Writing and Talks

I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be… Continue reading Opening to Uncertainty

In a moment of reactivity, there’s a part of you that jumps into the driver’s seat. It stresses you out with anxiety, defends you with anger, or entices you to reach for that coping strategy. It’s so sure it has… Continue reading How do you protect me?

— I recall being on a meditation retreat and seeing someone who was practising diligently but continually running up against a wall in their practice. Over and over they raised their hand and asked what they should do if they… Continue reading The Double Helix: Integrating Insight and Content

Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good.You do not have to walk on your kneesfor a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it… Continue reading The world offers itself to your imagination

I never met my Uncle Chwan. I’ve only seen a small sepia-tinged photo of him on the altar at my Aunty’s house, next to photos of Ah Ma and Ah Kong, my paternal grandparents. The second youngest of eight siblings,… Continue reading Uncle Chwan: A ghost monk

~4 minute read I’m 10 days into a 21 day silent retreat. Here with one dear friend, at another friend’s property on Birpai land. Each dawn and dusk my friend and I quietly make our way to the riverbank to… Continue reading An Image of Existential Crisis

Imagine yourself atop a misty mountain, fog obscuring every direction. As you stand here, you know the terrain is complex — mountains and valleys, rivers and ravines. You gaze around and see only haze. Peaks rise over clouds, the way… Continue reading Pointing out the path through the mist

I’m sitting on the beige, scratchy carpet in the spare room of my unit in Maylands, a quaint-yet-growing suburb of Boorloo (Perth). I’m trying to meditate and have a growing sense of failure. I gaze at the light slowly crawling… Continue reading Finding a Path Forward

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s a new year (or it will be soon for the lunar calendar devotees). The question I’m asking myself now: What am I taking refuge in? Refuge here means what I trust in, what I… Continue reading Taking refuge in compassion and wisdom

We can practise noting “feeling states” in order to be more consciously aware of what is arising and to be able to put into language the present moment experience so that it can be picked up on by others. In this practice the term “feeling state” covers emotion (anger, sadness, joy), mind states (boredom, curiosity), and also the sensory experience in the body that I have that co-arises with emotion or mind states (when feeling anger I feel warm in the face and tension in my arms and hands, or when I notice a mind state of curiosity there’s a lightness in the chest and head). The emotion, mind state, or sensation are all equally valid doorways to knowing what is present for you in that moment.

~4 minute read I’ve just left a Zoom call for a self-organised online meditation group and I’m buzzing with an open tenderness. It’s a small group, four of us chatting tonight for an hour. We take it in turns to… Continue reading Sangha is the most important dimension of meditation

Upcoming events in Sydney! Day of Practice Sunday 5 October 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pmBuddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney The opportunity to go on retreat is special. To have the time and space to focus on practice is an amazing… Continue reading In-Person Events

~6 minute read, 1100 words I’m trudging along, hauling my wheelie suitcase down an unsealed bitumen road that leads to the S.N. Goenka Vipassanā Retreat Centre. I’m about to do my first silent meditation retreat and I’m incredibly nervous. I’ve… Continue reading A Vipassanā Story

Mindfulness is so often talked about in terms of practising meditation to relax and calm down, to be non-reactive, to be mindfully present, and to release some of the “stuff” that makes it so tiring and painful to be in the world. Now this is undeniably helpful. Sometimes, it even feels like this is the cure. Being calm and present is a great start to help with some aspects of burnout (I’ll talk more about how meditation helps in the later parts of this series). But meditation could also lead to a kind of dead-end where you become an inert robot that simply “copes” with what is happening; where one finds a kind of “equanimous productivity”, as Rob Burbea describes, to function in a society that constantly pressures us to do and be in ways that are exhausting, depleting, and lead to a sense of futility and meaninglessness.

Video recording of a Dharma Talk from Day of Practice (14:10) Audio only: Register for the Day of Practice — next on Sunday 3 August. This is an excerpt from a talk at the Day of Practice. I offer some… Continue reading Presence and Buddha Nature (talk)

~10 minute read Reflections on different phases of meditation, what it means to deepen practice, and how an emphasis on trust, confidence, and humility can allow the practice to unfold. You don’t know what you don’t know There’s a Deepening… Continue reading You don’t know what you don’t know

This is a reflection on some of the formative moments in the earlier part of my meditation journey. 5 minute read. I’ve been thinking recently about the moments in my own life and practice when things were not going so… Continue reading Inflection Points – Key Moments of Finding Direction in Practice

Hi friends! I’ve been thinking a lot about the importance of community for practice. I recently returned from spending some time in the United States practising on retreat, teaching, and spending time with the communities over there. It was an… Continue reading Community, Sangha, Support

~ 10 minute read Why Meditate? ~ 10 minute read People meditate for various reasons and with different motivations for what they want from practice. We could loosely put these into three levels, which roughly correspond with how much practice… Continue reading Why Meditate?

~ 7 minute read I’ve been hearing a familiar story from friends, students, and peers lately. It goes something like this. You’ve tried out meditation practice and noticed that it helps! There’s something that’s just good about taking some time… Continue reading Reigniting Meditation Practice