Posts by Justin Whitaker

monk with laptop Technology brings a world of spiritual knowledge to our fingertips. But immersing ourselves in a world of gadgets may also distance us from more authentic connections with teachers, family, and friends. Guest blogger Justin Whitaker takes a look at the double-edged sword of our hyper-connected world.

Since you are reading this, presumably on a computer or other high-tech device, you owe a thing or two to technology. Nearly all of us in the Western world and a fast-growing number in the East live in a world molded and directed by technology. We have lived amidst changes that could scarcely be imagined just fifty years ago. We wake up, push a button or two for coffee, assemble our morning meal from plastic containers in the refrigerator, and flip open the laptop to start our day. Whether we are aware of it or not – and our goal is to be aware – technology shapes our life. Thus in practice, we need to recognize not only how we individually use or do not use technology, but also how technology affects whole communities and future generations.

What exactly is technology? It is any human creation that has been put out into the world, thus affecting our lives, from the ancient technologies of iron tools and grain bins to the cutting edge world of nano-gadgets and skyscrapers. On the one hand all of this has allowed humanity to grow and flourish as it has. Today we enjoy extraordinary efficiency, easy travel, and abundant leisure. On the other hand we face countless distractions, a “hedonic treadmill” of chasing the next newest thing, and a virtual black hole for time spent waiting for computers to boot up, web pages to load or files to download, and so on.

Awareness in our technological world

September 24, 2009

Justin Whitaker

on practice

Technology brings a world of spiritual knowledge to our fingertips. But immersing ourselves in a world of gadgets may also distance us from more authentic connections with teachers, family, and friends. Guest blogger Justin Whitaker takes a look at the double-edged sword of our hyper-connected world.

Today we face countless distractions, a ‘hedonic treadmill’ of chasing the next newest thing, and a virtual black hole for time spent waiting for computers to boot up, web pages to load, etc

Modern technology has brought countless pages of ancient texts to our computer screen and untold hours of audio and video to download to our iPods and MP3 players. It might seem that there is no need to leave one’s home to find great teachings, and, when one does have to venture out, one can have those teachings pumped into their ears the whole time. Not only do we not need to find a teacher or a community of practice, but we don’t have to sit down to read texts or set aside time devoted solely to hearing great teachings. This is great, right?

Not so fast. How do we grow in awareness at the grocery store when we’re trying to pick out the best apples, remember the three other things we need, and listen to a discourse on the Four Noble Truths at the same time? When we’re in the grocery store, shouldn’t we just be in the grocery store. Shouldn’t our full awareness be with the sights and sounds around us? When we’re driving, hiking, etc, shouldn’t we just be in that activity?

Many observers our culture describe a rise in narcissism, a decline in attention span, the disappearance of traditions, and even a loss of basic civility, all at the hands of our modern conveniences. Many people are losing touch with friends and loved ones in real life and substituting them with virtual networks and television. One study recently showed that the relationship centers of peoples brains, those that become active when we enjoy time with friends and family, were also stimulated when regular TV watchers put on their favorite sitcom. With a touch of irony, the sitcom used in the study was “Friends.” What is going on?

I can only guess what the Buddha would say if he wandered into my cluttered house today, let alone if he used his ‘higher knowledges’ to wander into my equally cluttered mind.

It is said that Socrates lamented the advent of the book, the cutting edge technology in his day. To him it signaled a shift from wisdom, which was a virtue that could only be embodied in a person, to knowledge: facts about the world that could be recorded and studied in books. He worried that people would stop deeply learning things and instead rely on external hard drives, as it were. At that time, roughly the same time that the Buddha was teaching in India, one had to go find a teacher with whom to study. This was often difficult, but it forged the virtues of resolution and dedication. Years and often lifetimes were spent under a single teacher perfecting one’s understanding and practice, the key ingredients for wisdom.

Simplicity, too, was a virtue of years gone by. The Buddha often scorned household life as stifled and filled with impurity and praised the monastic life for its peace, quiet, and lack of possessions. I can only guess what the Buddha would say if he wandered into my cluttered house today, let alone if he used his “higher knowledges” to wander into my equally cluttered mind. The simple pace and simple activities of the past, albeit usually much more physically demanding than today, have all but disappeared.

