Meditation
How Meditation Affects the Brain
The world of neuroscience is revealing exactly how meditation affects the brain. I had the great honor to be invited to be subject on one of a series of studies being conducted on meditation. I was invited to the University of Wisconsin in Madison...
The Value of Three-Year Retreat
The three-year retreat at Söpa Chöling is a living experiment, resonant with the fearless spirit of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche who conceived it. The three year retreat was founded and overseen after Trungpa's death by Thrangu Rinpoche in 1990. Söpa...
Renunciation on the Spiritual Path
What is the role of renunciation on the spiritual path or in Buddhist practice? To most of us, what drove us to spiritual seeking in the first place is some level of realization that our obsession with self fulfillment and worldly pleasures can...
Is There a Dark Side to Meditation?
The recent article in The Atlantic by Tomas Rocha, “The Dark Knight of the Soul,” brings up a much neglected but very important topic around a dark side to meditation. With hundreds of studies (over 500 a year) coming out showing the benefits of...
Just When You Think You’re Enlightened
Andrew is a featured guest contributor in Buddhadharma Magazine. In this article, "Just When You Think You're Enlightened" Andrew writes that temporary experiences such as flashes of bliss or clarity can be encouraging moments in your practice, but...
The Power of Mindfulness
Everyday it seems there is another article about how mindfulness meditation is being embraced by people and institutions everywhere. From Silicon Valley to pro football to the Marine Corps , the power of mindfulness seems to be gaining some very...
Repetition is Key to Developing a Meditation Practice
Accomplishment in any discipline involves repetition. If we want to build muscles, we don’t lift 10,000 pounds one time, we lift a few pounds thousands of times. Just as repetition is the source of necessary hardship for a piano student aspiring...
