A Place to Land
Dr. Willoughby Britton, a Brown University neuroscientist, founded Cheetah House to support meditators experiencing severe distress such as hyperarousal, dissociation, and psychosis after her research showed meditation outcomes are highly variable. The nonprofit provides evidence‑based peer support, clinician consultation, and training for teachers, emphasizing a person‑centered, trauma‑informed model. Recent studies reveal that teachers can be the most helpful or harmful factor in navigating meditation‑related challenges. Cheetah House is scaling its training programs and a multinational study to map risk factors and improve community responses across meditation traditions.
Turning Back to Place
The essay argues that modern mobility has severed people’s ties to specific places, weakening stewardship of local ecosystems. Citing Gary Snyder and Daniel Wildcat, it highlights how a homogenized consumer culture blinds citizens to climate signals such as pollinator loss. Snyder’s...
Three Teachings by Buddhadasa
Thai forest monk Buddhadasa reshaped modern Theravada by challenging doctrinal orthodoxy, arguing that the Abhidhamma was a later addition and that nibbana is an everyday cooling of reactive emotions. He taught a luminous, "empty" mind free of self‑attachment and reinterpreted...
Liberating the Experience of Impermanence
The article traces Buddhism’s evolving relationship with impermanence, contrasting early dualistic meditations that sought disillusionment and escape from the world with contemporary nondual approaches that embrace change as a path to liberation. Early practitioners meditated in charnel grounds to cultivate...
The Uses of Equanimity
The article explains that equanimity, while appearing as calm concentration, can conceal subtle attachment and delusion. It warns that staying absorbed in a state of equanimity without probing can prevent genuine insight. Practitioners are urged to use equanimity as a...
The Sound of Silence
The essay explores how incessant internal dialogue functions as a form of noise pollution, clouding clarity and driving dualistic thinking. It presents chanting the name of Kanzeon—or any pure, intention‑free sound—as a pathway to a pre‑conceptual awareness that transcends mental...
Finding Our Way
The author recounts a journey from alcohol‑driven darkness in Juneau to a life anchored in Zen practice and recovery. By immersing in the San Francisco Zen Center, he discovers that brokenness, when faced, becomes a source of healing, illustrated through...
All You Need?
The article examines a growing Western interpretation that the four brahmaviharas—loving‑kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity—constitute a complete path to awakening. It contrasts this view with early Pali canon passages that consistently link the brahmaviharas to rebirth in Brahma realms...