buddhism

AMA with John Churchill. Wednesday 2/4 at 6:00 PM CT

Dr. John Churchill, clinical psychologist, mentor, and co-founder of Planetary Dharma. Find out more:

• Next Bodhisattva’s Compass (January 27th)
• Introduction to Planetary Dharma: April 24-26, 202
• The Cedar Cohort, a two-year, in-depth training program starting in Fall 2026 (a "fourth-turning" Bodhisattva path, integrating Buddhist contemplative science, psychology, and embodiment practices, focusing on personal and planetary awakening).

Enough/not enough are the same. If you’ve lived in the shadow of not-enoughness for most of your life, there often comes a moment where you declare “I am enough!” It feels glorious! Triumphant!

It’s a step forward, I guess. But it keeps the whole busted frame in place. 

“Enough” and “not enough” are built from the same mental overlay, which frankly is bullshit. You are. That’s unquestionable, and there were no requirements for your being. American culture, or your parents, or Instagram may have convinced you that you had to earn your right to exist (or be loved) but they lied.

One reason we make this mistake is because the frame of “enough” legitimately applies to specific goals: if I don’t have enough gas to drive to Louisiana, I won’t make it there. If I don’t have enough followers, I won’t get the brand sponsorship. But these all concern capacity relative to goals, not existence. Enoughness cannot be a statement of being. Being is. It’s tautological. Recognizing this tautology is transformative, because it undermines the whole edifice of enough/not-enough.

#TTT 

Spiritual AND religious ⛪️ . I’m spiritual AND religious. 

I’m spiritual: I believe reality-experience far transcends my individual self-reference, my understanding, and the understanding of science; and I believe this transcendence has a causal impact on the happenings of the world.  

But I’m also religious: I’m dedicated to daily transformative and devotional practices; I’m daily connected to other practitioners; I study “the transcendent” all the time (God, the universe, Truth, Love, Beauty, philosophy, awakening, shadow, etc), I learn from lineages with thousands of years of wisdom. I’m informed, challenged, supported by a community of fellow practitioners, teachers and students who are all involved—in my business, family, friends. I show up every Monday night to relatefulness, and sometimes y’all work me :) 

Some of y’all may not even realize you’re part of my religious community. You may want to keep the word out of your mouth like a bitter root. But you send me podcasts, articles, comments, give me gifts and ideas that show how much exists beyond what I knew, perhaps beyond what is knowable. You show me what I’m holding on to that I can give up. You show me how to be a better father, son, husband, citizen, steward of the evolutionary impulse. You show me love, humor, gentleness, forgiveness. You show me ways to come into greater integrity.

I don’t mean that I belong to a specific form like Christianity or Buddhism. I belong to you.

And I belong to a commitment: to inhabit and be changed by spirituality, rather than just claim it. To knowingly devote myself to it in every single moment, especially when I’m resistant.

#TTT 

I practice Secure Detachment. 

For me, detachment is not about being desireless or divorced from the world and others, it's about being aware of and in relationship with reality and the world.

I have egoic desires--I desire to have a thing, to go to a place, to be with a person. All day I have these desires, and I mostly just completely indulge them. Egoic is not a swear word, it's just an awareness of self-interest and preference. I have every right to pursue my preference. My life is for me. My body is for me. My experiences are for me.

And, in right relationship with reality and the world, I pursue my preference with abandon. That is, I abandon the idea that my preference is correct or righteous, or that violations of my preferences are evidence of something going wrong in the world. I pursue my preference simply--it's just what I want to do. I'm always doing something!

My preferences are sacred to and for me, and I have every right to use my time, energy, and attention in ways I prefer at all times.

AND it is correct and true and simply reality that the world does not conform to my preferences, that I will not be given my way, that in thousands of ways each day my preferences will be violated and this is a feature of reality, not a bug. I can have the right to have what I desire and not the ability to have it! This is simply a truth in the world.

I am detached from the outcomes of my egoic desires, because that is part of who I want to be. Who I want to be--that is the authentic desire which ideally gives rise to the forms of my egoic desires, if all's in integrity.

Who I want to be in the world is my deeper desire, and it applies as I receive my egoic desires and as I perceive myself deprived of those egoic desires. Who do I want to be while I get what I want? Who do I want to be while I don't get what I want?

Who do I want to be in this world which has so much to offer, so much that is inside my preferences and SO MUCH MORE that is outside my preferences? Who do I want to be in this world which was not designed for me, but is habitable and maybe even enjoyable, to the extent that I curate it?

