You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting— over and over announcing your place in the family of things.
(emphasis mine)
We adopted a cat five weeks ago. Her name is Mimi and we affectionately call her Memes. She celebrated her 1st birthday this week.
I wonder about her life. About her past as a stray on the street. About what she really thinks of this apartment and these two humans that are now her loving companions.
Mimi is vicious when pouncing on a bee soft toy; tender when snuggling to be brushed. She closes her eyes and nudges her head towards the window to smell the outside air. She perches on a shelf and watches us go about our busyness. I bow to her while blinking slowly, doing my best to communicate love and safety.
Since Mimi has come into our lives, I’m moved by her softness and the raw animal of her being. I’m touched by the divine aliveness that fills her graceful movements.
I’m humbled by this creature that depends on me to survive. I come across a reddit thread asking what to do in their cat’s last days. I know it’s likely I’ll outlive Mimi and be witness to her death. The sadness I feel is poignant and clarifying: I choose to move closer and to love her more even though it risks greater pain.
I sit quietly and consider this imaginally. Mimi offers herself to my imagination. The image of self, other, and world has shifted to include her. The threads of my life are now interweaving with Mimi’s. A new meaningfulness unfolds, felt but not named.
Where there is love there is image. When we open to something and find this sense of love, we can recognise that the imaginal is working away in the background, concocting a sense of things, finding our place in the world.
This is a different move from reducing suffering or letting go of clinging. Sometimes it also opens us to grief and pain — there is always that risk. What it promises in return is deep meaningfulness, found in the particulars: softly breathing curled up in a ball, meowing in excited greeting, yawning after a long nap.
—
The meditation workshop on Imaginal Practice I’m leading is coming up next week. If you feel the world offering itself to your imagination, come explore with me.
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 youngest of eight siblings, he was kind and gentle. My Dad and Aunty talk of their little brother as the nice one of the family. I can sense the truth in this.
All eight of my Dad’s siblings moved from Malaysia to Australia to go to university. After graduating with an accounting degree, Uncle Chwan decided to become a Buddhist monk in the Thai Forest tradition. This was the time — the family was healthy and well, he’d finished his studies, and something called him to live a different life.
He travelled to Thailand to ordain in the Ajahn Chah lineage at Wat Pa Nanachat — known locally as the monastery for westerners. The details are cobbled together from stories I’ve heard from family and from a monk who was there at the time. To ordain he was required to arrive with few possessions and no money, taking motorbike rides through jungles, giving up everything he knew to live with strangers. He turned his life upside down at 21 for a chance to dedicate himself to something greater.
Uncle Chwan’s Dharma name was Nyanaviro in Pali — meaning “courageous in wisdom” or “one whose courage is knowledge”. This Thai Forest tradition is characterised by austere, relentless dedication to the path.
A couple of years after ordaining, Uncle Chwan became ill. The abbot of the monastery had encouraged the monks to be equanimous with their illnesses rather than seek medicine, a reticence to which Uncle Chwan was already inclined. When his illness got worse, he continued meditating in his kuti. After he didn’t come to the morning chanting and meditation, he was found dead by another monk.
It was incredibly rare for a monk to die so young. The monastery held a special ceremony and dozens of monks travelled from the surrounding towns to pay their respects. But almost all of my family couldn’t travel to such a remote place at that time. The cause of death was said to be encephalitis caused by malaria or rabies. If caught early, this could have been treated. Death by equanimity.
I’m haunted by his ghost. He first came to me in meditation cautiously, hesitantly. I was unsure of opening to this dimension and the image flickered and faded in turn.
Eventually I allowed the image to come. Uncle Chwan visits me — adorned in ochre robes, shaved head, thin-framed glasses. He sits by me. Sometimes he offers me a smile, or a gentle hand on my shoulder. I sense that he is always with me, a phrase I’d dismissed when hearing others talk about these presences. I feel held in a kind embrace, watched over. During a month-long retreat, I experienced so much pain and mental anguish that I felt close to giving in, but I continued on, comforted by his presence in my imaginal sangha. He sat among my field of support.
I can’t explain the tenderness and kindness I feel from this image. What I feel is love. I feel heartbreak. I feel a family that was shattered at his death and maybe never recovered. I feel both endless grief and limitless compassion. I break down into tears when I see his half-smile. I’m held in his Loving Presence.
