A strange realization with my practice is that growth is not exciting. All of my life, and probably all of yours, I've been taught to get excited and to celebrate growth or progress. When I graduated or got a new job or reach some other milestone I would have a party and celebrate. As I …
Category: Personal Experiences
The Rational Religion
While I've pulled back from the belief that everyone should meditate, as I now feel that it's a practice that resonates with certain people at certain times, I do feel that Vipassana can address a current void in our society. Over the last 60 years people have been leaving the church in ever increasing numbers. …
Good Grief
I remember waking up to problems bigger than myself. I remember things feeling so hard to change but, nonetheless, believing they could. And I thought, as I was taught, that my duty was to help create that change. I felt frequent anger at who I perceived to be the cause of destruction and injustice and …
Personal Solutions
I learned long ago that in order to grow, I needed to experience things for myself. I relearned this wisdom while playing the role of teacher or a mentor. I could explain something until I was blue in the face, but my students would always return to old habit patterns. If I created a situation …
The Root of Societies Problems
Yeah, I was one of those kids that wanted to save the world. I've gone through many iterations of deconstructing and reconstructing this thought, and I'm wondering if it's time to deconstruct it again. I've grown to realize that I'm just one person among billions, that the idea of saving the world is full of …
Addiction
The conditioned mind keeps on returning to the same place, time and again without knowing either the route of the journey or the purpose of it. The mind is addicted to reach a certain box of known feelings covered by the comfort of knowingness. From substance addiction to the pornography, does the mind know what …
Learning from aditthana
Every Vipassana meditator has a different technique to enduring aditthana. Also in life everyone has different techniques to being able to endure difficult situations, where they feel they might explode. This short piece invites you to consider the sitting of aditthana, a key requisite of sitting a 10 day course, and what insight it can …
How Do I Fit In?
Walking the path of Dhamma gives me a strange feeling of isolation. Often, I feel like I'm walking around an entire society of people with a secret. I don't want to hide this secret, but I also know that it's not a secret I can simply share with words. Instead, I need to live it, patiently …
Giving Up Sensual Pleasures
I've been observing life a bit more subtly recently causing me to revisit my attachment to sensual pleasures. Early in my career as a Vipassana meditator it was quite challenging for me to give up drinking, not because I loved consuming alcohol, but because I enjoyed the high of escaping the burdens of life for …
Love During War
I can only imagine the amount of suffering on a battle field; there are scars, both physical and mental, that would last a lifetime. As I ponder the depth of pure love, I believe it has the strength to cleanse these old wounds. Maybe in an extraordinary person, the ability to love may even be …
Living Vipassana 