Appreciation With Great Difficulty. (Originally published on substack. This was unusually scary and vulnerable to publish)

There’s this Buddhist poem. I don’t know if it’s a poem. They say it’s “a set of contemplations.”

It’s called “The Four Reminders,” and the first time I read it, it kicked me to the floor. And every time after, too.

Here’s Trungpa’s translation.

—

Joyful to have
such a human birth.
Difficult to find,
Free and well-favored.

But death is real,
comes without warning.
This body will be a corpse.

Unalterable
are the laws of karma;
cause and effect
cannot be escaped.

Samsara
is an ocean of suffering.
Unendurable,
unbearably intense.

—

When I was first learning coaching, one of my teachers said “An unwanted present state will stay stuck until it’s fully appreciated.”

To appreciate something is not to say “I like this” or “I condone this” or “I value this”. It’s to let it in. Just let it in to your heart. You must let the things into your heart that you’ve excluded. Make space for them in your heart, or they’ll be chains around your ankles.

To fully appreciate the present state, to love the world as it is. To allow the world into you fully, and not keep out parts, not try to keep yourself separate, but let the world belong to you and let yourself belong to the world.

This requires a letting go. A surrender to life, to what will happen. “Amor Fati,” Nietzsche said. “Love your fate.”

Or as Tyler Durden put it “Stop trying to control everything and just let go”

When you do that, you get the benefit of belonging to life. You are just life, living. You are the world and the world is you.

But Goddam it’s a lot to take.

I don’t know war, outside of news, and social media, history books, and Hollywood. And it’s already more than I want to know.

But what if the only way to stop war is to let it into your heart? For each of us to let it into our hearts. Not to love it. But to allow it. To allow it to exist. To not resist*, but include it in your heart, and include your love of peace. To include those two things together is to break your heart.

Things don’t care whether you want them or not.

So we allow war to be. In this moment, when it is, we allow it. We appreciate it. Things are not different than how they are. And when you do that, also feel your love of peace, and the pain of all the suffering war is causing, and your own fear about your suffering and your death and the suffering and death of your loved ones, and remember, your love of peace, your longing for peace.

Just try, right now. Include all that in your heart. Pause. Close your eyes. And feel your love of peace and the fact of war, together in your heart.

It’s too much. I can’t do it. I’m sure I don’t even come close.

But trying just now, I sink down. It’s like lowering myself into a hot bath of vibrating sensation. Or descending from the pristine clouds into the hot, chaotic jungle. I feel now that I belong to the world and my heart cracks, and I want to cry.

And then I can’t stay, and I rise back up, out of that intensity.

But for a moment, I felt I belonged to the world.

Maybe trying this practice with something as huge, horrendous, and abstract as “war” is setting us up to fail. But what happens if you try it with something in your own life? Find that knot, that persistent place where life keeps being the same, painful way. What’s the the thing in your own life that feels hardest to appreciate?

Now again, close your eyes and let it into your heart. It can sit right there along with your desire and longing that it be different. You have to make room in your heart for what is so, as well as your wanting something else. When you do that, and breathe, and feel it all together, as part of the wholeness of life, what happens? What happens in your heart? And what happens in your life? I’d love to know.

Of course, I only get to explore these territories because of how much peace surrounds me. This blessed peace, that allows me to stop and feel life in this way. This precious peace, this delicate, sometimes punctured, peace, that I pray remains, that I pray grows stronger. I pray that you are surrounded by this peace too, and all the people you love, and all the ones they love and so on, out across the whole world.

—

* This is not to say real world actions are unnecessary. I’m not talking about quietism. You can include a rabid dog in your heart, even as you’re putting it down.

What are some of your uncertainties? Experiences of failure (that maybe you still haven't turned into learnings yet?) Obvious realizations? (eg: things that were maybe super obvious to others, or even obvious to you about others, but you just realized deeply apply to you?) 

Will you share some here in the comments?

#quicktakes 

It's not always best to tell the truth. Truth is tricky to define, and often people use a black-and-white definition to avoid taking responsibility for impact.  But those kinds of truths rarely land well. Speaking a fuller truth—one that takes into account the person receiving it, and that this matters—doesn’t mean watering it down or making it less real. In fact, it becomes more true, more real, and more likely to be received and understood because it recognizes that truth does not exist in a vacuum nor do we. #DeepTakes

I just noticed how the "no-self" doctrine supports the "materialist industrial epistemological complex". My friend Divia has coined this intense-but-great phrase "So “materialist epistemology industrial complex” is my own mental handle, and it might be silly but I like it for now.