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 there shrouded in mystery.
“Wow, that’s some nice mist. Now mist that nice must be covering something pretty specky.”
Climbing a mountain in Liuzhou, from the series “Picture Book of Chinese Poems (Toshi gafu no uchi)” by Totoya Hokkei Original public domain image from Art Institute of Chicago
You know that you aren’t on the highest peak, yet it was a long climb to get here. It took everything you had, for all of your life, to move higher, to do better. Hesitant to begin descending, you take off your bags. You get cosy where you are. Thoughts arise in pensive moments: “well, this isn’t so bad, I’ll just make the most of this” as you open a can of beans from your stash. You’ve become stuck in a good place. Then something calls to you. The possibility of higher peaks. More mountains to climb. To more deeply know yourself. To see what you are capable of. To experience the full range of freedom and meanginfulness.
When you go to take the next step you realise it must be downwards. Stepping down is awkward and your feet hurt when landing on uneven rocks. Trying anything from here is a tad uncomfortable. Whatever comes next challenges you and makes you question whether to stay or try for the next peak.
This is where a guide comes in handy: someone who’s been to a higher mountain can share tales of that place, the path to get there, and what the view looks like from the next peak.
To follow the guide you have to be willing to trust — to set off on a journey that first leads down the mountain, then hopefully up the next one. You commit to following the path long enough to really see if it leads to a higher mountain. Without momentum, you’ll take a few steps then turn back. A good guide instils trust and confidence that each step has its place in the whole journey.
Rediscovering the Joy of Being Taught
For a long time, I attended teachings but they somehow didn’t land. Even when talks were interesting and enjoyable, I sat thinking “this won’t change my meditation tomorrow.” Worse yet, techniques would get mixed and I’d find myself looking for landmarks that were off in the other direction entirely. Something changed in the past 18 months. I’ve attended retreats and workshops where the teachers were doing something genuinely different. I rediscovered the joy of being a student and having things to learn. I delighted in the voyage to get to the next peak.
One time I was learning a new framing of the practice of calm abiding. I was already very familiar with this practice from another set of teachings. I found the first few meditations challenging — I was grinding through, trying to make sense of it, comparing and contrasting to what I already practised, thinking I’d made a mistake to ever leave my cosy hilltop. I was homesick. Realising that this was a golden opportunity right in front of me, I gave in to the new instructions; I trusted the guide. Once I stopped resisting, I quickly landed in effortlessness — not through sitting a long time as I had been taught, but through following elegant, efficient moves. This felt experience of tranquility is now right there, just a few steps away.
Rather than learning from a book, I was being welcomed into a new landscape and invited to play there. I was given new frameworks and maps, but more importantly, I was told where to step so I could feel it in my body. I could sense, in real time, how my understanding shifted and opened up.
From this experience I realised I could do more to show others the views I’d seen myself.
The guide first meets you exactly where you are. Then they point out the way to the next vista. Each step unfolds into the next. When you really land in where you are, the questions begin to form of where to go next, the fog opens up with each step you take until you are steady on the path under your feet.
Meditation Workshops
Let’s unfold a path of meditation that feels alive in your bones. We can walk the trail to the next summit.
My new offering is Meditation Workshops — a full day deep dive. The ask is a full day of your time for a chance to explore the teachings, coming out with a view from the top of a new mountain, and a map to guide you back there.
Feb + Mar — The Elephant Path of Calm Abiding Apr + May — Exploring Imaginal Practice Jun + Jul — Meditation, Emotions, and the Nervous System Aug + Sep — Cultivating Insight Through Ways of Looking Oct + Nov — Insight into Emptiness and Nonduality Dec + Jan — The Freedom of Spacious Awareness
These are on the first Sunday of the month, alternating in-person and online. There’ll be a curriculum with teachings on specific topics: instruction, guided meditation, q+a, practice pod chats, plus recordings and resources. Lots of chances to get support and guidance. Coalescence Sangha will also explore each theme in the lead-up to each workshop.
Okay that’s enough talking, let’s go explore some trails. I’ve got the map and I’ve packed plenty of snacks. Come join me and I’d love to show you some of the views that I’ve had the pleasure of exploring.
