The summer Werk offering unfolded the Seven Homecomings as a path of training in energies of protection and cutting through confusion. Specifically, Lama Rod emphasized:

• Experiencing the dynamic relationship between refuge and protection

• Exploring how refuge and protection empower us to rest beyond patterns of dualistic fixation

• Embodying the Seven Homecomings as means of clarifying awareness while refining our ability to cut through binary confusion and abolish the carceral state. 

The Fall Werk offering will center tantric teachings about fear and the ways dualistic confusion blocks our ability to embody the fullness of freedom, power, and awakened care. Through the profound example of Ma Tara, Mother Liberator, Lama Rod will clarify how deity practice in its many diverse expressions can help us abolish conditioned patterns of carceral logic in our own bodies. Through this werk we are invited to ground our practice in liberation as the indestructible foundation we call upon in all situations. Specifically, Lama Rod will emphasize:

• Deepening our exploration of the creative power of Ma Tara and other expressions of deity practice (like Medicine Buddha and Chenrezig) to help us reclaim the integrity of unconditional love.

• Tending our direct relationships with the Land, which have been distorted by forces of colonialism and the carceral state. 
  
• Clarifying our attunement to the ways carceral logic weaponizes binaries, like hope and fear, to undermine even our most sincere commitments to personal liberation and spiritual abolition. 
• Refining our capacity to be in our agency in ways that allow us to release dualistic patterns as they emerge, thereby stabilizing the embodiment of freedom regardless of external conditions. 

 The Winter Werk offering is a special opportunity to explore the relationships between rest, grief, and freedom through training in the practice of Mahamudra (“Great Seal”) meditation. As one of the most important gifts of the Indo-Tibetan tantric lineage, Mahamudra is an embodied, non-conceptual practice rooted in a fresh, unfabricated experience of the nature of our own minds.

Through guided contemplation and instructions of the tradition, Lama Rod will invite participants into direct relationship with the nature of their minds – a ground of spacious, fluid, and unbounded awareness. From this foundation of personal experience, we will train collectively in attuning to the qualities of Mahamudra as an unconditional support for resting amidst the waves of life, death and change. 

In addition, Lama Rod will emphasize:

• Learning how to relate with everything that emerges in practice without needing to rely on conceptual labels nor get caught in dualistic patterns of carceral thinking. This entails empowering our capacity to rest freely without clinging to any aspects of our experience, including heartbreak, grief, and despair as well as comfort, love, and joy.
• Strengthening clarity and awakened care through working directly with the realities of death, dying, and impermanence as vital expressions of freedom. In this way, Mahamudra invites greater intimacy with the spontaneous, non-conceptual clarity and awakened care of the entire phenomenal world.
• Engaging the Land as a trustworthy refuge throughout all seasons of change by relating to the Earth and other elements as guides and accomplices in spiritual abolition. This includes exploring Mahamudra as the open, creative ground of deity practices like Medicine Buddha, Ma Tara, and Chenrezig.
• Honoring “Old Saints” of the Mahamudra tradition like Milarepa, Padampa Sangye, Machig Labdron, and others who learned how to embody freedom and then worked to protect these precious teachings across time and space so they could be shared with future generations (see The New Saints, pg. 19). 

The first Werk offering of 2025 will be a deep dive into embodying the power of the five elements of Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space as medicines for personal healing, spiritual abolition, and collective liberation.

Together, these elements form an essential aspect of Indo-Tibetan tantric spiritual practice. Within this tradition, the elements are especially important for understanding deity practices like Medicine Buddha, Ma Tara, and Chenrezig. Through the elemental praxis of deity work it becomes possible to release our carceral conditioning and reclaim the liberation which is the birthright of all beings. Werking with the example of Medicine Buddha, Lama Rod will weave insights from classical Vajrayana dharma, spiritual herbalism, and ancestral wisdom to help participants connect directly and intimately with their own expression of the elements as medicine for healing and spiritual abolition.

This offering is ideal for those who:

• Want to deepen their lived experience of the elements in their daily lives and in their work in the world.  
• Are interested in learning more about the liberatory dynamics of deity practice and how a deeper experience of the elements enhances these practices. 
• Seek to relate to the elements within their bodies and our collective environments as fierce accomplices in the multi-generational labor of spiritual abolition.

The Spring Werk session is inspired by the profound teachings of Mandala Offering, a transformative practice of visionary imagination and ritual embodiment dedicated to freeing all beings everywhere without exception. 

Join Lama Rod and fellow practitioners to experience how this radical training deepens our capacity to say “yes” to liberation and joy. The practice of mandala offering helps us engage with every aspect of experience as an opulent and abundant offering given freely to the entire universe (seen and unseen), in order to dissolve dualistic conditioning and patterns of reactivity. 

Embodying this ethic of unconditional love and generosity fuels our agency to skillfully abolish everything that limits liberation in daily life, in our relationships with others, and in alliance with the Land. Over time, we decolonize our experience of phenomenal reality by reclaiming the full radiance of joy, clarity, and awakened care that is the actual inheritance of all beings. 