It is too simplistic to see technology as simply a tool, one that we can use skillfully or unskillfully, or not use it at all. The technology of the last fifty years has radically changed the way that most of us interact with the world. We need to become aware of the broader societal impacts of technology itself. As material wealth has grown, levels of life-satisfaction have not. What is missing? Or, rather, what have we lost?

With our mind on these questions it is helpful to study the lives of men and women of the past. They have accomplished our goal of happiness or awakening without the aid of computers, cell phones, and even basic conveniences like books and MP3 players. There’s little chance for many of us actually living as they did, but we can wonder what it might be like to go without our favorite gadget now and then, to consciously cultivate more face-to-face time with people as well as more simplicity and silence when we are alone.

These little things help form the very foundation for our practice. They have been taken for granted for so much of human history and have clearly been eroded in recent years. But, with awareness and determination, it is well within our power to bring them back to the center of our lives.

The Centrality of Impermanence

March 30, 2009

Justin Whitaker

on practice

If there is just one thing you should learn about this world, anicca is it. It may be an exaggeration to say that anicca, or impermanence, is the core of the Buddha’s teaching, but when we look closely at this single idea, the whole of the Buddha’s teaching begins to open up.

In Buddhism, impermanence is one of the three “marks” of existence, along with dukkha and anattā, or unsatisfactoriness and no-self. Together, these three marks form the core of a Buddhist conception of reality. Understanding this reality is often described as tantamount to awakening.

Indeed, in Vipassanā meditation we are taught to note, or to simply direct the mind to “see” these three marks in all of our experience. To fully see these marks in a way that is unshakable, in a way that you simply cannot forget, such that your every experience of the world resonates: “anicca, anattā, dukkha” is to be awakened. This is no easy task of course, requiring perhaps lifetimes of effort. But this insight alone is enough to cut the roots of ignorance that tie us to cycle after cycle of repeated suffering.

As if to emphasize the centrality of insight into the three marks, the Buddhist Jātakas (birth-stories) describe numerous beings who gained awakening through the realization of these three marks without hearing any teachings from a sammā-sambuddha, or fully and perfectly awakened one. These beings became known as pacceka-buddhas, or solitary awakened ones, because they neither followed another Buddha’s teachings nor taught others what they had discovered. So even from the early Buddhist texts we are taught that one can become awakened without following any “Buddhist” path per se, by simply gaining insight into the three marks of existence.

With insight into impermanence the very foundations of our suffering crumble

So why is impermanence in particular so important? Because, as Ñanamoli Bhikkhu points out in his Buddhist Dictionary, ”It is from this all-embracing fact of impermanence that the other two universal characteristics, suffering dukkha and no-self anattā, are derived.” This may be helpful because so much is said and written by contemporary Buddhists about dukkha and anattā in isolation from the more fundamental fact of anicca. And many discussions on these topics, including my own at times, quickly spin off into abstraction, technical details, and heady philosophy.

And yet in the actual practice of meditation the “mark” that is most easily experienced is that of impermanence. With a stilled mind everything is experienced rising and falling. All is impermanent, from the pain in one’s knee: dancing, throbbing, pulsing, fading – to thoughts and ideas: arising as if from the clear sky and fading again into it without a trace, leaving behind pure clarity (or just more thoughts!). Watching this flow, the apparent “solidity” underlying our typical samsāric experience begins to crumble. If you’re anything like me, that solidity comes back a few minutes after most meditations, but experience of anicca is now undeniable.

With insight into impermanence the very foundations of our suffering and sense of a permanent, unchanging self crumble. Obviously, if all is flow and change, then this goes for our “self” too. Our suffering is a result of thirsting after and clinging to bits of the world that we wrongly believe will give us lasting happiness. Realizing anicca, our grip on all of this is loosened. This was described to me once by the young daughter of one of my friends in grad school. “We learn to hold that which we love not like this,” she said, holding out a closed fist in front of her, “but like this,” and she turned her hand over, slowly extending her fingers.

…insight dissolves the very linchpin of samsāra

To work at stilling the mind to directly perceive anicca is to traverse a path to openness, acceptance, and a welcoming attitude toward life.