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 across the carpet. Restless and bored, I get up and do something else. Maybe meditation just isn’t for me.
Much earlier, I’m sitting on another carpet. This time I’m young, maybe nine years old, and Dad has offered to teach me to meditate. I’m thrilled, it’s all so mysterious to me. What happens when Dad goes off and sits quietly in the evenings? It could be anything! We sit on the floor in the front room of the house with the lights dim. Dad guides me to notice the sensations of my breath. I picture it like I’m watching an animation: breath coming into my body like flowing coloured lines moving through my nose, filling my lungs, then releasing on the exhale to rejoin the atmosphere. I enjoy the feeling of being calm, but I get sleepy straight away. I also feel like I’m somehow doing it wrong — I’m picturing something but it feels like I’m making it up, using my highly active imagination instead of doing it “properly.” Is this what meditation is meant to be? In the ensuing years I only meditate when in bed as something to do while waiting for my mind to drift off. I don’t recall us sitting together again.
I’m in a chair gazing over a busy Sydney street on a cloudy weekday afternoon. The recent move has been challenging and I’m in the middle of a spell of depression and anxiety. I can’t seem to break out of feeling this way through my usual methods and I’m starting to feel desperate. I come across a book: “The Mindful Way Through Depression.” While it sounds like it’s just what I need, I’m short of spoons and can’t summon the energy to get further than the title. Instead I read a short article online, remember yoga teachers talking about mindfulness, and try to do a practice. I bring my mind to the present moment sensations. I watch myself from a more objective viewpoint. I see myself drinking tea, walking up the stairs, feeling sad, obsessing about a stressful event. I watch a thought arise and pass and suddenly feel a freedom and relief I haven’t felt in ages: I don’t need to be so caught up. But this is only fleeting, fading away mere moments later. After I stop practising I’m right back to rumination. I know that if I could continue this mindfulness it would help but have no idea how to make it stick. It feels like I opened a doorway to a vast beautiful view that closed again in the blink of an eye. I have no idea what the key is to get the door open again, or to keep it open.
In each of these scenes, I felt like I had started school without books, anything to write with, or language to communicate with others. Without a framework and map, I got lost at every turn.
//
Once I got my head above water from the period of depression, anxiety, and burnout, I had a moment of insight. I realised that I needed to find some way of working with the mind. It was suddenly clear that my mind was turning an objectively good life situation into something miserable. I felt like I was stuck playing a cursed game that I had invented; I was trapped in a prison of my own creation. Something in how I was relating to experiences wasn’t working. I knew I needed something that would help me learn from these experiences.
A friend happened to give me a copy of the book The Mind Illuminated and I began practising consistently. I moved up and down the stages of The Elephant Path. The guidance I received in that book, combined with a few chats with more experienced practitioners, brought the practice to life. As I sat, I felt more calm and clear. I learned how my mind could so easily shift into criticism and place blame on myself, or feel responsible for things I couldn’t control, such as a moment of distraction. I saw, moment-by-moment, how my mind constructed this prison.
One morning a few months later I’m sitting on a cushion, this time on parquet flooring. I observe the sensations of the body and the breath. I watch thoughts about my unfinished thesis chapter, what to cook for dinner, an idea for an artwork. There’s a gentle sense of calm and comfort. The bell goes off after 45 minutes and I open my eyes to a soft light angled in through the apartment window. I take a moment to appreciate the warmth of the rays in the cool air. I realise that I’m just…fine. It’s another day and my mind isn’t a bad place to be.
Over the months that followed, I knew that I’d never experience the same difficulty with anxiety and depression. Each day, each week, I noticed the patterns of the mind and saw how intention and attention shaped my world.
//
Looking back, it became clear that I was lucky to find a foundational practice that helped make meditation not only function, but also to feel good. The Buddha said that practice should be “good at the beginning, good in the middle, good at the end.” That on its own is a vast beautiful view and a doorway worth opening.
I’m delighted to go back to my roots and to bring this practice to life through a full-day of exploration on the 8th of March. Come join me : )
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 turn to, what I rely on. Where do I go when the shit hits the fan?
I drop in the question and wait for an answer. What comes is a quiet resonance, a subtle hum, the room tone of spacious awareness. I go about my days and gradually these quiet tones form a stable drone.