Specifically Lama Rods emphasizes:

• Exploring aspects of classical mandala offering from the Indo-Tibetan tantric tradition and how this lineage informs the werk/work of The New Saints in these times.
• Learning how to weave mandala offering into formal practice and throughout every aspect of daily living and dying. 
• Attuning to the somatic, perceptual, creative, and political aspects of mandala offering for collective liberation and mutual aid.
• Calling in support and joyful inspiration from the Land, plant allies, ancestral wisdoms, and the unseen. 

For the Summer 2025 Werk offering, Lama Rod will share heart teachings on the meaning of fierce refuge for spiritual abolition and the path of the New Saints. We will be supported by refuge teachings from The Jewel Ornament of Liberation by Gampopa– one of our lineage ancestors and founder of the Kagyu school*. From this basis, Lama Rod will weave embodied insights from Buddhist tantra, ancestral medicines, and his own experiences as a Black queer man living through this moment in U.S. history to invite participants into a relationship with refuge that is personal, connected, and freely available in every moment. By rooting into direct relationship with this quality of refuge over time, we grow uncontrived confidence in the truth of liberation for ourselves and for all beings. 

This Werk offering includes a talk, practice, and a special refuge ceremony during the final hour (optional). 

*For more about Gampopa and The Jewel Ornament of Liberation, check out Blessed Slay, a monthly exploration of teachings from this sacred text with Lama Rod. 

Specifically, Lama Rod will emphasize:

• Deepening clarity about the inseparable unity of grief, refuge, the Land, and the elements. 
• The three aspects of refuge taught throughout all Buddhist traditions: Buddha (real liberation), Dharma (real teachings), and Sangha (real community), and how these teachings have inspired practices like the Seven Homecomings and Four Sweet Liberations to support us in the creative liberation of all beings here and now. 
• How refuge empowers us to meet the intensifying challenges of our times while cultivating fearlessness for the collective labor of creating a better world for everyone. 
• The meaning of “vow” as an intimate and deeply personal promise to practice choosing freedom, love, and clarity, while abolishing obstacles of inferiority, disconnection, and confusion moment by moment.

Refuge Ceremony: (Optional)*

Additionally, Lama Rod will offer a refuge ceremony for all who are interested during the final hour of the session. Classically, “taking refuge” is the first formal step on the Buddhist path; a view shared across traditions. The ceremony honors a sincere promise to oneself to reduce suffering by embodying refuge in the “Three Jewels” of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as natural wellsprings of freedom, care, and community for all beings. 

In this refuge ceremony, Lama Rod will open the gates for participants to receive the combined refuge blessings of Indo-Tibetan vajrayana Buddhism, the Black Prophetic Tradition, and the Land which fuels the emerging path of the New Saints.

Anyone who has previously received refuge vows from other teachers, lineages, or traditions are welcome to attend as a way to re-affirm, deepen, or enhance those commitments. The heart intention of the refuge ceremony is to liberate ourselves and all beings from suffering and the causes of suffering, no matter what. For this reason, if you choose to take the refuge vow with Lama Rod, it does not conflict with or impede devotional commitments with other teachers, lineages, or traditions. 

This ceremony will be offered for all who are interested. There is no obligation to receive the refuge vow, and the vow will not be required to engage in any of Lama Rod’s courses, events, or teachings.

*The recording of this session does not include the refuge ceremony. 

In the days ahead, we need to tend the labors of letting go, shedding pain, and freeing energy locked within the trauma of the past. We can’t carry all of that weight with us into the liberated future we all deserve. So how do we release the violence of conditional love and the carceral state which haunts our bodies, hearts, and minds? How do we empower ourselves to shake loose from woundedness and claim our wholeness for the sake of all beings? What would it mean to move through the world with an authentic experience of unconditional love and worthiness flowing between the Land, yourself, and all beings? How do we learn how to embody the fullness of our own freedom?

Join Lama Rod for our 2026 Winter Werk offering to explore these questions and more through the practice of Vajrasattva, a tantric deity expressing the embodiment of primordial clarity, care, and freedom. With ancient roots in the Indo-Tibetan Buddhist tradition, Vajrasattva arises for us to learn how to heal from the past and move boldly into a more liberated future. Through Vajrasattva practice, we learn to harness the power of shedding, releasing, and letting go to reclaim the liberated nature of our own minds. 

This offering is beneficial for all kinds of practitioners! Here is what to expect:

• Direct transmission of the Vajrasattva practice from Lama Rod through learning about its history, symbolic aspects, and elemental qualities. Particular emphasis will be placed on attuning to the ways Vajrasattva supports embodied spiritual abolition from the perspective of the Black Prophetic tradition and the New Saints.  
• Guided meditations exploring the relationship between healing and clarity, especially learning how to “touch the earth” by feeling into emptiness as a trustworthy homebase for resting beyond feelings of unworthiness, confusion, or disconnection.
• Teachings on the meaning and recitation of Vajrasattva’s 100 syllable mantra as a somatic practice of rooting deeply within the vast, luminous, and empty nature of all phenomena. 
• Heart teachings about the seasonal relationship between Winter and Vajrasattva practice, allying with water in ritual work for releasing and healing, and attuning to Vajrasattva as an expression of the mirror-like wisdom of the Vajra family.

(Image: Himalayan Art Resources)