Click here to view the fully formatted article in PDF An object can always have a name. This designated thing sits in its space; sometimes a geographic space of physical linkage and relationship, sometimes an emotional or conceptual space; and we, from the perspective of our own place, can then name it. But what if … Continue reading Naming the Unnameable
Essential practice => a way of living that can be fruitfully applied in whatever situation or circumstance we find ourselves in. An 'essential practice' for the maturing of our humanness – what I have come to think of as a path of 'natural awakening' or 'contemplative science', or 'buddhadharma'– involves much more than practicing or … Continue reading Essential Practice
Dear Trustees of Oxfam NZ My partner, Mary Jenkins and I have been regular contributors to Oxfam for many years. We, like many others, have been disturbed by the revelations in the Guardian concerning misconduct and poor management in Haiti, Chad and now other places. These examples of exploitation, by representatives of an organisation dedicated … Continue reading An Open Letter to Oxfam
Immense Gratitude and Thanks For A Wonderful Response to the Orgyen Care Project Dear Friends About three weeks ago, e-mails were sent out announcing the Orgyen Care Project and asking for support. For those of you who may not have heard about it, the O.C.P. was conceived by Andy MacIntosh, and Grant and Natasha Rix, … Continue reading Orgyen Care Project Thanks
Changing the way we speak can encourage new dimensions of understanding. In the light of this, I'd like to invite some fresh thinking about what we mean when we use the words 'body' and 'mind'. Instead of treating them as nouns that describe seemingly familiar pre-existing objects, one being physical and the other non-physical, we … Continue reading Body/Brain/Mind/Community
Hovering, on the cusp of a new year, or should I say wobbling; It feels a bit yin-yang-ish, a bit black and whitish, though both black and white mutually embrace – a radically inclusive, utterly seamless whole. On one side, a card game where some bad dudes seem to hold all the trumps, – ecosystems … Continue reading New Look for Green Dharma Treasury
The key to meaningful living is mindfulness. The heart of mindfulness, a simultaneous blending of love with clear-seeing-enquiry, arises out of the multi-levelled life and living that we are. 1 This is the music of the universe and it resounds in everything. Listen! You can hear the singing in your bones, your feelings, your perceptions … Continue reading Meaningful Living: a modern expression of the gradual path of awakening
Perhaps David Abrams approached it when he referred to the process of dying as “expanding into the wider life of the planet”. Perhaps Alexander Skutch was near to it when he wrote, “An outstanding attribute of an awakened spirit is its expansiveness, its insatiable hunger to experience more widely, to know more broadly and profoundly, … Continue reading The Art of Contemplative Science: Praise for “The Songs of Trees”
(This short piece was initially drafted Aug. 10, 201717, at Foz Iquasu, Brazil, and finished in Orgyen Hermitage, New Zealand.) We were recently in Brazil for 5 weeks, exploring dharmas of natural awakening, contemplative science and mahamudra with a large number of people in Sao Paulo, and Botucatu. After three very full weeks of teaching, … Continue reading Brazil, Wholeness and Gratitude
May this be for all of us! Blessed with a life-giving intuitive sense of belonging, A capacity for radical inclusivity and a cellular knowing of home; Breathing refuge as living presence, An immeasurable communing of self and other, I prostrate in all directions to the magnificence of creation. At the heart of all spiritual experience, … Continue reading Touching the Earth