I take refuge in the practice. I take refuge in the cultivation of wisdom and compassion.
Wisdom is the clear knowing, the recognition that who we ultimately are is the vast wholeness, the ocean of awareness, the beyond-beyond that is also right here, the deepest sense of being as this clear, pristine knowing itself.
Compassion is the tender caring that arises in response to the suffering of not recognising this wisdom. It’s empathising with others when they experience suffering. Compassion is connecting and sharing the complexity, the uncertainty, and the feeling of insecurity that flows in daily life. It’s embracing the not-knowing, together.
In practical terms, what I’m placing refuge in, for this year and beyond, is the trust that profound wisdom is available through practice, and that connecting with others is the compassion that lights the path. This sharing with others is a real gift, a guiding compass, and the practice itself.
Attunement is picking up on the relational field so that you have an embodied felt sense of what is going on for you, both individually and collectively. It’s about openness and acceptance of another. It’s seeing and hearing the other person, just as they are, without trying to change them. It’s much easier for me be kind and compassionate when I have a sense of what someone else is feeling – this is when I can really understand what they are going through and connect with their suffering, regardless of whether there’s anything I can do about it. By attuning to another, I am meeting the other person’s need for contact, while also allowing my own need for contact to be fulfilled.
For me, I’ve found difficulty with self-attunement, that is, knowing what I’m feeling. Sometimes this is not knowing I’m dysregulated until after the fact. Other times it’s letting frustration or anger build up without being clear about what factors are contributing to it. Sometimes it just takes me some time to realise I’m sad. I also sometimes have had trouble picking up on other people’s emotions, especially if they aren’t communicated explicitly. I just find it hard at times to know whether someone’s body language and slight change in affect means they want something or want to be left alone. The practice of attuned noting has been a great help.
Relationships require attunement. When we are spending time with others, and especially if we are close to someone or spend a lot of time with someone, we pick up on how the other person is feeling and base our actions on that, at least to some degree. The trouble arises if it isn’t so easy to know what the other person is feeling or if we ignore certain cues and signals. There’s three aspects to this: 1) I have my own feelings that I may be more-or-less consciously aware of. 2) I am expressing these feelings in some way. My feelings are influencing the relational field. 3) The person I am with picks up on the relational field.
For a lot of people, knowing your own feelings can be tricky. Feelings shift and change, and your awareness of them comes and goes. This influences what we express, and how skilfully our feelings are expressed in our words and actions. This then influences what the other person will pick up on.
It’s a relatable human experience to be told something about what you are doing and to only in that moment learn that you are feeling a certain way. For example, I didn’t know I was frustrated until my partner pointed out that I’m hunched over and making grrr sounds through gritted teeth while trying to fix a broken electronic device. The expression of feeling and emotion is always happening, even when unconscious.
Ideally, I would know what I’m feeling, I’d express it in skilful ways (appropriate to the situation), and people around me would pick up on this and in turn respond appropriately. This clearly isn’t always the case. It is also an area that can get more and more attuned and refined.
Noting Feeling States Meditation
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.
Importantly this practice held within a container that is agreed upon and made explicit. There’s a set time for the practice and the intention is clear. Try to ensure that the method is understood. This means that it can become a space where there is an appropriate level of intimacy and vulnerability. The goal here is to create a space for simply connecting with how things are right now. It’s not about complaining, or trauma dumping, or oversharing. If it starts to lean towards stories, blame, or trying to understand why a feeling is present, be cautious. Acknowledge what is present on the level of the feeling state (the sensations and emotions are something that you can agree is the present moment experience) – try to bring it back to what is present and how this feels in the body.
This is a practice of out loud labelling, with one person noting their present moment feeling tone and the other person attuning to what they are saying and feeling.
The practice is straightforward once you get the hang of it. Here are the dot point steps:
Instructions for Noting Feeling States – Dyad Practice
Create a container
Find a space that is calm and quiet enough that you can do this without interruption. It helps to face each other, or at least be able to see each other. You might like to sit in a different location from regular activities.
Make sure you both know enough about the practice intention and structure to feel enough safety to proceed, and discuss if there is some hesitation or apprehension. Acknowledge these feelings.
