Our Path to Now: The History of the Atlanta Shambhala Center
From Director Sue Gilman~
There have been numerous conversations in our community over the last year about doing a history of the Atlanta Shambhala Center. The flooding of our building, the demolition, and the eventual rebuilding invites reflection. Over the next few months while the center is going through yet another transition, we will highlight our past. We will invite people who were present at key moments of change to share their stories. We will unearth photos from the past and put together a series of presentations about how we got here.
I will begin this history of the Atlanta Shambhala Center with a brief outline of when and where we started. It all began at the apartment of 24-year-old Jackie Muse, then Jackie Martin, on Tenth Street at Charles Allen Drive. That was August 1976. The first night there were 14 people. They gathered every Sunday for about 3 months for an all day practice session and soup for lunch. From Jackie’s apartment in Midtown the growing group moved to 3 different locations in Buckhead, one on Lenox Road, and two in different addresses on Peachtree Street. Our centers were originally called Dharmadhatus. The first Dharmadhatu that was not in someone’s home and was rented specifically for the purpose of meditation practice was the location at 3179 Peachtree. It was above a club called Blues Harbor. That was 1981. That was forty-two years ago! I invite you to stay tuned as we unfold some of those stories as well as some from the more recent past – say the last 30 years.
