Category: Dharma Journal

The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the...

I am sitting on a stool next to a cafe-style table near the the front windows of a local tire store while I wait for an alignment service on my truck. My front end...

The popular media rarely reports the challenging side effects of meditation when one uncovers hidden afflictive emotions stuffed way down in the psyche. Zen Buddhism has a word for these sometimes disturbing experiences: makyo,...

San Lorenzo Canyon is a place of wonder near Socorro, New Mexico. The geology varies from sedimentary to igneous, from alluvial to limestone. Desert wildflowers are abundant this year with prickly pear blazing in...

My yoga master, Gurudev, lay dying in my arms and I am overcome with emotion. Tears stream down my cheeks as I witness the life force leaving his limp body. Gurudev looks up at...

I am staring up at a clear blue morning sky after several days of cloudy, blustery, hail-peppered weather. It is like gazing at a sunrise from the mouth of a dark cave—cold in back...

Tulku Urgyen Rinpoche once said, “When expression moves as thinking, it is confused. When expression dawns as knowledge, it is liberated.” I would suggest a refinement for the word knowledge as unfiltered awareness. So,...

When I experience a student with sincere fearless interest in the Dharma, much transpires in that relationship which transcends the simple meeting of two humans. It is like a doorway to the vast expanse...

I am often asked why we do not spend more time in silent meditation at our center. The simple answer is that silent meditation was never emphasized by my teachers. It was only a...

For those of us born and raised in the West, one of the more challenging aspects of Vajrayana Buddhism is visualization practice. Our minds are heavily influenced by a need for empirical, verifiable data....