Set an intention together. Something brief tends to work, such as “to find connection”, or “to explore attunement together”, or “to know how we are both feeling right now”.
Decide on a length of time to practice for and the steps to take. Set a timer if that’s helpful. Choose who will note first.
Time in silence – 1 minute
Take some time in silence, optionally with eyes closed. Connect with your internal experience. Notice what is present for you. Allow whatever is there to be there, without exclusion. You may notice physical sensations, thoughts, emotions, and stories or parts of the mind.
Noting and Attuning – 2 minutes each
The noter begins labelling their present moment feeling tone experience out loud (eyes can be open or closed). Aim for a steady pace, around 5 seconds per label tends to work well. You might say things such as: “calm”, “bored”, “agitated”, “happy”, “love”, “anxious”, “humour”, “tender”, “vulnerable”, “frustrated”, “stressed”, “excited”, “joyful”, “murky” etc. There’s always a pressure release option – you can say “don’t know” or “unclear” or “pass” or simply be silent.
While the noter is saying this out loud, the attuner listens and watches, holding space for the noter and connecting with what they are saying and feeling. Tune in to the noter’s tone, rhythm, breath, and subtle facial expressions. The attuner might notice correlations, or they might even intuit what feeling state is arising (there might also be guesses that don’t match up). Notice how it feels to attune and if there is a sense of alignment or misalignment. Listen with presence and allow whatever is taking place to unfold.
Check in and debrief – 3 minutes
Take some time to debrief and talk through the experience. How was that for you? What did you notice? What was challenging? What came more easily? What helped you engage with the practice?
Conclude the practice. Take turns to speak about how you are feeling now, and if there’s anything you need, or some way you will move forward from here.
Extra Tips
The time durations here are just suggestions. Start with something short that is easy to commit to as a low-cost experiment. You can even spend just one minute on each phase.
When noting these feeling states, there’s a few interesting things that occur.
You might find that the states change more rapidly than you expect. This happens because when paying attention to the feeling state it brings more clarity to the emotion and sensation, leading to identifying more complexity and richness, as well as a faster rate of change than you may have previously noted. By saying the label out loud, you are also palpating the feeling state, meaning that you are giving it a little massage that makes it change or shift in some way. The degree of equanimity and acceptance also contributes to this, allowing those present moment states to be there without any need to change them allows them to shift more rapidly. Acceptance leads to change.
The states that you notice might vary wildly, even moment to moment. You might be noting “humour” and then the next second “anger” or “sadness”. There might be “strength” and then shortly after “feeling small”. You might also find it helpful to label things like “thinking”, “story”, “belief”, “remembering”, “planning”, “fantasising”.
There are also a range of labels that are worth familiarising yourself with as they help when you aren’t quite clear on what is there, labels like “something”, “blank”, “vague”, “murky”, “unsure”, “don’t know”. You might also notice that the feeling is changing rapidly, in which case acknowledging this might help, such as “changing”, “shifting”, “flowing”, or “feeling”.
It is normal to find it challenging at first to locate the feeling tone and to note continuously. It’s perfectly fine to say you don’t know or to label “blank”. It might take some time just noting blank before you discover a distinct feeling tone. No problem. The key here is to tune in to what is present for you — the truth of your present moment experience is whatever you are aware of, even if that’s nothing distinct!
For me this has been a high value practice. There have been plenty of times I’ve felt like I didn’t want to do it before we started, but I don’t remember a single time when I didn’t feel glad to have done it afterwards.
Find a friend and try it out – see for yourself if this is valuable. If you are curious and want to try it out in a welcoming space, you can come along to Sit For A Bit, or get in touch with me.
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 speak about our practice and anything dharma-adjacent: sharing our challenges of pain and fear, our celebrations of meditative insights and deepenings, and our contemplations on this complex existence. The group feels like a gift, a treasure. It’s a space of heartfelt connection and playful joking. There’s a tone that is somehow both totally uncontrived and deadly serious about awakening. I feel waves of gratitude and appreciation for these other humans and their willingness to connect.
