Some Useful Websites

The Dharma Overground (DhO) is in its 2.0 phase and has moved here The Dharma Overground 2.0. It is very, very highly recommended. It is where the life is at the moment, and is a flourishing on-line community where people explore the issues surrounding straightforward, open, practical dharma, find resources for real practice and try to fight the pervailing culture that sees real dharma and its effects as taboo. There is a rare collection of very accomplished practitioners with a great diversity of perspectives, attainments, and backgrounds who will talk openly about dharma and so it makes way more sense to post on the discussion section there most of the time than to ask me. I tend to pay attention to what happens here, and there are a number of other very talented practitioners who do also. This is a good place to post practical questions and thoughts on the dharma. Again, if you were thinking of asking me some question, you could just as well post it to the group there and thus draw on a much wider base of wisdom and perspective.

Access to insight: an extensive archive of Buddhist texts. A great place to find the original Buddhist texts (suttas) and modern writings by living and recently deceased meditation masters, such as The Progress of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw. In that same vein, Sacred Texts has a surprisingly large and wide collection of texts from many traditions.

My friend Vince Horn is a great practitioner and has a great website, and he and his friends have a website called BuddhistGeeks where they feature podcasts, discussions and other things about practice and theory. Some podcasts by me and others can be found there.

Hokai is strong practitioner, scholar, publisher whose blog is very worth checking out. He was also very important in the founding of the Dharma Overground.

Alan Chapman runs The Baptist's Head, a site about magick, The Great Work, and enlightenment, as well as Open Enlightenment which is self-explanatory. Both are recommended.

My old dharma brother and long-time dharma combat foil Kenneth Folk runs the eponymous Kenneth Folk Dharma. While we don't always see eye-to-eye, there are many interesting points for consideration there presented in Kenneth's classic style.

Constance Casey is a counselor, strong practitioner and meditation teacher who is also active at the DhO.

The full version of of Mahasi Sayadaw's Practical Insight Meditation, my favorite dharma book of all time, may be found at Google Books, where many other fine dharma books may be found for free. Part of it may be found at: http://www.mahasiusa.org/meditation.htm. The rest may be purchased from a number of sources at very reasonable cost; type the title and author into any search engine. It is also available at Wisdom Books, where you will also find many other books on Buddhism.

Insight Meditation Online is a good place to go for straight-up Burmese-style Thereavada, and has a section on the insight maps.

BuddhaNet is a large multi-tradition on-line resource for practice, texts and a lot more.

The Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre, located on the island of Penang, is by far my favorite retreat center in the world. I absolutely love this place: great food, great instruction, great technique, nice meditation halls, it is safe and clean, you can drink the water, basically no worries about malaria, very inexpensive, and they speak English, in short, one of the rarest shining gems in the meditation world, the perfect fusion of best of the East and the West, like Burma without the hassles. It is traditional, has monks, and you should go with the attitude that you will meet them on their own terms, follow instructions and respect the schedule and culture there. Address: 355 Jalan Mesjid Negeri, 11600 Penang, Malaysia. Tel : +604 - 282 2534, contact: mbmcpg@yahoo.co.sg, or Linda Toh, lindatoh2001@yahoo.com, Ah Huat Tan : ahhuattan@gmail.com. If you fly into Bangkok, the Butterworth Express is a very nice sleeper train ride down.

Insight Meditation Society (IMS) and the Barre Center for Buddhist Meditation - Located in Barre, MA, IMS is a great place to go on intensive retreats, particularly their 3 month retreat in the Fall. BCBS, located just through the woods from IMS, is an excellent center for the academic side of spiritual inquiry.

Bhavana Society - A fine forest retreat center in the mountains of the West Virginia panhandle, in the Sri Lankan style, with a particularly emphasis on the Samatha Jhanas and Insight Meditation. The home of Bhante Gunaratana, a world-class scholar and meditation master. All retreats on a donation basis.

Gaia House - A very nice retreat center set in gorgeous Devon, England. Offers retreats year-round in various traditions, all dedicated to the development of wisdom and freedom of the heart and mind. Home to Christopher Titmuss, Christina Feldman, and numerous other excellent teachers.

Bodh Gaya Retreats - Christopher Titmuss and his fine crew conduct yearly retreats in the Thai Monastery in Bodh Gaia, India. I am extremely grateful to everyone who contributes to making these retreats possible. The time I spent there during my year in India were key to making my practice what it is today. Highly recommended.

Spirit Rock - An insight meditation center in north of San Francisco, California. It is the sister center of IMS. My friend Vince tells me good things are happening there with Jack Kornfield and his crew.

Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center - Located in Australia. I haven't been here, but their abbot, Sayadaw U Pandita, Junior, is a remarkable teacher and practitioner, and I recommend studying with him if you can.

In that same vein, I sat with Subhana Barzaghi years ago and was impressed by how open and down to earth her teaching was. She is both a lineaged Zen Master and Vipassana teacher who teaches in Australia, India and New Zealand.

True North Insight Meditation Centre - Located in Eastern Ontario. It sounds like this center is still getting organized, and I haven't been there, but Norman Feldman is a fine teacher who is associated with this project and I recommend him.

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha may also be found at Meta Pleroma, The Spiritual Seeker's Portal, where you may also find discussions, links, downloads etc. about meditation and other topics from a wide variety of traditions.

Leigh Brasington's Jhana Page is also fun stuff.

Any of these lead to many other fine links.