Meditation
The Evolution of Abuse
It’s happened again, most recently in the Shambhala community. And it is heartbreaking. Scandals in spiritual organizations will never end until we understand the processes that give rise to them. The wisdom traditions maintain that if we can...
Shamatha Meditation as a Preparation for Death
What Is Shamatha Meditation? Shamatha meditation is a fundamental form of mindfulness meditation. Shamatha means “peaceful abiding”.”Mindfulness is the meditation common to all schools of Buddhism. It is the ground meditation upon which all...
Shamatha Meditation Instruction
In this audio program, I offer meditation instruction on Shamatha, or calm abiding meditation. This is a fundamental form of mindfulness meditation. This is excerpted from my audio learning course (available through Soundstrue.com) Dream Yoga: The...
The Power of Perspective: The Straw Effect
Take a look at your own experience and see if it’s not true: when the mind gets small, problems get big; when the mind gets big, problems get small. That is where the power of perspective can help. One of the biggest problems we have in life is...
Meditation is Difficult Because Waking Up Hurts
Meditation is difficult because waking up hurts. And if we don’t understand why, we will run from the pain and abandon the path. There are countless people who have become spiritual dropouts, or who are lost in detours because they have not...
How Meditation Affects the Brain
The world of neuroscience is revealing exactly how meditation affects the brain. I had the great honor to be invited to be subject on one of a series of studies being conducted on meditation. I was invited to the University of Wisconsin in Madison...
The Value of Three-Year Retreat
The three-year retreat at Söpa Chöling is a living experiment, resonant with the fearless spirit of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche who conceived it. The three year retreat was founded and overseen after Trungpa's death by Thrangu Rinpoche in 1990. Söpa...
Renunciation on the Spiritual Path
What is the role of renunciation on the spiritual path or in Buddhist practice? To most of us, what drove us to spiritual seeking in the first place is some level of realization that our obsession with self fulfillment and worldly pleasures can...
Is There a Dark Side to Meditation?
The recent article in The Atlantic by Tomas Rocha, “The Dark Knight of the Soul,” brings up a much neglected but very important topic around a dark side to meditation. With hundreds of studies (over 500 a year) coming out showing the benefits of...