During the call I share that I’ve been thinking about sangha and how grateful I am to have people who listen and understand when I share the contents of my mind. This has opened up a deeper dimension of friendship than I experienced in my first 20+ years. It has also been invaluable to progressing on the path and in life. I talk about how much it helps to just have people who will listen, and that I trust. Sharing this to the group feels like it folds these threads together, my words are understood and find a palpable resonance. My travel companions nod and smile in joyful agreement.
I’ve been gifted with many great sanghas. This online group has been meeting since 2020. I have a number of teacher friends who offer support and guidance and shared understanding. I have dear friends who are devoted to different aspects of the path that help me to expand my understanding (special shout out to my friends dedicated to the practice of Awakened Connection, for the cherished friendship and the gifts they bring). I also have a growing camaraderie with my classmates in the Aletheia Training Program, which has opened up new doorways. Through online groups, I’ve also developed friends that I will keep for life, that will always have a base of understanding to return to. I’m also so grateful for Coalescence Sangha, for everyone who joins the events I lead, and for the amazing team that has helped me offer retreats!
The lovely retreat team!
I’ll go out on a limb and say that sangha is the most important dimension of meditation practice. Having friends that meditate is a better predictor of whether you’ll stick with the practice and deepen practice than any other measure.
Why is having meditation friends so helpful? Sangha is the convergence of social acceptance with interest and meaningfulness – and meditation, practised deeply, cannot help but touch on the deepest and most meaningful aspects of our lives.
It’s undeniable that we are social creatures. Humans have a social capacity that is deeply ingrained in our biology. We take in the culture that is around us; we absorb what we are surrounded by. We can find so much joy and fulfilment in our relationships. We also find that a lot of our deepest needs are around social qualities: love, acceptance, safety, and value. When these aren’t met in satisfying ways, it leaves us hurt. Unfortunately for many of us the greatest pain and difficulty in our lives tends to come in relationships that failed to meet these needs.
Sangha has the capacity to repair this hurt through the offer of contact and connection. Sounds lofty right! But all great journeys begin with a single step.
For me, it has taken some time. At first, I was shy to open up and often felt like there were parts of my experience that simply weren’t okay to share. It’s been a process of folding this in, beginning with saying when I did feel uncomfortable or uncertain, even if I didn’t know what that was about – and to be seen in exactly that experience.
When I turn up to these groups and I share my experience, I gradually open up, and I am seen and understood. I feel held and appreciated, exactly as I am. It’s a felt experience of the practice coming through in relation: I am becoming more equanimous with my experience as others offer being with. I deepen my contact with myself and with others and in doing so it reveals a depth of experience.
Now I’m going to quote a sutta from the Pāli Canon, because I love hearing this, and I think I’ll keep repeating it until I no longer can.
Ananda said to the Buddha, “This is half of the path: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.”
“Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the path. When one has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, one can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.
— Upaḍḍhasutta, translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (with my own adjustments of gender, epithets, and emphasis)
This sutta points to the meaningfulness and significance of having friendship, companionship, and camaraderie – it isn’t an auxiliary to the practice, friendship is the practice. We practice in our relationships, and our relationships sustain our practice.
Sweet Potato Sangha — a painting gifted to me by Ju, I don’t know the artist unfortunately!
How can you find sangha? First, reflect on how sangha fits in with your life and if it matches your intentions and values around practice. Maybe you already have some sense of community – this is an invitation to check in and offer contact. If you feel you could do with more connection, start with finding someone you get along with. When you join a class, if you resonate with someone, reach out and see if they want to chat. Find other people online or in-person that share an interest in meditation, and especially if they seem to be exploring in similar ways. Build from there, step by step. You might just have one friend you chat with, a family member you sit with, or a pal who has read the same dharma book as you. You might like to form a practice pod and have others you check in with. Then you begin the process of connecting and gradually finding ways to be with each other in good friendship.
Sit For A Bit has been a beautiful chance to practice with like-minded folks walking distance from my home in the Inner-West of Sydney, a far-off dream when I started meditating and only knew of people on the internet who were interested in this. I hope that it can help foster the kind of community that leads to this admirable friendship and to provide a spark of connection in the practice. Come join some good meditation friendship : )
Reply and let me know what you find most valuable in sangha – I love collecting stories of friendship and hearing people’s appreciation for their meditating friends and communities.
