Bodhisattva vows

Have been attending a dathun at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado...it's been the usual ups and downs as always in intensives...a couple of good days along with some bad ones of pain and torrents and torrents of un-noticed thoughts...my son is here with me and his presence I think marks a good insertion of the everyday into the practice...we always ask: how do we take this back into the world?...well, I think I've found one of the answers...take some of the world with you!...Today marks the end of the first week and one more week to the end...today is a very special day...Acharya Galan Ferguson offered Bodhisattva vows. I took the vow...we had a meeting about it and an interview with Acharya Ferguson a couple of days ago...the interview was to be 5 minutes but we talked about everything from Shambhala to the vows to film and literature...so today was the day and he offered a very moving and wonderful ceremony at the end of which we offered our gifts and he bestowed the new names...I offered my reading glasses for vision in the case that my mother made for me to represent the container/space which my parents provided for us as we were growing up...a container without constraints that left us free to explore the world...and a pendant of the buddha of course representing the example of the buddha...and my name is Samten Serri (Meditation Golden Mountain)...