The Path

The path we practice is a path of meditation and self-discovery. Its purpose is to become more aware of how the mind works, to see the patterns that shape our experience, and ultimately to discover what lies beyond them. Meditation is the foundation, but the practice doesn’t end when you get up from the cushion. Relationships, work, fear, attachment, uncertainty, joy, success and failure all become part of learning to see yourself more clearly.

We sometimes call this the fast path. Fast doesn’t mean easy, and it doesn’t mean instant. It means working directly with your life and your state of mind. You learn to notice where your attention goes, what drains your energy, what you hold onto, what you avoid, and what happens when you begin to let some of that go. There can be tremendous joy in the process. There can also be periods when the practice asks a great deal of you. Real transformation takes effort, honesty, meditation and time.

The aim is not to adopt a set of beliefs or become a particular kind of spiritual person. The teachings are something to explore and test through your own experience. Over time, the experience is very practical: greater awareness, less entanglement in the patterns that cause suffering, more freedom in how you meet your life—and a growing recognition of the deeper awareness that meditation allows us to experience directly.

Coming to the Path

Most people begin simply by coming to a public meditation. You sit with other people who are interested in many of the same questions you are. Meditation teachers guide the sitting and help you learn how to quiet the mind, work with attention, and gradually move beyond the stream of thoughts into more direct awareness. You begin to experience what happens when the mind is given some space from the constant concerns, attachments and frustrations that occupy so much of our attention. The atmosphere is relaxed. You can ask questions, listen, meditate and get a feel for the people and the practice.

For someone new, the first few weeks are mostly about learning to meditate and noticing what meditation actually does. Your first meditation may be peaceful, restless, surprisingly clear, or filled with thoughts. There is no particular experience you are supposed to have. With practice, you begin to recognize the difference between being caught in thought and simply being aware. You may also discover how good it feels to spend time with people who are exploring the same things—people with whom you don’t have to perform or pretend to have everything figured out.

We generally meet once a week in person and once a week online. The meetings include meditation, teaching, discussion and questions about how the practice applies to what is happening in our lives. For students who become interested in going deeper, there are opportunities for individual meetings as well. There is no cost for the teachings, classes or individual instruction. Some students who have practiced for many years and established successful lives and careers choose to contribute financially, helping make the same opportunities available to the people who come after them. There is no requirement or expectation that anyone do so.

At first, though, it is much simpler than all of that. You come. You sit. You meet some people. You learn a little about your own mind. Then you decide from your own experience whether you want to come back.

What Happens at a Meeting

A meeting usually begins informally. People arrive, meet one another and settle in. We talk about meditation—how it works, what we are learning through it, and how it can help us become less entangled in the constant activity of the mind. There is plenty of room for questions. New people can talk about why they came, what they are looking for, or simply listen.

Sometimes we begin with a writing prompt to help make the transition from the momentum of ordinary life into a more reflective state of mind. What empowers you? What drains you? How would you want to live so that, at the end of your life, you had no regrets? There is no right answer. The point is to stop for a moment and look.

Then we meditate. We often use music, particularly for newer students. It gives the mind something beautiful to focus on while helping the student move gradually toward greater stillness. We also work with simple points of concentration such as the breath, a chakra or a yantra. As the mind settles, students begin to experience the spaciousness that exists beyond the continual movement of thought. Afterward there is time to talk about the meditation, ask questions and share what came up. And then there are cookies. People hang around, talk, laugh and get to know one another. The social part is part of the experience too.

Between Meetings

Once you leave, the practice becomes your own. We encourage beginning students to sit in the morning for five to fifteen minutes. Observe your mind. Work with the breath or focus on a chakra or yantra. Notice the thoughts that appear without having to follow every one of them. A useful image is that the mind is the sky and thoughts are passing clouds. The clouds come and go. The sky remains.

Then take that same attention into the day. Notice where your mind goes. Notice what pulls you out of balance, where you become attached, frustrated or reactive, and how quickly the mind can build a whole narrative around something that happened. The practice is to see it without immediately judging yourself or getting carried away by the story. Little by little, meditation and daily life begin to connect. You aren’t only learning how to sit quietly for fifteen minutes. You’re learning how your mind works while you’re living your life.

What Students Learn

Students begin with meditation: how to sit, focus the mind, work with attention, and become less caught in the continual movement of thought. Over time, meditation becomes more than something you do for a period each day. You begin to recognize different states of mind, understand what strengthens or diminishes your awareness, and develop the ability to return to clarity when life pulls you away from it.

The teachings explore the things we encounter in ordinary life: attachment, fear, desire, ego, relationships, work, uncertainty, happiness and change. Students learn to look at their own patterns without judgment and to see more clearly where those patterns create suffering or consume energy. The point is not to accept an idea because a teacher says it is true. You learn through meditation, observation and your own experience.

Practice also has to work in the world. Students are encouraged to build strong lives—to study, pursue meaningful careers, develop their abilities, take care of themselves, and bring greater awareness to the choices they make. Work, relationships and everyday difficulties become part of the practice. The measure of what you are learning is not how spiritual you appear. It is what happens to the way you actually live.

How Students Grow

Growth on the path tends to happen gradually. In the beginning, a student may simply be learning to sit still, focus attention and watch the mind without following every thought. At the same time, we encourage people to get their lives in order: build good habits, keep commitments, develop meaningful work, take care of themselves and become increasingly responsible for the direction of their own lives. Meditation and ordinary maturity go together.

Over time, the practice becomes more subtle. Students begin to recognize their reactions sooner. There may be more space between an emotion and what they do with it, more ability to separate what actually happened from the story the mind creates around it. Difficult conversations, career decisions, relationships, uncertainty and disappointment become places to practice. Awareness moves from something experienced during meditation into something available in the middle of life.

Years of practice can deepen this considerably, although the path is rarely linear. There are periods of clarity and periods of difficulty, breakthroughs and stretches when very little seems to be happening. What develops is less a spiritual identity than a capacity: to become still, recover more quickly when thrown off balance, make decisions with less noise, love more openly, and meet life with greater awareness. For some students, meditation also opens into profound experiences of light, spaciousness or states of consciousness beyond their ordinary experience. These are deeply personal experiences rather than benchmarks everyone is expected to reach. The practice continues through all of it.