ESSAYS
BOOKS E-BOOKS ESSAYS POEMS PRACTICES MISCELLANY GLOSSARY
The Four Immeasurables
A fresh look at the meditation on loving kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and serenity. In Buddhism these are known as the Four Brahma Viharas or Immeasurables or Boundless States. This article was originally written to support a one year retreat on the Brahma Viharas that we did at Wangapeka during the year 2000. It has been modified for Green Dharma Treasury. Read the full essay
Read the German translation by Peter Gerdes here
A Feeling for the Whole
We were recently watching an animation by Drew Berry which glimpses, in wonderful detail, the processes of replicating and transcribing DNA. It’s as if you had a microscope capable of magnifying ten million times. Seeing the rhythmic choreography of molecules dancing together their life stories, is breath taking. At one point the commentator says that this process is taking place, right now, in nearly every cell of your body! Read the full essay
Surfing and Dharma
Modern culture is addicted to achievement, perhaps surfing might suggest a different way of being. Read the full essay
Notes from a dharma farmer: Dharma and Health
Buddhadharma is sometimes translated as the teaching of awakening. We could also call it the way of healthy living. Any practice of buddhadharma today must involve opening our eyes to the causes of suffering and then taking steps to alleviate it. The Buddha spoke of clinging and ignorance as being major contributors to suffering. I find myself looking to the field or forest for an indication. Read the full essay
Reflections on Owning Land
There was a time when the land was experienced as alive and sentient. It was not property. It was not even environment. It birthed all beings and at the right time, received each and everyone, back into her fullness. It was both matrix and mystery and a source of wonder, reverence and awe. Today, in our culture of commerce, land has become property. It is seen as a commodity; something to be bought or sold, a resource to be used or abused or at best enjoyed. What happened? Read the full essay
Wrestling with Demons
I was asked a question about transforming negativities. As often happens when an interesting theme is raised in class, my largely unconscious thinking process continued in its mysterious workings, merging many streams of experience, and these thoughts about practices for working with demons emerged in the form of an essay. Read the full essay
This Day is for Living
“This Day is for Living” starts with a critique of unquestioning reliance on economic and technological solutions to the problems of living well. It then goes on to consider a day in the life of an awake, compassionate and enquiring human; a true bodhisattva. Read the full essay
A Story of Stories
A weaving of prose and poetry. Story telling is not merely for entertainment. We are constantly telling ourselves stories, interior verbalizings, daydreamings, enactments and re-enactments of situations that have happened and ones that might happen. By and large, story telling is the way we humans make sense of relationships, the world and the universe we find ourselves in.
Suffering arises in not seeing we are caught in a story of our own making. Suffering arises in not seeing our story is also the making of others. It also arises when we believe the story should be fixed for all time and we struggle to keep it so and to get others to keep it so.
How many universes can dance in the story of your mind? Read the full essay
How to Stitch a Robe
Reflections on Ordination and Divine Ordinariness
At the time of the Buddha, robes were simple clothes made from discarded fabric, sometimes bits of tattered cloth from funeral shrouds. Sewing these many pieces together symbolized the reconnecting of the many different aspects of our life; aspects that are also parts of other being’s lives. The making and on-going mending of a robe was an opportunity to contemplate wholeness and connectedness; this seamless garment, this cloak of many colours. Wearing such a robe would remind us of the wholeness and inter-beingness of life and provide the opportunity for others to glimpse a possibility of wholeness. To be clothed like this goes along with a willingness to be truly seen. Read the full essay
Education and Buddhadharma
The practice of buddhadharma and the process of meaningful education, are deeply related. Buddhadharma is more commonly associated with Buddhism which, of course, is viewed by many as a religion. Education is usually associated with secular schooling. Yet each has something to contribute to the other. I’d go so far to say that richly developed, each contains the other. Read the full essay
The Eight Offerings
a practice for cultivating flexibility and ‘give’
The eight offerings represent inner qualities of being that we aspire to cultivate and bring forth into the world through the various activities of our body, speech and mind. Although this process is often enacted in real and tangible ways – so many bowls of water and so many sticks of incense – this offering practice can become a yoga or a sadhana which has the power to profoundly transform the way we live. By cultivating the essential meaning hinted at by these eight symbols, we remind ourselves of what is truly valuable. Loosening the strings of attachment, and resting with increasing confidence in an inexhaustible flow of mutual shaping and support, we gradually recognise and appreciate the real wealth that is in all of us. Entering this vast flow of offering is the heart and vitality of true empowerment. It is naturally discoverable in any situation or circumstance. Read the Full Essay
Truth, Power and Sharing the Merit
Sharing the merit is a buddhist practice, done at the completion of a session of meditation or a period of creative work in which one consciously shares the benefit of one’s explorations with all beings. In its full grandeur, sharing the merit is a call to revolution – a call to recognize the great cycling of life and to participate richly and fully in this mystery we were born to. Read the Full Essay
Many of Tarchin's writings have also been published and can be found at