Blog
Reflections from our teachers
The Kogi are an Indigenous people who live deep in Colombia’s Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta Mountains in an intact pre-Columbus society. They understand they exist to care for the world and the Earth....
Love and Dust: Opening your Heart Wide to a Dying World
With the fragile condition of our eco-system finally breaking through into the mainstream news cycle, we can easily be overwhelmed by the loss of biodiversity and permafrost, the pollution of earth, air and oceans,...
Soften the Hard Places: Opening our Hearts to Those we find Difficult
When others intentionally or unintentionally disappoint, disrespect, betray or harm us or our loved ones, we tend to stiffen, going into a defensive, frozen or fight mode. This hardening is not wrong, it can...
Relief – In This Very Moment, In This Very Breath
We just returned from sitting a wonderful week-long retreat to find two rooms of our small monastery flooded. With workers coming in, ripping up flooring and carpeting, tearing apart the kitchen and guest room/library,...
Breathe! Delight in Meditation
Most of us live in cultures that are super busy and goal directed. In our meditation life, that same goal-directed energy is always searching for a special experience that’s higher, better, different from what’s...
Uncovering Our Natural Awareness
These days as I teach natural awareness practice, I’m encouraging meditators to relax the amount of effort they make in their meditation to access a more natural, spacious, effortless awareness. A common concern of...
Love in the Time of Extinction: Dharma Practice and the Climate Emergency
Yanai writes: “I know there are many in our worldwide sangha, who like myself have engaged with, or are considering engaging with Extinction Rebellion, or have questions about it. As a young, but quickly...
Confidence in the Dhamma, Confidence in Yourself
I often recall a time many years ago when my grandmother was dying. I was with her during her final days, and sat at the foot of her bed during her last few breaths....
You are Not Alone: Healing the Myth of Separation
The dharma invites us to face ourselves fully. But through fear, we sometimes distract ourselves, over-fill ourselves, and hold onto external attachments, in order to avoid.…what? The illusion that we are separate and isolated...
Who Am I?
The self (‘I’ and ‘my’) lands on objects, voluntarily or involuntarily. Primary objects of interest include forms, feelings, perceptions, formations of mind/speech/body and consciousness (mindfulness, awareness, concentration and meditation). The self also grasps onto...









