Vincent Horn

I was both surprised and delighted, at the end of a recent interview with Roger Walsh, to hear him give this answer to my question about what he would say to a group of listeners who may identify as Buddhist Geeks. Roger: Well, Buddhist Geeks, I love that phrase by the way, and I’m just delighted to know of what you’re doing and that you’re putting this information out on the Web and making it available to people. Yes, something does come to mind and that is that we’re in a unique time in history and we have a unique opportunity as well as unique challenges. This is the first time ...

"I am just learning how to paint." - Pierre-Auguste Renoir (in 1913 at the age of 72) I saw this quote while viewing an exhibit of the last 30 years of Renoir’s work at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Along with Monet, Renoir was a key figure in the Impressionist art movement, which was marked by its extraordinary use of color, shadow, and light. What I found so striking about this quote was the depth of wisdom that Renoir had achieved through the form of painting. He had developed what Suzuki Roshi called “beginner’s mind.” And even though he was considered one of the most ...

I received this question from a meditation practitioner named Tracy, and with their permission have posted their question and my response here. Often the distinction between Hinayana and Mahayana is self-liberation versus liberation for all. The Hinayana is often described in Mahayana teachings as sounding really selfish! But I would not imagine that anyone actually achieving liberation would be selfish. I realize this is an ancient debate and I have read many articles and essays on the topic. What I am most interested to hear is your perspective as someone who studies deeply many traditions and practices the insight meditation tradition. I'm unclear of the difference between Theravada and Hinayana. Sometimes they are ...

I recently re-launched this site, and wanted to share a little about what has changed, and why it has changed. Firstly, I’ve changed the title of this site from Numinous Nonsense—my first title from when I started posting way back in the blogging stone-ages of 2003—to my name. I did this because this site has become more of a portal for the various projects I’m working on, and less a blog. In the past couple years I’ve been blogging less, I think because the nature of the web has changed and micro-media services like Facebook and Twitter now fulfill a lot of the need that blogging initially ...

One thing that vipassana meditation teaches is how to dis-embed oneself from experience. All experience is made an object, and by virtue of making it object, we know that the we, the subject, are not that. The subject—or more accurately, the sense of being a subject—moves to a higher and more subtle position, until that new position has been made object. And on-and-on this process goes until there is, as one of my teachers told me, “just the dance of experience.” There’s nowhere left to go, and thus there’s nothing left to do. We could call that awakening. One side of this awakened understanding has to ...

I just posted a new article on the Buddhist Geeks site this morning, entitled The Path of Wholeness. I wrote the article as a way to explore a shift that has happened in my orientation, over the last couple of years, wherein I've moved away from a view of spirituality dominated by transcendence, toward one of integrated wholeness. A little snippet from the article: What I found, after several years of dedicated searching and practice, was that my orientation had gradually shifted away from transcending life, to a more inclusive relationship with it. I began to feel that the purpose of my life was to be more whole, to ...