Mindful Living - 6 month work practice in a Buddhist community

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Living your life mindfully is a rewarding choice, which invites color into your experience. Designing your life with this purpose can be a challenge, even when you know it is the direction you wish to go. We recognize this and have designed a program to support you in your journey.

Mindful Living is a six-month residential program that lets you explore what it means to be fully present in every part of your life, from work to study to time off. It will show you a new way to live.

You will be living with a Buddhist community that has been established since 1969 in Berkeley, CA. Our centers engage in many projects: we teach classes, publish books, do charitable works, produce art, host retreats and events, and much more.

As part of Mindful Living, you will live at the Mangalam Center, in the heart of Berkeley one block from the BART subway that connects you to Oakland, San Francisco, and airports. Mangalam Center has a fully equipped kitchen, a shared cozy living room, a study space with plenty of books, classrooms, and a meditation room - you will be joined in these spaces by other practitioners. You will have your own room, sharing a bathroom with the room adjacent to you. Lunch will be provided as well as a stipend for other meals. The center is vegetarian only.

You will take 2 classes with your fellow participants each week during the day to learn practices to bring presence into your daily life. One class focuses on bringing presence into your daily life and the other on how Buddhist teachings are making their way in the United States. You are welcome and encouraged to take other classes or workshops offered in any of our Berkeley centers. Most classes are offered after work hours. They range from traditional Buddhist teachings to secular mindfulness classes - Meditation, Buddhist Studies, Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga, Full Presence Mindfulness - to name a few.

You will work with Mangalam Center, a nonprofit that houses projects focused on research, publishing books and a magazine, offering mindfulness training, and offering programs to the public. All these activities explore new ways of bringing wisdom to the modern world.

You will be working 35 hours per week. Possible work you can learn to do at Mangalam includes:

Website Design, Videography, Post Production, Photography, Typesetting, Copywriting, Grant Research, Cooking, Cleaning, IT, Graphic Design, Gardening, Social Media Marketing/Communication, Event Coordination and Curation.

You will not need experience in these fields, just a willingness and capacity to learn. If you do have skills in a particular area that you would like to exercise, we can probably place you in that area.

You may find yourself wearing many hats, and you should be ready to take on a range of responsibilities as needed.

Selection Criteria:

Interested in developing a mindful life

Willingness to fully participate in program activities for the duration of the program

Readiness to contribute energy and enthusiasm

Open-minded, self-reflective, and ready to learn and engage deeply on inner and outer levels.

Will follow all the program rules and abide by a simple Code of Conduct for the community.

Healthy and able to care for oneself

Comfortable with a combination of office work and light physical work

You do not need to be Buddhist, but you must be open, respectful, and curious about what we do.

Comfortable with living in a drug-free community

Interested in taking on work you may have never done before - figuring out how to do the task and seeing it through to the end, through the ups and downs of doubt, frustration, joy and wonder.

Please see our website for more information, pictures, and the application. Feel free to reach out for a tour or any questions that may come up.