I claim that there’s some memeset that launders legitimacy from “everything is made out of stuff in a refuctionistic way, seems like the laws of physics" 

And today I was noticing how the Buddhist doctrine of 'no-self' contributes to this whole way of thinking—

by denying that there's a self (claiming instead what we call a "self" are five aggregrates/skandas that interact in a way that seems selfy but doesn't actually constitute a real thing) this thinking can fall trap to leaving the so-called objective/external world pre-existent, out-there, reducing it to just physics.

—at least as its imported into the USA. And probably not how it is interpreted by deep Mahayana practitioners, for example, or people who have actually reached the nondual nirvana state advertised by the practice and that gave rise to the doctrine, who would experience this as a false duality and notice that whatever we normally think of a subject would need to be included/accounted for in/as the object.

I just noticed how the "no-self" doctrine supports the "materialist industrial epistemological complex". My friend Divia has coined this intense-but-great phrase "So “materialist epistemology industrial complex” is my own mental handle, and it might be silly but I like it for now.

I claim that there’s some memeset that launders legitimacy from “everything is made out of stuff in a refuctionistic way, seems like the laws of physics" 

And today I was noticing how the Buddhist doctrine of 'no-self' contributes to this whole way of thinking—

by denying that there's a self (claiming instead what we call a "self" are five aggregrates/skandas that interact in a way that seems selfy but doesn't actually constitute a real thing) this thinking can fall trap to leaving the so-called objective/external world pre-existent, out-there, reducing it to just physics.

—at least as its imported into the USA. And probably not how it is interpreted by deep Mahayana practitioners, for example, or people who have actually reached the nondual nirvana state advertised by the practice and that gave rise to the doctrine, who would experience this as a false duality and notice that whatever we normally think of a subject would need to be included/accounted for in/as the object.

I just noticed how the "no-self" doctrine supports the "materialist industrial epistemological complex". My friend Divia has coined this intense-but-great phrase "So “materialist epistemology industrial complex” is my own mental handle, and it might be silly but I like it for now.

I claim that there’s some memeset that launders legitimacy from “everything is made out of stuff in a refuctionistic way, seems like the laws of physics" 

And today I was noticing how the Buddhist doctrine of 'no-self' contributes to this whole way of thinking—

by denying that there's a self (claiming instead what we call a "self" are five aggregrates/skandas that interact in a way that seems selfy but doesn't actually constitute a real thing) this thinking can fall trap to leaving the so-called objective/external world pre-existent, out-there, reducing it to just physics.

—at least as its imported into the USA. And probably not how it is interpreted by deep Mahayana practitioners, for example, or people who have actually reached the nondual nirvana state advertised by the practice and that gave rise to the doctrine, who would experience this as a false duality and notice that whatever we normally think of a subject would need to be included/accounted for in/as the object.

... No belief is true, no matter how popular or plausible

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

A Jhana rabbit hole. Someone on X/Twitter introduced me to a meditation retreat company called Jhourneys that focuses on helping people get into Jhana states. Apparently there are different stages of Jhana. People describe them as states of euphoria, bliss, joy, and contentment that stay with you and some have shared that they have more capacity to be with the harder more challenging aspects of everyday life.

Any one have any experience with Jhanas?

Last night I listened a podcast featuring a guest who has been experiencing these states since the early 80s. (https://jhourney.transistor.fm/episodes/being-happier-than-you-ever-realized-for-no-apparent-reason-leigh-brasington) The energetic transmission was profound.

I’m really curious to learn more.

Are We Ever Awake/Free/Thriving Enough To Not Practice? Through the years, I’ve had periods in my life where I feel so overwhelmingly good that all my daily spiritual practices (yoga, meditation, prayer, Big Mind process, relatefulness, spiritual study, etc) fall to the wayside.

When I feel super awake, connected to everyone and everything, able to flow with whatever is happening, in an unshakeable trust that Basic Goodness is all there is, it’s really easy for me to go: Well, this is it. I’m done. No point in doing any practice of any kind anymore. And that’s not to say that I abandon practice entirely. I still lead my sessions online a few times a week or whatever, but the underlying attitude in me is this is all optional.

And yet, the feedback that I keep getting from Life is that I do, in fact, need practice.

There’s something about making the daily commitment to presence, to myself, to Spirit, and dedicating one or several periods of my day to some form of spiritual practice that is just so nourishing.

And when I stop doing it, it’s like if I stop doing physical exercise. After a while things start feeling kinda stagnant, and my way of being in my life gets wonky. I’m more likely to make choices that could hurt me and the people close to me.

I’m grateful that I can always come back to the routine of one or more daily practices. It feels healthy. : )