Sunday 5 October 2025, 9:00 am – 5:00 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
The opportunity to go on retreat is special. To have the time and space to focus on practice is an amazing opportunity. Unfortunately, many of us don’t get this opportunity very often, so we try to carve out bits of time that allow us to do this in the midst of a busy life. The Day of Practice is an opportunity to practise deeply in the city, without leaving our lives.
You can look at this as a detox from communications and electronics, or a nervous system reset. It can be a deep exhale and shift towards relaxation. It also fosters time to go deeper in practice and explore what is meaningful to you about meditation and the path. The day becomes a container to hold your practice and assist cultivating different states of mind.
Śamatha – Practices for Deep Nervous System Resourcing
Tuesday 14 October 2025, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
Śamatha (calm abiding) is a meditation practice that leads to degrees of samādhi (collectedness and unification of mind and body). This calming is a powerful resource for regulating and balancing the nervous system. Beyond simply relaxing, these practices open up the possibility of deep states of effortlessness and equanimity – which can be directly linked to states of deep nervous system regulation.
Attuning to the state of the body and mind in the present moment provides clues as to how to navigate both meditation and daily life in a way that leads to more grounding, settling, and the state of energised calm that is both a resource in itself and sets the stage for freeing insight to arise.
This session will include lecture, guided meditation, and discussion to provide a first hand experience of these practices. All levels of experience are welcome. If you are interested in a deeper exploration.
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Vipassanā – Attuning to the Felt Sense of Freedom
Tuesday 21 October 2025, 7:00 – 8:30 pm Buddhist Library, Camperdown, Sydney
Vipassanā (insight) is the practice of Buddhist meditation that allows for seeing through obscurations to recognise our deepest nature. But how do you know that your insight practice is moving forwards?
As insight practice deepens, there is a felt reduction of clinging and suffering in the moment. You can track this with an awareness of the body and by tuning in to the sense of lightness and openness that is revealed when habitual tendencies relax. We will explore ways of tracking this felt sense of lightness and noticing the fading of perception that reveals deep insights about the fabrication of experience.
This session will include lecture, guided meditation, and discussion to provide a first hand experience of these practices. All levels of experience are welcome, however previous meditation experience is recommended to get benefit from these teachings.
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 been meditating consistently and reading about meditation, but it now becomes apparent that I really have no idea what I’m in for. Another retreatant, travelling lighter with a shoulder bag, silently overtakes me. It was a busy day for me, clearing my to-do list and tying up loose ends, communicating with others and putting on auto-responders, packing, and then rushing to the train to head two and a half hours out west into the Blue Mountains. On the train ride I try to read a bit more from the meditation manual I’ve been studying, hoping that cramming in a little more meditation advice will help me navigate this experience.
I’ve recently turned 30, finished my PhD in data-generated audio-visual art, and given myself this 10-day retreat as a gift. Throughout my PhD studies I experienced the worst mental health of my life, with depression and anxiety keeping me bedridden for days at a time. Although my mental health has been improving thanks to yoga, meditation, and a pared-back schedule, my hope for this retreat is that it will help me put those dark mental spaces behind me for good. It’s clear to me now that there’s more to the mind and conscious experience in how I’m perceiving the events of life and I yearn to find the kind of understanding that will bring relief.
When I arrive, I put my suitcase with the ragtag pile of luggage in the alcove and then stand around awkwardly. I’m confused about the centre. There’s a bunch of normal rural houses mixed with gravel walkways and lush ponds that seem to invite the bush to encroach and take over. I gradually look around and poke my head into a room to see people lining up to check in. Someone greets me, takes my name, and tells me which dorm room I’m in, giving me a name tag to put beside my bed. They point me in the direction of the dorm and I head there by myself, but when I find my allocated area — reminiscent of the components of a Japanese capsule hotel: a bed with dividers on either side, a few compartments for storage, and a curtain for privacy — I see someone else’s name tag still in the little plastic sleeve. I assume that I must have been given the wrong number and I go back to the reception to wait in line again. This time the volunteer comes down with me and assures me that it was someone from the previous retreat who accidentally left it. It’s this moment that it hits me just how anxious I am. I wish that this process of arriving and checking in could be clearer and warmer. In the dorm, I sit down on the bed and see a tally scratched into the wall, like someone waiting out a prison sentence. The scratches stop short of 10.
