Abstract: We often regard our body as a skin encapsulated organism of flesh and blood and sensation. Ironically, we seem to be mostly interested in it when it is malfunctioning, when it is demanding attention. We want pain or discomfort to go away. We want the cut to heal or the embarrassing leakage to stop. … Continue reading Contemplating Beginner’s Body
We are bombarded daily by reports of conflict, atrocities and proliferating social dysfunction. Surely many of us must be asking what, if anything, we can do about this nightmarish situation. The following essay is extracted from my e-book, "Sangha Work". Re-reading it the other day I felt it is as relevant today as it was … Continue reading Cultivating Healthy Community: towards a universal sangha
A central meaning of 'tantra' is wholeness/continuity. Tantra is a path of wholeness understanding wholeness, a vision integrating all visions. In the ancient cultures of Tibet, India, parts of southeast Asia and China, there flourished various wisdom traditions known as tantra. Today, tantra is sometimes associated with attempted mergings of spirituality and sex, but originally … Continue reading Tantra and Climate Change
Click here to download a fully formatted PDF We are constantly 'explaining' things to ourselves and sometimes, we try to share these explanations with others. Through this process, we make sense of the world. An Embracive View Essentially, all explanations are attempts to understand the same thing; this ineffable, continuously cresting wave of spontaneous presence … Continue reading Explanation, Assumption and Guru Yoga
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
Living Buddha, Living Dharma, Living Sangha or What's the problem? What can I do? What can I realise? How can we help? (a modern Buddhist's response to a Donald Trumpian world) by Tarchin Hearn, Feb. 2017 Click here to read in PDF format Late afternoon sun and it's hot. With passing rainless days, everything has … Continue reading Living Buddha, Living Dharma, Living Sangha: a modern Buddhist's response to a Donald Trumpian world
I'd like to begin by briefly sketching out some personal events that led to the ideas in this essay/poem. In my early 20s, while at Kalu Rinpoché's monastery near Sonada, India, I participated in an ancient ceremony in which I and a few other young men, in the presence of a community of monks, yogis … Continue reading Taking Robes: Embracing a Life of Natural Awakening; Reflections on Ordination and Divine Ordinariness
with thanks to David French for asking me to write something on this topic Oct 25/15, 5:52 am. I am sitting in my hut at Orgyen Hermitage, our 2 acre block situated in the Bay of Plenty, New Zealand. The sky appears crystalline, washed with the colours of dawn and framed with silhouettes of trees … Continue reading The Dharma of Illness and The Medicine of Wonderment
"The central purpose of all dharma practice is to cultivate a well balanced, thoroughly integrated, vibrantly alive, humane human becoming." 'Dharma' is a rich and bounteous concept. Common translations give us words or phrases such as truth, teaching (particularly spiritual teaching), natural law, law of nature, phenomena, process and 'thing'. It's difficult to grasp in … Continue reading A Life of Dharma
Green Dharma Treasury 