No system
There is no formula to master and nothing new you need to believe.
Not a teaching. Not a path to follow.
An invitation to look together at what is already here.
Maybe you found this because something feels missing.
The past can seem to explain why life is this way. The future can seem to promise something different.
What's here when we set down, even for a moment, the ideas of how life should be—or should have been?
There is no formula to master and nothing new you need to believe.
Come with a question, confusion, curiosity, seeking—or nothing in particular.
We begin with ordinary experience and look together at what is already present.
Much of the search begins with a quiet assumption: that freedom lies somewhere ahead—after another insight, experience, teacher, practice, or awakening.
Rather than offering more ideas to hold, these conversations make room to notice the ideas already shaping the search: who is seeking, what is imagined to be found, and whether this moment is truly incomplete.
Nothing needs to be torn down. But anything can be looked at. Sometimes even our most cherished ideas can be set down long enough to see what remains.
In direct looking, what isn’t true falls away by itself.
I’ve spent over twenty years exploring meditation, contemplative practice, self-inquiry, Zen, radical non-duality, most religions, and the nature of experience.
So much seeking to realize the one looking could never be seen.
There’s no one here interested in giving you another philosophy to adopt. What changed things for this character was not being given more spiritual ideas. It was having space to question the ones I carried, until seeking began to loosen. A stripping away of beliefs, ideas and landings.
Sometimes another person sitting across from us—asking a question, noticing an assumption, or simply sharing the space—can make what seemed complicated surprisingly ordinary.
That is what these conversations are about.
My Zen practice is under Sensei Michael at One River Zen. These conversations are not Zen instruction. For Zen teaching and practice, please visit the community there.
There is nothing you need to prepare. Bring whatever is alive for you, and we’ll begin with that.
60 minutes · online video conversation
Book a Conversation