This work may be done in many ways. Calming meditation, such as mindfulness of breathing certainly forms the most widely taught foundation. Further techniques are numerous and are best pursued with the assistance of a teacher. The best known route in the West is the “path of wisdom,” which directs the student’s stilled mind directly at anicca. However, this path is not for everyone. Buddhaghosa, in his Visuddhimagga, describes how the “path of faith” works in Buddhism, drawing the practitioner by the heart, not so much the head, into direct confrontation with the changing nature of all experience. Peter Harvey discusses the rise of the early “Cult of Relics” in stating that, “Buddha-relics can be seen to remind devotees both of the impermanence of the Buddha and his entry to the deathless (nirvāṇa); they are a presence that reminds them of the absent Buddha…”

Thus we see that it might not be such an exaggeration to call insight into anicca the central goal of Buddhist practice, whether it is through the path of wisdom or the path of faith. We can trace the route back from suffering, through clinging and our mistaken notions of a permanent, unchanging self and lasting happiness in things of this world, to this one fundamental aspect of experience as it truly is. When we truly “get” impermanence, the cycle of ignorance and what follows begins to unravel. We might say that this insight dissolves the very linchpin of samsāra.

Awakening the Inner Warrior

September 24, 2008

Justin Whitaker

on practice

The archetype of warriorhood, if taken literally, can antithetical to the Buddhist path of peace. Taken as a metaphor for inner change, however, it can represent the inner struggle required in spiritual practice. Guest blogger and philosopher Justin Whitaker explores three types of warrior: outer, inner, and perfected.

I find it difficult to write about warriorhood from a Buddhist perspective. The term for me is heavily laden with negative connotations and often misunderstood by those around me. We may do well to distinguish at the beginning between three kinds of warrior: the outer, the inner, and the perfected. It is the outer warrior that we most often think of when hearing the term and see glorified in the movies and praised by politicians. This is not the warrior ideal of the Buddhist path.

And I, like many of you, have encountered people who, fleeing great pain in their hearts and past, have wrapped themselves in the cloak of a certain type of warrior, the outer warrior. That is to say that these warriors, haunted by demons of their own minds and hearts, wear a mask of strength or stoic detachment. Yet this mask, at its worst, perpetuates the cycle of suffering by painting the world as a very dark and unwelcoming place, externalizing the pain within. At its best it protects the wearer from the wounds still felt from an almost unknown place deep within.

So it is with that background that I say that we must be careful when we speak of warriorhood. Our vision of awakening cannot be accomplished in battling the world around us. In order to take up the path of the Buddha, of warrior-like discipline and striving, we must turn inward. Carl Jung stated it well: “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart…. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside, awakens.” This turning within is the inner warrior-ideal. Whether weak or strong, old or young, this is the work of the Buddhist warrior.

In order to take up the path of the Buddha, of warrior-like discipline and striving, we must turn inward.

The more we practice, the more we see that all of us carry pain from the past. The deeper your wounds are buried, the more difficult your work will be and yet all the more necessary it is to begin now. This is not to speak lightly of the arts of the outer warrior: developing one-pointed concentration, mastering wise teachings, building strength and vitality in the body, and so on. But if we have these abilities and yet still hold a core of anger and pain, then it is like putting a great army in the charge of a madman. One can be a one-pointed assassin or bully, or an immoral and unhappy academic of Buddhism or similar spiritual path. In fact one must be careful with the arts of the outer warrior if one’s heart is still dominated by the three poisons (greed, aversion, and ignorance). Possessing these skills may actually strengthen the ego and feed the poisons.

Devadatta, the Buddha’s cousin who tried to kill the Buddha and seize control of the Sangha is one such afflicted outer warrior. He possessed great skills, great knowledge, and meditative prowess. But his heart was still filled with jealousy and desire for power. Had he let go of his outward ambitions and turned his brilliant mind inward to uncover the pain at his heart, he surely would have won enlightenment in that very lifetime, as countless others did in the presence of the Buddha.

This turning within, with whatever degree of mindfulness you have at the moment, is the work and skill of the inner warrior.

The warrior’s skills may actually strengthen the ego and feed the poisons

The third type of warrior is the perfected. This is the stage of one’s practice in which the grip of the past is finally loosened. Bernadette Devlin, a woman who was active in the long struggles of N. Ireland, once said, “Yesterday I dared to struggle. Today I dare to win.” Living in troubled times or with a turbulent heart, it can be difficult to recognize this juxtaposition, this transition from struggle to victory. This is the transition from the inner warrior to that of the perfected.

