Dirty Hands,
Clean Dharma.
Clean Dharma.
Former prisoner. Union tradesman. Dharma student and teacher.
The hard Work of the dharma
The Dharma is getting up when you’d rather stay down. It’s the discipline to sit, the patience to keep at it, and the willingness to fail without giving up. Now and then, you catch a glimpse of what’s possible—flashes of clarity, of real, deep ease.
But the real test is coming back—over and over—to one sit, one act of restraint, one uncomfortable moment at a time. No shortcuts, no guarantees. Just effort, and the quiet truth that it pays off.
There was a time in my life when I actively felt aversion for entire people, for everything about them, and I felt justified in doing so.
There are individual skills related to mindfulness that can be strengthened by performing different drills. Bite-sized, skill-focused mindfulness drills.
This guided meditation establishes embodied mindfulness by first using external bodily sensations, then internal bodily sensations, and finally a combination of both.
How can the Buddhadharma be used as the framework for addiction recovery? And how does such a Dharmic approach differ from 12-step models?
Sometimes, a mind arises that tells us, "There has to be something more than this", which can serve as inspiration to practice the Dharma. In the Zen tradition, this is called the Way Seeking Mind.
Perhaps there is a sense that the suffering just keeps tumbling toward you as the prison system perpetually churns out wounded people. I get that. The carceral wheel of samsara is very real.