Awakening Your Five Wisdom Energies: The Practice of Maitri with Jenny Bondurant

Maitri is a powerful practice for accessing the brilliance and sanity inherent in our everyday experience.

The five wisdom energies, also known as the five Buddha families, are traditional Vajrayana Buddhist teachings on how we can transform neurosis into wisdom.

Created by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche as a meditation practice for his Western students, Maitri Space Awareness practice involves practicing five postures in five rooms of different shapes and colors to evoke these energies. Manifesting as different personality types, in their wisdom aspect they are experienced as spaciousness, clarity, richness, passion, or skillful action, and in their confused aspects as dullness, anger, pride, grasping, or envy.

Working in the spacious and accommodating environment of Maitri, or loving kindness, one can begin to access the wisdom found at the heart of one’s most confused and difficult states of mind. We will practice meditation both individually and in groups. The weekend will include talks, discussions, and meditation instruction. Because it has 10 permanent rooms designed and constructed specifically for Maitri practice, Shambhala Mountain is uniquely positioned to offer this powerful retreat.

Besides bringing insight to one’s own psychology, this practice has been taught to psychologists and educators as a means of understanding how to work effectively with others. This program is open to meditation practitioners of all levels of experience.

Jenny Bondurant began practicing meditation in 1980, under the direction of her teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. She has completed the traditional Buddhist three-year retreat and is a senior teacher in the Shambhala Buddhist tradition. A frequent teacher of Maitri programs, she divides her time between teaching and retreat practice at her home in Colorado.


Extend Your Stay. We are offering a 25% housing discount for additional nights. Come early and relax before your program starts to savor your retreat experience.

Please arrive between 2 and 5pm on the 18th. No program activities are scheduled on the departure day. View Detailed Program Information.