San Francisco Shambhala Center

San Francisco Shambhala is a meditation and community center located in the heart of the city.

What We Offer Meditation instruction, meditation practice sessions, open houses, classes, workshops and retreats. SF Shambhala has meetings of interest groups from contemplative art disciplines (including Ikebana, Contemplative Photography and Mindful Knitting), to a monthly Queer Shambhala gathering, to Young Meditators Night, to Family Meditation on Sunday mornings. We also host salon-style events on topics of interest.

Our Teachings are rooted in the Buddhist tradition of meditation, and our path includes a secular course of study for those who wish to imbibe their belief systems with this wisdom tradition.

Worldwide Community SF Shambahla is part of a worldwide Shambahla community that arrived in North America in the early 1970s. Our members are active and engaged, and many volunteer to support the running of the center.

Shambhala Vision is rooted in the principle that every human being has a fundamental nature of basic goodness. This nature can be developed in daily life so that it radiates out to family, friends, community and society.

In action, Shambhala is both a spiritual path of study and meditation that helps us work with our minds, as well as a path of serving others and engaging with our world. These vital and timely teachings open the door to the compassionate care of ourselves and others.

We are living through an age of greed and aggression. We harm ourselves, each other and our planet. The Shambhala teachings offer an antidote to this crisis. Shambhala Vision tells us that we can experience a natural source of radiance and brilliance in the world, which is the innate wakefulness of human beings.

From this deep, profoundly human foundation, it is possible to extend that out and create what the Shambhala tradition calls "enlightened society." This vision offers possibilities for a radical paradigm shift –– not a utopia, but a culture in which life's challenges are met with kindness, generosity and courage.