A New Vision.

To be spiritual you do not have to be raptured. You do not have to be sucked into an alternative reality. You have to be ordinary—not mediocre but tremendously ordinary.

Down to earth. 

Totally human.

To be an artist you do not have to be blessed with an abundance of talent. You have to be authentic.

Sincere. 

To be creative you have to be willing to be vulnerable. You have to put yourself out there without any thought of what loss or gain.

You have to be authentic...

Courageous.

Honest.

The Biggest Misconception about Meditation Practice.

Just as the heart beats the brain thinks...

"As it is explained in many of the meditation teachings, first of all you cannot stop thoughts. It is impossible. And stopping thoughts is not our agenda. It is not doable. Even if were do-able it is not necessary, it is useless. Meditation actually is to generate the awareness of the thought. If you are supposed to develop the awareness of the thought, then you have to have the thought to be aware of! So you can’t really get rid of the thought and then try to look at something." ~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche

Meditation in Action

In this talk Ben Riggs explains the need for a somatic orientation in our spiritual practice and guides us through a body base meditation practice developed by Reginald A. Ray called the ten-points.

Meditation in Action: Coming Back to the Body from The Refuge Meditation Group on Vimeo.

Embracing Personal Sadness as the Path to Awakening.

Buddhism is not about wishful thinking or academic speculation. The Buddhist path is about learning to participate in the expansion of your true life. In short, it is about learning to love your Self.

Buddhist spirituality is not a theoretical endeavor. It is a first-person exploration of what it means to truly be your Self. Buddhism is about awakening to the immediacy of our life. Ideas do not awaken people, experiences do. So, the Buddhist path is an experiment that emerges in response to the question, “Who am I?”, and ends with a direct experience of Being that precedes any speculation. The aim of Buddhist spirituality is to move beyond the realm of internal dialogue so that our personal confusion maybe unraveled in a flash of insight.

In order for this experiment to be relevant, we have to be willing to be honest with ourselves. This means that any attempt to engage in wishful thinking is a waste of time. We have to get our hands dirty. Currently we are standing at the threshold of the spiritual path, and no one comes to spirituality for shits-&-giggles. We come to spirituality because of personal dissatisfaction, and the Buddhist path begins with the first noble truth, the truth of suffering. The first noble truth is an invitation to relate to our personal disappointment.