I’m creating this website primarily to make the guided practices (and some teaching/writings based on the discussions) from a weekly Wednesday class dedicated to supporting those working with Rob Burbea’s approaches to practice offered through the San Francisco Dharma Collective. More info on this offering can be found here. Please drop in and practice with us if you feel called to.
The guided practices I offer there are a mix of practices. Often I will try to expand or elaborate on teaching instructions from Rob for the guidance (offering a long practice on what are sometimes pithy written instructions, for example). As well some of the practices combine themes, instructions, and practices Rob offered in new ways. For this website, I will prioritizing practices that diverge somehow from what Rob himself recorded and made available.
I’ve included some resources (primarily links to Rob’s extensive recorded materials) here and hope to add more as they become availalbe. A secondary impulse for starting this group was to offer ways into what is a large, complex, and intricate body of teachings – a way to pick out and emphasize the threads of Rob’s teachings that to me feel distinctive and essential, in order to support those wishing to enter into or continue exploring the dharma directions Rob opens up.
A result of offering this class and supporting the group of meditators who participate has been for me maybe the most personally important thread of exploration: revealing, exploring, and distilling the novel and radical elements of Rob’s teachings that for me represent alive, hopeful, and distinctly contemporary directions for contemplative practice. Certainly Rob’s teachings both expound upon and elaborate on a foundation of wisdom teachings, with the Buddhadharma being primary. I am personally deeply grateful for the teachings of the historical Buddha and the schools of buddhist thought and practice that came after. And yet it feels to me that certain ways of opening, re-envisioning, and re-contextualizing dharma practice were necessary for me to open my own path to a real depth… So here, as a teacher (offering primarily practice possiblities but also some commentary), my focus is to highlight and to continue exploring/evolving some of these “post-Buddhist” practice directions.