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Noticing the Quality of Our Noticing
In this Awake in the World podcast episode Michael explains the meaning of taking refuge in Prajna Paramita (your heart), and your capacity to embrace your aliveness without being sidetracked by your storyteller.
You Are Your Refuge: Take Care of Yourself
In this Awake in the World podcast episode Michael considers the question: “If the boundaries of your self are conditioned and changeable, how do you know if you’ve stretched too far?” How do we balance the importance of boundaries and
Best of Awake in the World: Love, Death & Oak Trees
This week we’re revisiting a favorite Awake in the World podcast episode. In this talk, Michael describes the Buddha’s death and discusses the Zen koan “Oak Tree in the Garden,” meditation practice, and the politics of love.
Best of Awake in the World: The Role of the Body in Meditation Practice
This week we’re revisiting a favorite Awake in the World podcast episode. In this talk, Michael uses the teachings on emptiness to work with the body. He calls sitting “physical practice” and he describes yoga as “psychological practice.”
Best of Awake in the World: Bring Me Something That Isn’t Medicine
This week we’re revisiting a favorite Awake in the World podcast episode. In this talk, Michael discusses the Avatamsaka Sutra (The Flower Garland Sutra) and seeing everything as medicine. Meditation teaches us how to practice intimacy, even with old wounds.
Best of Awake in the World: The Whole World is Upside Down
This week we’re revisiting a favourite Awake in the World podcast episode. In this dharma talk, Michael talks about a Zen Master called Bird’s Nest Roshi who would go out on a limb and meditate in an abandoned bird’s nest.
Best of Awake in the World: Gratitude in Jewish and Buddhist Practice
This week we’re revisiting a favourite Awake in the World podcast episode. In this talk, Michael reflects on God, gratitude, mind, compassionate action, and the encounter between what can and can’t be talked about.
Radically Simple
In this Awake in the World podcast episode, Michael references the Middle-Length Discourses of the Buddha, reads a koan from The Book of Serenity, and explores how Buddhist practice is radically simple and relates to the whole of our lives.
Finding a Path
In this 30-minute guided meditation, Michael explores how to work with thoughts during sitting practice, focusing on the breath in a way that reduces clinging, reduces rejection. The breath doesn’t decide good or bad: it is kind to our body,
A More Liquified Existence
In this Awake in the World podcast episode Michael elucidates the “post-negation” part of the Heart Sutra, particularly the lines “with no hindrance in the mind. No hindrance, therefore no fear.” He characterizes hindrances as walls of the mind and
The Authoritarian Structures of the Mind
In this Awake in the World podcast episode, Michael explores the “negation section” of the Heart Sutra (no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue…) and how the story-telling and I-making functions of the mind contract and cling, leading us
Patanjali’s an Optimist
In this Awake in the World podcast episode, Michael unpacks part of the second pada of the Yoga Sutra (2.29 – 2.39) with an emphasis on wholesome thoughts, the yamas, the cure for nihilism, and the importance of not separating
About the Community Library
Michael was a great archivist and the Community Library was—and continues to be—a labour of love. Everything in the Community Library is available for free. Anyone, anywhere can have instant access to material that will help them deepen their practice and contribute to a culture of compassion and collaboration.
Libraries are places where we gather alone together. They are known to be places of refuge for seekers, as well as those who are marginalized. This library is no different. It helps us nourish our beautiful, international community without walls. Now, it will also help keep Michael’s legacy alive.