Food for thought. The new research on intentional daydreaming, mental health and mindfulness that I summarised in my recent article on my Psychemagination website raises some interesting questions in relation to meditation, so I I’m posting the link here to make sure you had a chance to read it. Questions for us ex-Tibetan Buddhists are: … The post Can Day dreaming be Meditation? appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

Nature meditation. I think most people probably find some kind of peace or spiritual inspiration in nature. Being in nature certainly makes meditation easier for me, and it has no religious overtones. Yay! That’s the kind of meditation I want! And there are many different ways to use nature as a spring board to a … The post Listening in Nature Meditation: A Simple and Effective Way to Be in the Moment appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

When I look at my life, how I live it and the reasons why I live it that way, I realise that I follow the dharma with every moment (mostly). And by dharma, I don’t mean Buddhadharma, and I certainly don’t mean Tibetan Buddhism. What does ‘dharma’ mean? There are many meanings of the word … The post The Religion May be Abandoned, but the Dharma Remains appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

What happens when your love of Vajrayana style meditation makes you yearn for it, but you just can’t do a traditional Tibetan Buddhist practice anymore because it carries too many negative associations? I don’t know what happens for others, but this is what happened for me. The post When Vajrayana Meditation Practice Calls but … appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

I’ve discovered that I have ADHD, and I’m not the only one of our community who has discovered this about themselves. I stopped meditating formally after the events of 2017 – which are well documented here and in my book Fallout: Recovering from Abuse in Tibetan Buddhism – but I’ve recently returned to a form … The post Does Meditation Help People with ADHD? appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

After two decades of enjoying vajrayana-style meditation, I dropped it all when I discovered that institutionalised abuse was rampant in the tradition. I no longer wanted to have anything to do with visualising gurus. However, I couldn’t forget the incredible peace and power that the practices gave me, and I found myself turning to an … The post A Guided Imaginative Meditation: A Modern Derivitive from an Ancient Tradition appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

After Tibetan Buddhism, after you’ve left the religion, what happens to your spiritual life? I was a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner for 20 years and left the religion 5 years ago when I discovered that my teacher Sogyal Rinpoche was abusing his close students and those running the organisation not only enabled it but also saw … The post After Tibetan Buddhism, What Remains? appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

When eight of his students wrote a combined letter that exposed Sogyal Rinoche’s abuse, I was initially amazed at how some people simply couldn’t see what he did as abuse. I figured that once it was out in the open, everyone would see how his behaviour constituted abuse. I was wrong, and some today still … The post Why Some Tibetan Buddhist Practictioners Can’t See Abuse as Abuse appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

Today we have a post by Joanne Clark as a follow up to her last post on Dzongsar Khyentse and nihilism. “In our practice, we may view the guru’s behavior as that of a mahasiddha, but in the   conventional world we follow the general Buddhist approach, and if a certain behavior is harmful, we should … The post Poison is Medicine: Has Dzongsar Khyentse Clarified or Muddied the Waters? appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more

Meditation without meditating. What a great idea. Meditation practice, is, after all, practice for having a chill mind all the time, so anything that calls you back into that space, or any time you take a moment to breathe consciously. there it is, meditation without meditating. And that’s what I love about this video. It … The post A 6 Minute Meditation Without Meditating appeared first on Beyond the Temple ..read more