Matthew regularly offers Buddhist teachings and meditation instructions for in-person groups in the San Francisco Bay Area and online nationally. Here are events scheduled for 2025 and 2026, thus far.
The Buddha taught that the body can be a doorway to liberation from suffering, a place we can return to find steadiness and ease. With practice, the body can become
Matthew leads the practitioner through mindfulness of anatomy using Bhikkhu Analayo’s method of Satipatthana practice. The meditation begins with establishing embodied mindfulness and then moves into body scans of the
People mediate for a variety of reasons. To slow down. To heal. To stay sane. To meet what’s here. In this talk, Matthew explores these motivations for practice and the
Can the present moment be devoid of everything that came before? How might our mindfulness practice be framed as a way of understanding the past?
Equanimity is the quality being cultivated from the very beginning of practice, from the first time a meditation teacher invited us to bear witness to our experience “without judgment or
Loosely, the goal was to offer a practice guide framed around the triple gem – the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha – using language that more closely aligned with
Pain, in its myriad forms, is often the entry point for practice. Tragedy and heartbreak, discontent and unease, something among these inspires us toward something different. The Buddhist path offers
Defensiveness often arises when identity is challenged – when information about ourselves and the world runs counter to the way we view them, hold them, and maybe even cling to
Matthew draws on experiences firefighting and in incarcerated Buddhist communities to explore what it means to feel safe in a sangha, despite external circumstances.
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.
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
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
If the present is the inheritance of the past, and the future is the inheritance of the present, doesn’t this mean that the future is the inheritance of the past?
I was facing many centuries in prison under California’s three strikes law. My suffering was inescapable. It was time to do something different.
Have you every heard the phrase, “Dirty hands, clean money”? It comes from the trades and refers to the idea that we can be proud of what we’ve earned so
Though not practiced as often as other subjects, mindfulness of death (maranasati) is an important part of the Buddha’s teachings.
The Buddha also teaches us that we can find refuge in a dangerous world. What does it mean to find safety despite the inevitability of danger? What are the conditions
Prison Mindfulness Summit: useful approaches to volunteering in prison, pitfalls that facilitators might encounter in incarcerated settings, and what makes for safe prison sanghas.
One way we can train our hearts is by practicing metta, which is often translated as lovingkindness. The word also carries with it ideas of benevolence, friendliness, and care for
When the Buddha taught the four foundations of mindfulness, part of the way he instructed students to be mindful of the body was through the lens of the four elements: earth,