Dependent Origination Vision
Did a 6 hour sit without moving or breaking posture at the advice of Delson. He encouraged me not to move at all if possible. Mind went through many many cycles of entering "Quiet Mind" reaching this ...
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Cessations & Considerations
It has been 18 months since I wrote my dependent origination post and retreat report so I'd like to clarify my thoughts on TWIM (tranquil wisdom insight meditation), definitions of Nibbana and subsequ...
The Five Stages of Awakening
When I review the years that have gone by and what earlier cycles of awakening looked like, the moment that a big shift or a big opening happened was always completely unexpected. Always random. It wa...
The Jhanas Explained: A Complete Map of Buddhist Absorption States
The jhanas are one of the most important and least understood areas of Buddhist practice. They are sometimes translated as "absorptions" or "concentrations," though the word "immersion" is actually cl...
The Five Hindrances: What's Blocking Your Meditation and How to Release Them
The five hindrances are one of the most important teachings in all of Buddhism, and not just for meditation. These five obstacles, sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, a...
What Is Non-Duality? The Direct Recognition Beyond the Mind
There is a question that comes up again and again in spiritual circles, and it almost always produces the same result: a vague, abstract answer that leaves people more confused than when they started....
What Really Happens When We Die: A Guide to the Bardo of Dying
We don't talk about death. Not really. We are handed euphemisms and platitudes, or we are handed clinical language that keeps the whole thing at a safe distance. And the result is that most people arr...
Dream Yoga: Using the Dream State as a Path to Liberation
There is a statement in the Tibetan tradition that I return to often. It comes from Padmasambhava's Natural Liberation, which is a commentary on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The statement is this: wh...
Lucid Dreaming as Spiritual Practice: A Beginner's Guide
Most people treat lucid dreaming as a curiosity, a party trick for the brain, something that happens occasionally and gets filed away as a weird night. I want to make the case for something different....
Out-of-Body Experiences and Spiritual Awakening: What's the Real Connection?
The only reason I teach out-of-body experience is for awakening. That is the short answer. But the longer answer, the one that actually matters, is what changes when you approach it that way.
Dzogchen: The Ancient Teaching That Points Directly to Your True Nature
Dzogchen, which means Great Perfection, is considered the pinnacle teaching of Tibetan Buddhism. That word, pinnacle, is used deliberately. It does not mean the most advanced technique, the most compl...
What Is Rigpa? The Question That Changes Everything
If you've spent any time in Tibetan Buddhist circles or come across Dzogchen teachings, you've probably heard the word "rigpa." Teachers point to it constantly. It's described as the natural state, pu...
Near-Death Experiences and the Clear Light: What the Tibetan Teachings Reveal
People who have had near-death experiences and people who have spent years in deep meditation are often describing the same thing. They use different words. They come from different cultures and diffe...
Mahamudra and the Nature of Mind: The View That Changes Everything
Mahamudra means the great symbol or the great seal. It is one of the principal teaching lineages of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly within the Kagyu tradition, and it points to the same fundamental rec...
I Am Everything
Driving to work on the 5 freeway in Orange County, out of nowhere my heart cracked open and I experienced recognition of the Self. I couldn't tell where my hands ended and the steering wheel began...
The Lost Years
After Dad's passing I went back to school and began working with special needs kids. From ages 20-25 I changed jobs 4 or 5 times, joined a psychic teacher's community, and wandered far from the dharma...
Agents of the Guru
our kisses of death are full of nothing at all / there is no path to reality no way to immediacy / because all paths are reality and all ways are immediacy...
Death of My Father
My Dad and I had a complicated relationship, as any son would with an addict father. We loved each other deeply, but I let my anger towards him get between us. With all his shame and depression he wasn't able to bridge the distance either...
Higher Self Now
A few months after my near death experience on Amanita, my temple Wat Phra Dhammakaya opened a 90-day meditation coach training program in Thailand. I had just turned 19 and still in community college...
Vipassana & Arcata
After my first successful OBE I continued with psychedelic experimentation. Right after high school graduation I had a wild pressing calling and intuition to bike all the way to Arcata, Northern California...
Give Me Death
That summer of my 18th year I was camping in the desert with some friends in Ojai California. Before I ate the amanitas, I heard a whisper internally that said "ask it for death."...
Sleep Paralysis Demon
I'd never had a lucid dream before. The idea of being conscious in other states of consciousness besides the waking state was an incredible idea to me. It never even occurred to me that one could be lucid and aware in their dreams...
Enter the Shadow
My life was ordinary until my 16th year. One night while alone I ate 3.5 grams of mushrooms. My eyes turned black and eternities of screams filled the room. In that moment my spiritual life began...
Mind of a Deity
From a conversation with a fellow practitioner. In one of my OBEs a thangka of Tara appeared in my bedroom and I flew through it. When I appeared in the mind of a deity its mind's eye was like a super information highway of light...
Configuration Model of Consciousness
Having traversed the various planes of consciousness it has become clear that consciousness itself is not findable. Consciousness is none other than what appears — as this room, as the thoughts you are having, as the body you are experiencing...
Higher Self Yoga
I've been having lucid dreams and out of body experiences since I was 17. It was only 5 years ago that I began to have a certain kind of dream which would trigger lucidity — what I call simulation dreams. This is the story of what I found inside...