In the stories of the Buddha’s life is the character Mara, the personification of all doubts, cravings, and misunderstandings. Even after his awakening, Mara would visit the Buddha. That is to say that in his mind some doubt, desire, or misunderstanding still occasionally would arise. But the Buddha had attained the level of perfected warrior. He thus did not see Mara as having any external, independent reality outside himself. Nor did he shy away from Mara or get pulled into the drama or confrontation that Mara sought. Instead he simply said, “I see you, Mara. I know you.” And seeing Mara destroyed ‘him’ every time.

So it is that correctly seeing our own hurt without fleeing or being drawn into the story or drama likewise destroys it. This is no easy task, as many seasoned meditators know. It can take years to see through the layers of grief, abuse, and neglect that may be encountered in one’s life, to see through the stories and justifications and even indignation we have wrapped ourselves in for protection.

Our path to the perfected warrior within us may take many years of struggle: struggling to be present with our pain as it arises, struggling to simply stay with the practice when more pleasant activities beckon. And it may help us greatly along the inner journey to our heart to have practiced and grown in the arts of the outer warrior. But the path is, always, of a whole. And there is no time to begin, but this very moment.

Justin Whitaker holds a Masters degree in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, England and is currently a Ph.D. student in Buddhist Ethics at the University of London. He has practiced in several Buddhist traditions including the Western Buddhist Order in Missoula, Montana and Bristol, England. He currently lives in Missoula, where he works for the Center for Ethics, leads the University sangha, and meditates regularly on Missoula’s mountains and rivers. His personal blog is americanbuddhist.blogspot.com.

The art of friendship

June 22, 2008

Justin Whitaker

on practice

Spiritual friendship comes highly praised in Buddhist practice. But why are spiritual friends considered to be so crucial? What are the qualities of a spiritual friend? And do we have to leave our existing friends behind? Guest blogger Justin Whitaker investigates.

“But due to the fragility and perishability of human things, we should always be on the search for someone to love and by whom to be loved; indeed if affection and kindliness are lost from our life, we lose all that gives it charm…”

Sed quoniam res humanae fragiles caducaeque sunt, semper aliqui anquirendi sunt quos diligamus et a quibus diligamur; caritate enim benevolentiaque sublata omnis est e vita sublata iucunditas.

Cicero, Laelius de Amicitia

Friendship, and our human relationships in general, can at times be one of the most difficult aspects of our lives while at other times the most helpful. In Buddhism, friendship is an extremely important factor, perhaps even more so than you might expect. The most famous statement on friendship in Buddhism comes when the Buddha’s cousin Ananda is said to have approached the Buddha and remarked “This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.” And the Buddha replied, “Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, and comrades, he can be expected to develop and pursue the noble eightfold path.”

Monks, a friend endowed with seven qualities is worth associating with. Which seven? He gives what is hard to give. He does what is hard to do. He endures what is hard to endure. He reveals his secrets to you. He keeps your secrets. When misfortunes strike, he doesn’t abandon you. When you’re down & out, he doesn’t look down on you.

So despite the common image of the Buddhist as the ultimate solitary wanderer, we see from this and several other verses throughout Buddhism the central importance of admirable friendship. Here I would like to discuss two sides of admirable friendship. The first is finding and cultivating admirable friendships, as opposed to our ordinary, everyday friends. The second side is in how we, as friends, may best support one another on the path.

See also: 10+ Genuine Buddha quotes on friendship

The first thing to note in finding and cultivating admirable friendships is that we don’t have to dump our old set of friends and replace them with so-called “spiritual” people. Our current friendships, even with people who have no affiliation with Buddhism, can serve as fertile ground for admirable friendship. In the very short Mitta Sutta, or discourse on friends, the Buddha tells his monks to seek out friends with seven qualities: “He gives what is hard to give. He does what is hard to do. He endures what is hard to endure. He reveals his secrets to you. He keeps your secrets. When misfortunes strike, he doesn’t abandon you. When you’re down & out, he doesn’t look down on you. A friend endowed with these seven qualities is worth associating with.” Notice there is no mention of being well-versed in the dharma, mastery of meditation, or possessing great wisdom. Friendship, the Buddha knew, is far more foundational, far more simple.

