Random Acts of Gratitude

On April 5, 2018
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Recently on the final morning of a retreat I felt inspired to talk about gratitude. It wasn’t what I had thought I would talk about. Increasingly, my talks start this way – with a single image or word arising unexpectedly from the quiet depths. I found myself talking about the gratitude I felt for many […]

On December 1, 2017
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Awakening or self recognition entails a profound shift of identity from being a finite, separate self to infinite awareness. This realization belongs to no one and refers to no one. It is the liberation from personal identity. When this happens, we realize that no story or image can possibly define or confine us. We are […]

On September 28, 2017
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A few months ago during a talk at an Open Circle event in Berkeley I said something like, “No matter what conditioning you have endured and no matter how flawed or lacking you may feel, you are essentially whole.” During the ensuing dialogue one of the listeners reported how deeply struck he was by this […]

On June 27, 2017
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“Discovering the Beloved” There is a humorous piece of advice for new-age types: If you want to meet your soul-mate, look in the mirror. I rather like this pointer and would like to extend it to meeting the Beloved as well, adding a few refinements: 1) Ask yourself if you are really interested in meeting […]

On April 12, 2017
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Thirty years ago I visited a Korean Zen Master in Berkeley named Seung Sahn. He would give a short dharma talk and then ask if there were any questions. When he sensed that a question was coming from the mind , which was often, he would playfully growl: “I hit you with stick! Only don’t […]

On December 13, 2016
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“The spiritual task we are given is a simple one: to attend to that inner spark of radiance, to hold vigil over it until we realize it to be our self, and to dig up and cast off all argument we have with its love.” – Adyashanti This is one of my favorite quotes by […]

On October 3, 2016
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Many years ago, when I was first studying with Jean Klein, he said something that deeply struck me: An object never fulfills its promise. In his elegant and economic way, Jean was pointing to the fact that we unknowingly project our inherent happiness onto objects. By objects he meant things, people, ideas, and even subtle […]

On July 12, 2016
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When I first met Jean Klein, the European Advaita master, in 1983, I immediately knew that he was my teacher. This knowing was unmediated by the mind – it was direct, clear, and unequivocal. The inner knowing here recognized itself there in the form of an elegant European gentleman whose speech, philosophical and thickly-accented, was […]

On April 20, 2015
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The other day I was talking with a friend who had recently returned from a solo car camping trip on the eastern side of the Sierras. He had intended for it to be a spiritual retreat – a time to let go and be deeply intimate with himself in the wilderness, as Jesus had once […]

Random Acts of Gratitude

Awakening to Our Uncommon Senses

“Both Wounded and Whole”

Discovering the Beloved

“Don’t Know, Don’t Need to Know”

“Tending the Inner Spark of Radiance”

“The Way of Benign Disillusionment”

“The Role of Spiritual Teachers & Teachings”

Defeat Precedes Surrender: The End of a Vision Quest