Tea Ceremony

Remain inside the storm of your own mental chatter
and you can see nothing else.
But take the backwards step into natural Awareness
and you will know that your storm is a tempest in a teacup.
The teacup is what you call "me," your personal identity,
and the tea is all your experience.
Awareness holds the teacup. Awareness drinks the tea.
Awareness experiences the tempest, too,
but without getting lost in the drama.
Vast, open, empty, silent Awareness.
The teacup is but a small thing.
Don't throw out the tea or smash the teacup.
Awareness likes drinking tea.
Only stop believing so very much in your tempest.
Let the tea be still.

Logging In to the Present Moment

One Human Journey is pleased to offer "Logging In to the Present Moment," a 25-minute guided audio meditation with Dennis Hunter, founder of One Human Journey and author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are.

This meditation uses a very contemporary and familiar technology metaphor as a gateway into the practice of mindfulness.

To prepare for this practice, find a quiet, comfortable place to sit. Relax and enjoy!

This guided meditation can be streamed here at One Human Journey. You can also play it at Spotify and SoundCloud, or download it from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, and other digital stores.





Intro music credit: "Dub Eastern" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Hurricane Season

Big Mind and small mind are not two separate things.
"Big" and "small" are reference points at which to grasp
while free-falling through open space.
Just let yourself fall. Trust that you are the space.

The small mind is a hurricane,
blowing with sound and fury,
circling around a non-existent center.
Nothing is really there but the energy of Mind itself,
moving in habitual patterns through space and elements.
Vivid. Temporary.

The hurricane believes so strongly in its own importance.
It has to make an impact on the world. Space couldn't care less.
Let the hurricane blow or not, and go where it pleases.
Space accommodates everything and attaches to nothing.
Only the hurricane believes in its own sound and fury.

Small mind, bent on having its way, are you tired yet
of your own blowing, spinning, wailing, contracting?
Do you know that at your center there is only stillness?
(Sneak peak at tomorrow's lesson: you don't really have a center, either.)

Do you remember that you are, have always been, could only ever be, Me?

The Girl with the Skull Earring

In a dream I had recently, I was sitting in a restaurant next to a girl who was wearing a beautiful outfit, with one dangling skull earring. Some of the dream details are fuzzy, but I think I was dressed in my old monk's robes, because I was somehow singled out as being very distinctly and visibly "Buddhist." At any rate, the whole atmosphere of the dream seemed charged with Buddhist spirituality, because His Holiness the 17th Karmapa was teaching nearby. When I have dreams with a teacher like the Karmapa in them, I tend to pay attention and look for messages. And boy, did I get one this time.

Two waitresses approached the girl and told her how nice her outfit was, but gently reprimanded her for wearing the skull earring. They said the skull was a morbid symbol of death and that one shouldn't wear such symbols because they attract evil spirits, or bad luck, or something equally superstitious. At that point in the dream, I chimed in, and delivered a speech that went like this (paraphrased from memory):

"Actually, the Buddhist view would be quite the opposite. In Buddhism we are encouraged to deeply contemplate death and impermanence, and Buddhist iconography often features skulls and corpses and other stark reminders that death is woven into the fabric of life itself. Most of the time we don't think about death, and so we go around acting like we have all the time in the world. But the reality is that our bodies are impermanent, and we are subject to old age, sickness and death. In fact, we might never even make it to old age. We might become gravely ill next year or get hit by a bus today after we leave this restaurant. Death is really the only thing in life that is absolutely inevitable, and it can strike at any time, without warning — so it's best if we keep that always in mind. It not only helps us be better prepared when it's our time to go, but also helps us put our life in better perspective. A lot of the things that we ordinarily think are very important in life, mundane things that we devote so much of our time to pursuing, appear insignificant when we remember that our time in this life is short and that death could come at any moment."

Relaxation Is What You Are

One Human Journey is pleased to offer a 20-minute guided audio meditation with Dennis Hunter, founder of One Human Journey and author of You Are Buddha: A Guide to Becoming What You Are.

• Practice deep relaxation and mindfulness of the present moment
• Learn to notice subtle ways you resist your own experience and move away from the present moment
• Feel more refreshed, awake, and synchronized between mind and body

To prepare for this meditation, find a quiet, comfortable place to lie on your back and close your eyes. Headphones or computer speakers are best for optimal sound quality.

Bonus for cat lovers: 
Agneshka the cat briefly interrupts the meditation to make a special, apparently urgent feline announcement around the 9:36 mark, then settles down again after a few seconds.

This guided meditation can be streamed here at One Human Journey. You can also play it at Spotify and SoundCloud, or download it from Google Play, Amazon, iTunes, and other digital stores.