“But imagine my surprise when, upon surrendering to wanting nothing, I am released from perceiving a lack, awakened by and to a want for nothing, instead.”
Jessica Locke: Anti-Racism and Buddhist Practice
“When everyone is doing better, everyone is doing better. And when life is precious, life is precious. Can we connect with this motivation?” -Jessica Locke
Who Knows Good News Bad News? – Dharma Talk
“The good only stands out in contrast to something relatively worse; the bad only emerges from a context of relative good. The wise old farmer appears to see life holistically, as a unified totality.”
Desire Refined: Dharma Talk
The transformation of desire is a critical component of the spiritual journey, but this transformation does not necessitate sacrifice and grim acceptance. Aligning one’s desire with the deeper quality of the Heart’s aspiration can infuse one’s practice with vitality and whole-hearted engagement.
Yes, The Unitive Mantra: Dharma Talk
As Alan Watts put so well, “No one can be moral – that is, no one can harmonize contained conflicts – without coming to a working arrangement between the angel in himself and the devil in himself, between his rose above and his manure below.”
The Way of Obstacles: Dharma Talk
Challenging energy is part of the path. Can we open to these energies with curious kindness? Can these energies be integrated within our being? This is the path.
Dharma in the Time of Dukkha
Practice is not a luxury. In times like these, practice is essential for resilience, centered-ness, and compassionate engagement.
Vanja Palmers: A Mushroom in the Lotus
Some people in the spiritual world say we don’t need crutches, or that we shouldn’t use crutches. This is true, we don’t need crutches; we don’t need zendos; we don’t need sesshins. But still, many seem to benefit from these supports.
Tuning the Lute: Dharma Talk and Meditation
Joseph Goldstein writes, “Effort becomes unskillful when there’s some idea of gain and a mind full of expectations, rather than an openness and receptivity to what is already.”
On Gratitude: Dharma Talk and Meditation
“As we peer into our experience, we peer into one of the biggest mysteries of all: The fact of our own consciousness peering back at the web of existence that created it.”
The Wings of Awakening: Dharma Talk and Meditation
Compassion without wisdom can lead to emotional burnout. Wisdom without compassion can lead to detached apathy. Together they balance and complement each other on the path.
Lateral Drift: Dharma Talk and Meditation
If the straight-ahead, conscious approach fails to render a solution, the “lateral drift” approach can be employed by allowing the mind to stop thinking about the problem which allows a solution to suggest itself.
Dr. Judith Blackstone: Healing Within Fundamental Consciousness
From the safe experience of fundamental consciousness – a consciousness that is awake to, within and beyond the body – we can release and unburden the body’s holding of trauma within the fascia.
The Knowing Ungrasps Tanha: Dharma Talk and Meditation
As the Buddha said, “The rain could turn to gold and still your thirst would not be slaked.” In many ways, the entire path pivots on the skillful relationship to desire.
The Heavenly Stings: Dharma Talk and Meditation
The initial experience of awakening is not often one of calm, serenity, and bliss; rather, the initial encounter is one of waking up to confusion, uncertainty, and despair. We can map our own psychological experience to the mythological story of the Buddha’s biography.
Ungrasping This Moment: Dharma Talk and Meditation
If you let it, reality will wake you up out of your drifting state into a naturally awake state. This transitional pivot is the key moment upon which the entire spiritual path unfolds.
The Movie, The Viewer, and The Light: Dharma Talk and Meditation
“The ‘I’ that is looking for pure awareness can’t find it, just as a wave can’t do something to find the ocean.”
I Am Not My Green Jumper: Dharma Talk and Meditation
If we respond to every television advertisement by purchasing the thing being advertised, we’d go bankrupt. In the same way, if we reflexively identify as the thinker of our thoughts, we make ourselves vulnerable to the demands of their message.
Robin Wang: Yinyang Theory in Chinese Thought
When two things interact, a third dynamic emerges. When two people come together a relationship emerges. When Yin and Yang come to harmony, a Third Way emerges as the Path.
The Antifragile Heart: Dharma Talk and Meditation
All experience, if you let it, will reveal the vast empty space from which all things arise and cease. Recognizing that open space as the source of your own awareness facilitates the emergence of an undefended Heart.
The Critic’s Gold: Dharma Talk and Meditation
The Inner Critic seems to present an obstacle on the spiritual path, judging and disparaging our practice at every turn. But what if there was gold to be found in even its nastiest of statements?
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