Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are

Gorillas in the Mist.

“Praise Allah, and tie your camel to the post.” Pray, but also make sure you do what is necessary in the world.

Dipa Ma and other Buddhist teachers demonstrate the remarkable possibilities of the awakened heart. In Transformations of Consciousness, Harvard psychologist Jack Engler reports on his study of Dipa Ma and other advanced meditators.

Martin Luther King, Jr., understood this when he said, “If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote his plays.”

To continue this journey requires reinforcing the necessary foundation of virtue. By establishing a practice of basic morality, of nonharming, virtue becomes a safeguard on the path, guiding and protecting us and all we touch from harm. In the simplest fashion these safeguards are spelled out in the five traditional Buddhist precepts: (1) not killi

In the Christian mystical tradition one of the great texts is Dark Night of the Soul by Saint John of the Cross, in which he talks about the periods of loneliness, fear, and doubt that one goes through after the initial awakenings into the light. Evagrius,

I had many teachers, but the most central were two of the wisest Theravada teachers of the past century: one in Thailand, Ajahn Chah, and one in Burma, Mahasi Sayadaw.

“We pay attention with respect and interest, not in order to manipulate, but to understand what is true. And seeing what is true, the heart becomes free.”

RAIN is a useful acronym for the four key principles of mindful transformation of difficulties. RAIN stands for Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Nonidentification.

Living Buddhist Masters.