2022-06-12 Jizo Ceremony | LaurieWinnette by Appamada

“It’s not all that hard to get enlightened; what is difficult is to keep giving up our sense of the world so that the world can come to us on its own terms, with its vast, pitiless, loving intelligence…we return to the simplest things with an immense recognition and gratitude…”

[Stephen Mitchell in “The Light Inside the Dark” by John Tarrant, p. xv]

2022-06-13 | Depth in Practice | The Light Inside the Dark | John Tarrant by Appamada

“What I refer to, or point toward when I speak in these terms is the tender experience I see in each of us — in you — when something breaks through to your heart, inviting tears to begin to form in your eyes, and causes a warm sense of well-being or goodness to gently flood into your body. That very real, visceral and emotional experience is the only evidence I have of something that may very well issue initially from my thoughts but seems to go well beyond them into an intimate space that is hard to touch, like the sounds of the gongs. You can feel those vibrations and even describe them, but they are more than your descriptions and more than your sensory responses, and that is part of their beauty. Hence, the “embodied inconceivable.” That is no mystery. It is the longed for and treasured conversations we share, moving through our individual bodies and through the space our bodies make together. It is the forrest, the sky, the ocean and wind, and the entire contingent universe we find ourselves in — together. It is the awe and gratitude, the humility and sheer joy which spring up beyond everyday answers and ordinary knowability. It feels like love to me.”

~ Flint Sparks

For When People Ask

~ Rosemary Wahtola Trommer

I want a word that means

okay and not okay,


more than that: a word that means

devastated and stunned with joy.

I want the word that says


I feel it all all at once.

The heart is not like a songbird

singing only one note at a time,


more like a Tuvan throat singer

able to sing both a drone

and simultaneously


two or three harmonics high above it—

a sound, the Tuvans say,

that gives the impression


of wind swirling among rocks.

The heart understands swirl,

how the churning of opposite feelings


weaves through us like an insistent breeze

leads us wordlessly deeper into ourselves,

blesses us with paradox


so we might walk more openly

into this world so rife with devastation,

this world so ripe with joy.

2022-06-06 | Depth In Practice | The Light That Shines Through Infinity | Katagiri by Appamada

2022-05-29 Memorial For 31 People Killed In Mass Shootings | Robin Bradford by Appamada

2022-05-31 I Inquiry I What Is Spiritual Practice? I Flint Sparks by Appamada

2022-05-30 | Depth In Practice | The Light That Shines Through Infinity | Katagiri by Appamada

2022-05-22 Dharma Talk | Joel Barna | Not-Self And Emptiness by Appamada

2022-05-15 Dharma Talk | Laurie Winnette by Appamada