritual traditions in forms that are applicable and effective in our modern world. In doing so, we are bringing together the wisdom of the Eastern spiritual traditions with the modern wisdom of the West.

Bringing together the wisdom of the East and West

Such a process of bringing together these traditions requires deep training in both worlds. It is not a simple blending and mixing together of the insights of these traditions. Insight into the nature of mind can provide a deeper and more profound level of understanding of psychology, health or the creative process than Western traditions alone can offer us.

Trying to develop this deeper understanding while at the same time trying to apply it directly to working with others, to mental or physical health, or to our creative process makes the learning very direct and personal. Doing this, we cannot use a spiritual practice as an escape from the reality of our lives, but rather use it to relate to our reality more directly.

A personal journey

So taking part in such a training is a very personal journey. Those who have been practitioners of meditation, whether it is Buddhist meditation or other forms, find that the meditation becomes more personal, and we are directly confronted with applying the insights into our lives. Those who have previously trained in Western traditions such as psychology or healing will find a deeper meaning, a deeper understanding of the relation between the essence of mind and healing, or the essence of mind and the creative process.

Ultimately, such a journey is not just a spiritual journey. We could say that the genuine fruition of such work is that we see our lives, our work as a practice itself – there is no further need to look outside of our current everyday lives for spirituality. We can see our work as therapists, healers, artists as a continual exploration of the nature of mind, as an ongoing process of uncovering our innate wisdom and of cultivating health and sanity in others. There is no further need to separate. East can genuinely meet West.

Upaya’s History

Our Roots

An introduction to contemplative Psychology was organised in Hamburg in 1996, held by Melissa Moore, PhD. At this point she had already taught contemplative Psycholgy in the USA and Europe for many years. Inspired by the event, contact was established with a psychotherapeutic Practice in Bielefeld, Germany. Out of this first meeting, Elisabeth Fey, Dagmar Niehaus, Angelika Schulz and Hubert Backes developed, in cooperation with Melissa Moore, the idea of a training in contemplative Psychology, modeled on the existing courses at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado.

Karuna e.V.

Karuna e.V. was established as an organisation in 1998, and in the autumn of that year the first cycle of Karuna Training took place in Bielefeld.

The teaching faculty included Melissa Moore as well as Irini Rockwell, Paul Cashman and Han de Wit. In subsequent years more Training cycles took place in which the curriculum was developed and refined. Gisela von Keiser-Grenkowitz, another graduate of Naropa University, became the first German speaking member of faculty in 2000.

Upaya gGmbH

In order to give the coordination of the training programs a more professional basis, Upaya gGmbH was established in 2002. The founding members of Karuna e.V. were instrumental in achieving this. Along with the founding of Upaya, another program for contemplative healing, called  ‘Menla Training’, was developed. The main teachers were or are Christoph Klonk and Phil Weber. The first cycle of this training started in November 2004.

In 2003 Shambhala Europe took on the patronage of Upaya, being the european administrative branch of Shambhala International, the Buddhist lineage out of which Naropa University was founded.

Thank You!
Many people have, in the meantime, had a chance to attend the trainings. We would like to take the opportunity to thank all those who have contributed their energy, wisdom and love to this work and are still doing so. Without these people the project would never have been realized or even imagined. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks and our appreciation to all of you.

Upaya GgmbH Kartäuserwall 20, 50678 Köln Tel: +49 221 310 24 40