There’s a kind of peacefulness here, but I also pick up on a tone of severity. The lack of talking seems to land me in a space of being back in school, or in a library in a foreign country; I don’t know who I can speak to or how things run. However, this also ties in with a palpable presence, that I can only describe as being bright and clear, austere and striking. I feel a sense of awe and anticipation. It seems that this sense of sacredness is being created by the volunteers and the shared sense of commitment. I’m yearning for some kind of powerful shift in my life and I wonder, apprehensively, if this could be it, if I can commit to this enough for it to lead to deep change.
During the retreat I experience many things. I feel an extreme range of emotions from joy and bliss to frustration and anger, while also battling boredom and sleepiness. I earnestly try to attend all the sits, even at 4:30 am, attempting maximum diligence. Then I crash. My body rebels against the strictness and denial of comfort as I give in to the soothing warmth and comfort of a hot shower. I find myself unable to get out, and when I finally do, I have to sprint to the scheduled meditation session, barely making it in time.
I find my practice deepens and expands; I find new aspects of my mind that I hadn’t come across before. I experience some sensations of pressure in my head that feel to me somehow completely wrong, with incredible tension and a sense of energetic blockage. In question time I go up to the teacher and ask about this tension, fully expecting them to be shocked at the situation. Their response: “try deconstructing it”. The conversation ends abruptly, I get up and leave the hall, feeling like I am missing something.
I’m almost ready to give up from an exhausting two days of precisely investigating and deconstructing sensory experience, when I reach a clearing in the mental space — a kind of beautiful opening where things seem to flow and shift. I can only describe this with vague language and imagery as it is an experience that I can’t match up to anything I’d felt to this point in my life. I feel as though all that I perceive turns into water droplets running down a glass pane — I even see this in my visual field as the light seems to trickle in and soothe my weary brain. There is a sense of flow, smoothness, and ease that I had never felt before.
This experience evaporates when I get frustrated that all the vegan dessert has been eaten and all that’s left is the vegetarian option. Despite eating a lot less than I normally do, I don’t feel hungry, but I also notice a growing disconnection from the signals of my body — getting easier and easier to ignore sensations such as hunger and discomfort. By the end of the retreat I realise I’ve unintentionally lost weight.
I find the teachings powerful, funny, and deeply meaningful, aided by the relief of stories and entertainment after 10 hours of silently observing sensations. I also feel incredibly conflicted at how different this lifestyle is from my regular life. The mandate to sit two hours a day to continue on this path seems impossible to maintain. I leave the retreat floating, but also confused; dizzy from the highs of deep meditation and feeling like a traveller dropped into a new land without a map.
Something opens up, something closes.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to try out a retreat experience that is warm, supportive, and aimed towards integration, there are still a few places open for the 10-day retreat in October.
A quick warning and disclaimer: I talk about mental health difficulties and systemic issues here. This writing is without gory details but please consider your state before proceeding. This text is from my perspective and your experience will differ, please take what is useful and leave the rest.
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This is a series on meditation and burnout. I’m thinking through the causes of burnout, why it is such a challenging experience, what to do in the moment, meditation practices that create important shifts, and developing an understanding that will lead to burnout being done with, for good. This first part sets the view that burnout is sustained by external and internal systems and that self-compassion is the key to beginning practising with this.
Let’s begin with a definition. Burnout arises when demands exceed your capacity. It is a state of depletion that results from an extended period of stress and demand without appropriate support. Burnout is associated with chronic stress, working in caring professions, caring responsibilities, big life events, activist work, or perhaps just witnessing the turmoil of the world with little recourse.
Burnout is a state of emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation, and sense of hopelessness. The phenomenological experience differs person-to-person: it can be felt physically as a heaviness, pain, or tiredness that is not relieved by sleep; emotionally as a sense of misery, flatness, malaise, or depression; or felt existentially as a sense of hopelessness, futility, or worthlessness. Burnout generally comes with a decrease in skills and capabilities: moving and thinking in slow motion, problems seem harder, increased self-criticism, finding the right words becomes a challenge, your memory falters, task-related skills deteriorate.
It brings to mind Samuel Beckett’s refrain: “You must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” It’s the drive to continue to perform, care, and give effort after the resources have been used up.
