Plan your visit

We would like to help make your first visit as comfortable as possible. First, everyone is welcome at our center. Prior to your visit, though, you may have many questions. Check out our Frequently Asked Questions for answers. If your question is not answered, please feel free to contact us.

 

A Public Meditation session is a great opportunity for a first visit. These sessions occur weekly at our Lakewood Location (17309 Madison Ave, Lakewood) on Sunday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Public Meditation sessions lasts 1 hour. During this time, there is a timekeeper who rings a gong to begin the session. During Open Meditation we sit silently for 15 to 20 minutes. This is followed by silent walking for 10 minutes. This is followed by another sitting session for 15 to 20 minutes. On Tuesday evenings we begin and end each meditation session with 5-10 minutes of chanting. You are welcome but not obligated to participate in chants. Feel free to sit silently during the chanting, if you wish.

Check out our center hours for times.

Testimonial

I had read from multiple sources that in order to further one’s meditation practice it’s beneficial to seek instruction. This was my reason for pursuing a meditation center, and upon finding Shambhala, that’s all I’d expected to receive. I can admit now that I was taken aback by the chanting. It sounded cultist, and I didn’t dare join in only to butcher half the words like “Jambudvipa”, but the oddity didn’t discourage me into leaving and never coming back. During the book discussion to follow, there was an air of friendliness and humility to everything that was said. Nobody was conceited, spouting their opinion about what they “knew” to be the truth. Everyone’s thoughts were considered. The group offered a warm and inviting atmosphere that, along with the finger food, lured me back the following week and then the week after that for months to come. I was hooked.

Shambhala is more than a center to improve your meditation technique and it goes much further than the teachings of the dharma. It’s a community of those seeking goodness in themselves and to share that gift with others. There’s a radiance of warm-heartedness that we all make the effort to maintain which is offered to those ever in need. How many countless times have we all been saved from our own chaotic minds because of one visit to the center? Membership of the Shambhala lineage is something dear and rare. Our community is an embodiment of the mythological city of virtue that we strive to emulate, and we’re all so fortunate to have discovered such a precious place.

– Connor