I once sat before a great teacher and asked him, “why then do we feel extraordinary synchronicity around certain people [supposedly our spiritual friends] and then not with others?” “Delusion!” he exclaimed. Once we get the idea that so-and-so is a spiritual person and so-and-so is not, we are on the wrong path. Seek out the simpler qualities in others such as their service, kindness, discretion, fortitude, and generosity. In some esoteric Buddhist texts it is said that the Buddha may appear to us as a stone, as a dog, as a beggar, and so on, so that we should always be alert to the teachings that may come from such “ordinary” beings and objects. Similarly, admirable friendships may arise from a wide variety of situations. Meditating on DÃ…Âgen’s verses on the mountains and rivers of Eastern China, one can feel the sense of genuine friendship that this great master developed with the land.

Finding these qualities in the world brings us naturally to practice, to a sense of presence and awareness. Similarly, in good friendships these qualities are at the forefront. For example, if you were to get a raise in your job, a good friend would share in your joy, while an ordinary friend might reactively leap to comparisons and judgments: “Why didn’t I ever get a raise? Maybe the company is going to fail,” etc. That admirable friend might also kindly impart the teachings of impermanence, “don’t get attached to that job or promotion” and non-self, “a lot of people helped you along they way, haven’t they?” But the tenor is such that you are brought to a deepened sense of calm, connection, and joy, free of clinging, free of worry.

…each of us is deeply interconnected and this is no more apparent than in our friendships

Pema Chödrön puts it well when she writes, “The support that we give each other as practitioners is not the usual kind of samsaric support in which we all join the same team and complain about someone else. It’s more that you’re on your own, completely alone, but it’s helpful to know that there are forty other people who are also going through this all by themselves. That’s very supportive and encouraging. Fundamentally, even though other people can give you support, you do it yourself, and that’s how you grow up in this process, rather than becoming more dependent.”

Through this it appears that Buddhist views of friendship comprise a form of Virtue Ethics. The central theme is one’s personal development, the cultivation of skillful qualities and the abandoning of unskillful ones. But it is not forgotten that each of us is deeply interconnected and this is no more apparent than in our friendships. If our friendships are not in alignment with our practice, that practice will be ever more difficult to sustain. Quite often I have seen others and myself forgetting this, diving head-first into meditation and philosophical studies, only to see our practice crumble in the midst of unhealthy relationships.

So let friendship be a central part of your practice. Meditate on the relationships in your life to see how they bring you toward or away from awareness, toward or away from skillful and unskillful mental states and activities. As you become more aware of the friendships in your life that are indeed admirable, these relationships will naturally grow and deepen, while ordinary friendships will either fall away — the Buddha is also quite clear that solitude is far preferable to being in the company of those disinterested in cultivating positive qualities — or these friendships will begin to change for the better. The process is what western philosophers would call a dialectic, from the meditation cushion to the world, and from the world to the meditation cushion, a process of interrelationship and building toward awakening.

The purity of no-self

March 24, 2008

Justin Whitaker

on practice

Are we fundamentally sinful beings? Or fundamentally pure? Or somewhere in between those two extremes? Even within the body of Buddhist teachings there is a variety of ways of looking at human nature. Buddhist scholar and practitioner Justin Whitaker tries to bring some clarity to the murky area of purity.

The notion of purification can be a puzzling one for the modern Dharma practitioner. Am I impure? Is there something, somewhere deep inside me, that is bad or wrong and must be gotten rid of? Such questions ruffle my brow, yet it turns out that they point to one of Buddhism’s fundamental teachings. Like many Westerners practicing the Dharma today, I was born into a Christian society and attended church for much of my youth. Also, like many others, I felt uncomfortable with teachings of sin and guilt and rejected this aspect of my upbringing. In turn I looked to humanism and eventually Buddhism for what I took to be a more open and optimistic outlook. So when the Buddhist notion of purification is raised, I tend to put on my skeptic’s hat.

What does Buddhism have to say about purification? On the one hand is the anecdotal but telling story from a friend of mine who lives in Malta. The island was recently visited by a reputable Tibetan Lama giving teachings on Powa (‘pho ba, the Tibetan teaching on conscious dying). As the story goes, , during a question-and-answer period, one of the students asked the Lama, “is the goal of Buddhism that we purify ourselves, to become pure beings?” The Lama immediately and vehemently replied, “Nothing to purify! Already perfect pure!”

