When it comes to sensitive subjects, one of them has to be our own "worthiness." If I ask for a show of hands of those of you who are working toward enlightenment, many of you reading this would respond. However, if I ask how many of you feel you are worthy of enlightenment, the response could be much less. Why is that? Why do we tend to not feel worthy?

I talked dharma back in the late 1950s, and played at meditation in the 1960s, but it was not until the 1970s that that the dharma really got hold of me. That would be when I met the great siddha Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at Ann Arbor in February of 1974. I got to be his chauffeur for a time. It was clear to me on contact with Trungpa that here was an authentic supramundane being, and this was not my first rodeo.

All of this time I may have been focusing on understanding the emptiness side of the equation (i.e. being is empty), when perhaps it makes more sense to consider being "AND" emptiness and note that our being may be running on empty, as in: "being" is not (and never has been) there really that much, if at all. That's a twist.

When I came on the scene there were two approaches to learning Tibetan Buddhism in North America, students who practice traditional texts in English and those of us who do it in Tibetan.

Early on I had a brush with those who advocated English when I met the great siddha, the Ven. Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, but as it turned out my own root lama was more conservative, the Ven. Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, and he had us do our dharma practice in Tibetan.

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"In for a penny, in for a pound." is an old saying about getting involved. Anyway, getting involved with the dharma and our monastery (Karma Triyana Dharmachakra) in the mountains high above Woodstock, New York was for me not quite a hop, skip, and a jump. It took time and it took encouragement. And we were newbies. I love the dharma, but I also had some thoughts about joining a dharma organization. Here is my story.

I am sensitive to religious proselytizing, yet I am very enthused about the dharma, as readers of this blog must know. I am sure the Christians feel the same way about their message. I wonder how my enthusiasm compares to the message of Christian evangelism.

"Have your heard the 'Good News'" is what the Christians say. As a dharma practitioner and enthusiast, I feel that the dharma is also good news, and that if folks have not heard about the dharma, they might be interested. So what's the difference between my view and the Christians in my neighborhood who go around door-to-door? There is a difference.

There are a few key or very important terms in Tibetan Buddhism and the concept of "emptiness" is one of them, but it can be hard to define. In addition, there are several distinct ways the concept of emptiness is used in the teachings, and they can be confusing. Let's just start with how the Buddha defined emptiness and go from there

I can see that this going to be fun, like walking a tightrope, but the concept of Dakini is an important one in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, one often avoided because it has subtle (and not so subtle) sexual connotations attached to it, i.e. dakinis are often said to be the physical consorts of gurus, and vice versa. I can't speak to that, but we can sort through some of the ideas surrounding dakini lore.

I'm not referring to ecology, the environment, whole and organic foods, and all those endeavors that many of us are already involved in. Young people here in Northern Michigan are right at the forefront of all that. What I am referring to is something different and I don't even know what to call it, so "Organic Mind" is close enough for now, and the premise is simple.

Basic meditation involves learning how to allow our mind to just relax. The Tibetan Buddhists have a slogan (as translated by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche) that reads "Relax as it is" and another traditional admonition "Don't alter the present," which both essentially are saying the same thing. My point here is that beginning meditation involves learning to just allow our mind rest, and the accent here is on resting. "Resting" means ordinary rest like we do at the end of a hard day's work when we plop down on the couch and take a deep sigh. It is the same thing. Rest is rest.

I blogged recently about intuition and how to make it a constant part of our life-process, instead of just a sometimes thing. I don't want to beat a dead horse, as they say, but it may help those of you interested in all of this if I drill down a little bit more. I am referring to our being more in the moment and what is called Insight Meditation.

The freshness of the moment reminds me of when my wife and I used to raise dogs (by accident of course), and here were all these little fat puppies lined up on their mom nursing, about as content as anyone could be. That is kind of how I feel about being in the present moment – authentically content.

Some years ago I had the opportunity to take a number of trips into the Florida Everglades and, as a naturalist, totally loved it. But one thing that worried me down there was how shallow the groundwater in Florida is and how easily polluted. For some reason the pollution there sticks in my mind as the archetype for the following mini-rant.

The analogy is that our mind, at least our mental "surface" water, is also easily polluted. As a kid I grew up with five-and-ten-cent stores all around. There were also expensive things, of course, but all of the little stuff was priced low. Those days are gone. Everything today is offered at a premium price, as if it were the keystone or missing ingredient, the pearl of great price. The obvious result is that now it is much more expensive just to live. There are no five-and-ten-cent stores and even the dollar-stores that replaced them often have things that cost more than a dollar.

Ignoring the actual nature of the mind is what spiritual ignorance is all about. This blog is about what are called the Three Poisons, of which the root poison is Ignorance. Looking at what we ignore, and becoming aware of what we distract ourselves with instead, leads us to the deconstruction of the Self, and true transmigration, the transference of our identification from self-related concerns to actual true nature of the mind itself.

This blog is about those stones in our pathway that we call doubts. I have talked a lot about obscurations, mostly referring to self-imposed blinders that make it difficult to intuitively see, and these are, of course, obstacles to our spiritual development. But we also have plain-old "obstacles," external obstructions (events, conditions, or whatever) that appear in our life-path seemingly from the outside, and these can be harder to internalize, much less realize; they are something we can't do much about, except in our response to them.

This is a blog, with some personal rambling, on ostensibly what is called that Fourth Thought of the "Four Thoughts That Turn the Mind to the Dharma," a classic Tibetan Buddhist concept. The Fourth Thought is sometimes called the "shortcomings of Samsara," the basic undependability of this cyclic world of up and down that we all live in. The rambling part of it has to do with resting in the present moment and not wanting to take action other than allowing the mind to rest, i.e. not altering the mind. 

The actual technique of sitting meditation practice is only part of the story. Equally important is our intent and attitude both going into a meditation session and how we seal or close a session when we are done. The importance of aspirations before practice and the dedication of merit after practice are explained, along with the key concept of what are called the "Two Accumulations," that of merit and awareness or wisdom"