Buddhist Geeks received a wonderful write-up last week in the Los Angeles...
Recent Posts
The Great Cycles of Life: Being and Becoming
I finished last year by spending 3-weeks meditating in Barre, Massachusetts at the Forest Refuge. This year, I’ll finish the year on retreat as well, with a week of practice in Crestone, CO. For me, retreat practice is a time to turn inward, to explore my human experience in a more personal way, and to [...]
Paradox, Opposites, & Duality
I gave a dharma talk last week on Paradox on the Spiritual Path. Paradox is a topic that I’ve been really intrigued by the last few years, and it seemed a fitting topic to explore with our meditation group. After the talk one of the participants asked about certain “opposites” that aren’t paradoxes, such as [...]
Effective Dialogue
There’s an interesting conflict happening right now in the Philippines between the Catholic Church and the President of the country. The President supports the use of contraceptives for those citizens who wish to use them, and as a result the Catholic Bishops are threatening to ex-communicate the President, who is a practicing Catholic, from the [...]
Pragmatic Dharma
Last week, at the weekly meditation group I help lead, I spoke about A Pragmatic Approach to Dharma Practice. I found it really fun to do some research on the history of the pragmatist movement in Western philosophy, and see how much it overlaps with the Pragmatic (or Hardcore) Dharma movement that I’ve been involved [...]
How to Be It Without Becoming It
“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, [...]
The Great Paradox of Freedom
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 [...]
Dharma Talk : What is Meditation?
Enlightenment is an accident. Meditation makes you more accident-prone. – Baker Roshi [Audio clip: view full post to listen] 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 [...]
A More Comfortable Prison
“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, [...]