…one often hears that we are enlightened already; all we need to do is realize it!

Throughout Mahayana Buddhism, which encompasses Tibetan, Ch’an, Zen, Korean, Vietnamese, and influences most Western forms of Buddhism, there is this teaching of fundamental purity. Deep within us is an undefiled purity – as the Lama said, ultimately we are, “perfect pure!” The Sanskrit term for this deep purity is the Tathagatagarbha, the “womb of enlightenment.” Based primarily on this doctrine, one often hears that we are enlightened already; all we need to do is realize it!

On the other hand there are many teachings in Buddhism that suggest that the spiritual life is a path. This path leads away from our current greed, hatred, and delusion (a.k.a. samsara), and guides us towards calm, equanimity, joy, and swift responsiveness to the needs and sufferings of all beings (nibbana, nirvana). Foremost amongst these teachings is the Visuddhimagga, the Path of Purification.

This massive tome, written in the 5th century by the Theravadin monk Buddhaghosa, describes the path of virtue or morality, concentration, and wisdom. It suggests that these steps are sequential, first one perfects morality, then concentration, and finally wisdom. From this teaching we may surmise that there really are things within us that need purification. We are, as beginners, defiled by our wrong views, our lack of mindfulness, and our immoral deeds. So in a sense we are impure.

There seem to be two different teachings here: one saying that we are pure and just need to wake up to that, and the other saying that we are impure and need to follow the path laid forth by the Buddha to attain purity or our own awakening. Which is right?

The absence of self is not merely an absence, but a connectedness, a fullness beyond description.

Without going into too much metaphysical detail, I think we can see that both are correct. Deep down, all of Buddhism affirms our purity because all of Buddhism affirms the teaching of no-self. Sin is not at our core, but neither is some sort of pure being, or any thing that we just need to uncover. At the core is no-core. Very Zen, right?

Yet no-self is not a teaching of nihilistic self-denial or an abrogation of our responsibilities. One influential Mahayana text, the Avatamsaka (Flower Garland) Sutra, provides us with a useful image for understanding this, that of a celestial jeweled net. When we look closely into any jewel in the net, what we find is every other jewel reflected; likewise the more deeply we look within, the more deeply we see our fundamental interconnectedness with everything. The absence of self is not merely an absence, but a connectedness, a fullness beyond description.

But around the core which connects us to all beings is “us,” with all of our bad habits, mistaken ideas, and (most nefarious of all in Buddhism) our very concept of self. Asmi-mana is the Pali phrase, the “conceit I-am.” It refers not to the everyday usage of the words “I am.” The Buddha himself used these. It refers instead to the very deep psychological clinging to a separate identity, like trying to look at a jewel in that net without seeing the others. But that is the way we start out in this world and on the Buddhist path, feeling quite separate, as if our jewel were somehow so far away from the rest. The First and Second Noble Truths of Buddhism affirm the craving and suffering that follow from this feeling of separation.

The Third and Fourth Noble Truths, the “good news” of Buddhism, tell us that suffering can be overcome and provide a path for us to follow. Undertaking the practices of the path allows us to live the wisdom of no-self, to bring this realization into the flesh. Having the understanding of our already enlightened nature can serve as a great comfort and inspiration to begin and stay on the path. But it cannot substitute the steps of moral development, mindful cultivation, and learned inquiry that we find throughout the history of Buddhism in every school and sect.

So, according to Buddhism, we are pure. Impurity is an illusion, so too is the illusion of our separateness – in fact the two are intertwined. Waking up to our interconnectedness, looking within and seeing only infinite reflected jewels; this is goal of the Buddhist path. Yet how often can one simply do this? More often, when we look within we see only a tangled mass of thoughts, images, memories, hopes, and desires obscuring our pure nature. So we embark on the path, our journey through the tangled mass to the purity of no-self.

Justin Whitaker holds a Masters degree in Buddhist Studies from Bristol University, England and is currently a Ph.D. student in Buddhist Ethics at the University of London. He has practiced in several Buddhist traditions and is currently practicing with the Western Buddhist Order through the internet with his friend and teacher, Achintya, in Bristol, UK. He lives near Washington DC with his fiancée and (not so) secretly longs to return to his home state of Montana. His personal blog is americanbuddhist.blogspot.com.