Links

My Personal Home Page

It is called The Way of It. In this website I write in plain terms about the benefits that meditation and self-inquiry have brought into my life. That website also hosts my blog. If you want to get to know more about me you can go there.

Meditation

I used to help run a meditation group in South Bend, Indiana. It is called the South Bend Dharma Center, a Buddhist meditation group in South Bend, Indiana.

I also used to help run Zen@ND, a group that meets every Thursday from 5:15 pm to 6:15 pm at 102 Coleman-Morse to practice sitting and walking meditation in the Zen tradition. See their website for more information about their practices.

My meditation practices

Let me tell you about my two main meditation practices: The work and Dzogchen

The Work

The Work of Byron Katie is a process of inquiry that can help anybody see their problems from an entirely different perspective.  For thousands of years we've believed that in order to find happiness we need to change the world around us. With these beliefs as our unconscious religion, we've spent our lives at war with the world. Trying to get reality to match our stories of how we believe it "should" be, we wonder why we don't feel any lasting sense of peace. But how can we feel peace when mentally we're engaged in war, wanting everything to be different than it is?

Katie, after years of depression, experienced in 1986 the profound realization that without any story about how life is supposed to be, we are left with a sense of peace far beyond what we hoped to find by fulfilling our dreams. On the other side of our myths about reality is reality itself, completely indescribable—and unknowable as long as we're still pursuing how things should be. Only when we give up "what should be" can we experience the profound peace of "what is."

For more information as to how this process works check http://www.thework.com.

Dzogchen

Dzogchen is the consummate practice of Tibetan Buddhism. It represents the nondual, or absolute/ultimate teaching of pure and total intrinsic awareness, innate wakefulness.

Dzogchen is considered, in Tibet, an advanced and secret teaching. Today it is said by certain senior Tibetan lamas to be "the teaching for our time," because it is direct, immediate, essentialized, adaptable and profound: a naked awareness practice applicable to any circumstance or situation, and easily integrated into modern life.

For more information on this simple and profound approach to meditation check http://www.dzogchen.org/ or http://www.tsegyalgar.org/ .

Yoga

My dear friend Machelle Lee teaches vinyasa yoga in South Bend, Indiana. Her website has updated information on her class schedule as well as some information about her teaching style. Check it out:
http://shaktiyogastudio.org.