Teacher's Blog

(Photo Credit: Laura Ockel)

We gathered Saturday. From across the globe, from various walks of life, with video backdrops revealing books and shines, cabinets and clothes, artwork, staircases, and furnishings, we gathered to witness and commit.

The range of ways we showed up for this event - including those arriving by phone and those who will arrive through the recording - well matches the bodhisattva vow altogether. It is an ‘in the world’ vow, for one thing. Rather than being something we keep to ourselves, the commitments of this gesture are shared. And the exact nature of this sharing is always and necessarily unique to each of us.

So that we came together in such a tapestry of ways seems well suited to the occasion. And now let us acknowledge and celebrate all those who took this step in equally unique ways. Please take a moment to read through the names that follow. Take a moment to feel the resonance of this day, of this vow. And, should it feel appropriate, ask that resonan...

The practice of somatic meditation allows us to realize a series of developmental outcomes that mark a gradual loosening of samsara. An outcome noted in the third turning is buddha nature. Buddha nature can be simply defined as what remains in emptiness. What remains is often described as wisdom (aka: clarity, vividness, openness), compassion (aka: sensitivity, warmth, attunement), and power (aka: responsiveness). Note a moment from today - during your practice or your everyday activities - in which you glimpsed buddha nature.

Sunday morning. Dishes are being washed. Michael Enright’s leading us into the second hour of CBC Radio’s Sunday Edition. The opening piece is long, more than thirty minutes in duration. Enright is in conversation with a number of Indigenous peoples around the subject, ‘What are we really talking about when we talk about reconciliation?’

In broad terms, ‘reconciliation’ points toward efforts to establish just and respectful relations between First Nations and t...

The practice of somatic meditation allows us to realize a series of developmental outcomes that mark a gradual loosening of samsara. An outcome noted in the second turning is emptiness - simply defined as experience that is empty of all we think. Note a moment from today - during your practice or your everyday activities - in which you glimpsed emptiness.

Looking over today’s ‘to do’ list. Even when extraneous ‘I’s’ are eased out of my inner dialogue - even when ‘I have to pick up a squeegee’ is loosened to ‘pick up a squeegee’ - pressure, tension, edginess remain. ‘I need to get this done today,’ presents itself as part of this tension. As do ‘There’s not enough time’ and ‘I have too much to do’ and several others. Each is pushing, demanding, insisting in some way, shape, or form. Each is uncomfortable.

‘What if I loosened these as well?’ I ask, again recalling our forum explorations. Attention comes into the body, finds something holding deep in the belly, envelopes this until ther...

(Photo Credit: Artem Beliaikin)

The practice of somatic meditation allows us to realize a series of developmental outcomes that mark a gradual loosening of samsara. An outcome noted in the first turning is egolessness - simply defined as a relatively ‘I-less’ flow of ever-changing experience. Note a moment from today - during your practice or your everyday activities - in which you glimpsed egolessness.

There’s too much on my plate. Tasks and responsibilities feel like a torrent. Without noticing, I have personalized this stream. ‘I have to get ready for the live talk.’ ‘I have to put together exam questions.’ ‘I have to make this appointment for the bathroom sink, that appointment for our daughter.’ ‘I have to get groceries and tidy the kitchen and ready dinner…’

I wonder if I could edit some of these personalizations. Following our explorations with forum posts, I wonder if some of these are extraneous. If so, what might happen if they’re eased out of my internal commentaries? If ...

(Photo Credit: Alan Hurt Jr.)

For many of us, the spiritual journey begins and is continually reaffirmed by our visceral sense of samsara - simply defined as being caught up in what ‘I’ adds to experience. Note a moment from today - during your practice or your everyday activities - in which you were caught up in this way.

Walking to work, I notice what I am up to. Call it thinking. Call it pondering. Calling it injuring or maligning, adding or conceptualizing. My mind, I suddenly realize, is gripped with thoughts regarding how work, home, dinner, practice, this sunny autumn day - how everything - could be different.

I stop right where I am and these words arise: ‘This is suffering’. Before I am able to notice the tension holding my shoulders, the strain clawing my abdomen. Before I realize my forehead is crinkled and my face drawn into a frown. Before all of this, that one word takes me back to Sutrayana Foundation Yana Unit Two, the Buddha’s First Noble Truth. The first instructio...

(Photo Credit: Melissa Askew)

“The tandem of a ‘don't’ slogan and ‘all activities’ encourages us to come out of our materialistic daydream, come back to the body, and open the heart. Because we have time available to us, because we have this curriculum and this framework known as the three turnings, I want to encourage us to come to this task - this practice of opening our hearts into the world - in a gradual and a developmental way.”
- Neil W. McKinlay, Unit One Live Talk

Late afternoons typically look like this: I shop for groceries, tidy the kitchen, cook dinner, then wearily flop onto the living room couch. Yesterday offered little variation from this routine - except for the instant I caught myself grumbling about the sofa. It was, I moaned in my thoughts, ‘too hard, too short, and placed in a lousy location.’ At which point this unit’s first slogan appeared. “Don’t ponder others” it counselled, setting off a sequence of events that lasted only seconds.

Seeing what I was doing -...

(Photo Credit: Alis Kriviec)

“The tandem of a ‘don't’ slogan and ‘all activities’ encourages us to come out of our materialistic daydream, come back to the body, and open the heart. Because we have time available to us, because we have this curriculum and this framework known as the three turnings, I want to encourage us to come to this task - this practice of opening our hearts into the world - in a gradual and a developmental way.”
- Neil W. McKinlay, Unit One Live Talk

I like walking. It is my main means of transport. It is my main means of exercise. It is something I do a great deal.

In accepting the ‘lojong invitation’ for this unit, I’ve come to see how much thinking goes on as I do my wandering. More specifically, how much I think about the many ways things ‘should’ be different, the many ways things are ‘wrong’ through these times. ‘He should do this,’ I say to myself. ‘She should do that. And this should be some other way.’

Noting the quality of “injured limbs” that dominat...

(Photo Credit: Jeremy Bishop)

What should I write here? The task is to introduce myself. A plain enough endeavour on the surface of things. Yet one aim of this Sutrayana Study and Practice Intensive is to delve beneath surfaces. To engage the teachings and practices of this somatic lineage in order to perceive life more deeply. With a heightened measure of sensitivity and refinement.

In Part One of this event - the Foundation Yana - the term used to describe our heightened experience of life was egolessness. As the central insight of the First Turning, egolessness points to the fact that our sense of self is not what we typically think. Rather than being definitive, what we designate ‘I’ is more flowing in character; a winding river of ever changing experience. 

What if I were to introduce myself along these lines? 

I’m sitting at my desk right now. Late afternoon sun burns through the window, star-bursting my vision and warming the left side of my face. I’ve got one line from a ne...