Vincent Horn

“Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” – Dogen Zenji I was speaking with a practitioner recently who confided in me that they were going through a really challenging situation, and that there was a tremendous amount of fear coming up for them. She told me that she was doing her best to observe the fear, without being it. Sensing a slight separation in how she was describing her strategy, I sort of re-framed the question to her, “How can you be it without becoming it?” This question is radically different. As the observer we are disconnected, ever so slightly, from what we experience. There is a “me” ...

I gave a short talk last week, at Blue Ridge Meditation, on The Great Paradox of Freedom (it's available there if you want to listen to it). I decided to take on the topic of Freedom because it has been such an essential principle for me, from the very beginning of my practice. Interestingly, I can see that I wanted to be free, initially, because I felt that I was not already free. There was a distinct feeling that things were not ok, and that in order to be free I needed to transcend, or see beyond, this pervasive sense of "not okness." I think that ...

Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you more accident-prone. - Baker Roshi Last night was the inaugural sit of Blue Ridge Meditation, and we were thrilled to have a really solid turnout. Besides Emily and I, there were 7 other people who showed up, and most of them we had never met. It was a great group of people. We started off the evening sitting together for around 40 minutes, and then I led a "mini-dharma talk" on the topic of Meditation. The audio above is the recording of that talk, so if you're interested feel free to check it out. It's only about 15 ...

“Live neither in the entanglements of outer things nor in inner feelings of emptiness.” – Chan Master Seng-T'san One common hurdle to the development of wisdom is to identify with the sense of expansiveness in practice. By expansion, I mean those states that seem to be more open and free. States like stillness, clarity, silence, & even witnessing. Any state where it feels more expansive, more transcendentally pleasant, more free from states of contraction and suffering. But this isn’t real freedom, only a pseudo-freedom from what we perceive is the real problem… Contraction. Often times we start a contemplative practice completely embedded in contracted states of consciousness. ...

As I was sitting yesterday I had the very clear insight that, “What I am can never be separated from What I’m not.” The insight, like so many insights, came with a non-verbal holistic “knowing,” and then also the thought itself, which sort of framed the insight in mental terms. I’ve found it very interesting to reflect on the deeper ramifications of this insight and how it represents my current edge in practice-understanding. First, the most direct meaning has to do with seeing the process of identification and release of identification—another way we could frame this movement is in terms of expansion and contraction. Typically people ...

I’ve found that as my spiritual practice has developed, the highs and lows of life have been freed up to flow as they will. Some days I experience states of clarity, bliss, and joy. Other days I experience misery, hopelessness, and fear. And then the experiences change, and the next thing arrives. I’ve come to see that these changing states are simply part of the cycle of life, the expansion and contraction of both the inner and outer worlds. It gets interesting, and also tricky, when someone asks me how I’m doing during a difficult period, and I’m honest with them. “Oh, I’m feeling ...