The What and the How - A Bird’s Eye View

The Dharmayana: The Dharma + Entheogens + Spiritual Friendship = Joy

I placed this simple formula at the top of these pages and it contains the acorn from which the Dharmayana can grow into an oak.

A bird’s eye view - how would this work?

Imagine a beautiful home in your neighborhood. A sign reads: The Spiritual Academy of the Dharmayana. You’re curious – the building’s painted warm, bright colors, Tibetan flags hang from the eaves, a Buddha sits on the porch, his face illumined with a subtle joy, and tulips, yellow, orange and red, sway by the willow tree out front.

You enter.

It is a place of beauty.

The walls glow with cheerful hues, plants create an interior garden, ancient images of Buddhas, bodhisattvas and devas shine with blessing. The space is joyful and serene and you are immediately welcomed and brought into a vibrant, kind, ethical and loving tribe of seekers.

Here, as in many places where the Dharma is taught, you will be given, at no charge whatsoever, instruction in working with your mind, using the ancient and ever-fresh tools of meditation, mindfulness, loving-kindness and compassion. You will be trained in how to live with skill and grace, how to forgive and be forgiven, how to fall and how to rise, how to listen deeply, how to savor fully and how to walk through this precious human life with courage and with wisdom.

The teachings of the Buddha will bring light to the journey of your life and to your entheogenic journeys. You will learn how to work with the breath, how to reorient yourself during difficult moments of the visionary experience, how to prepare for the adventure, how to sail and how to fly, how to surrender, how to receive great knowledge, how to bow in gratitude and how to understand what you’ve received. You will be taught how to be ethical and moral in the context of the spiritual path and in the context of the entheogenic flight for which you are preparing.

Having completed your initial training, and with the agreement of the community that you are ready, you will, if you like, travel with this tribe of seekers into nature.

There, some of the academy’s students will play roles of support, while others will embark on the adventure with you. You will come with questions and hopes and things you wish to learn, and you will share as much of that intention as you wish to share with others. Then, in the beauty of nature, by brooks and trees and hills, you will participate in beautiful ceremony. You will know the meaning of each part of this ceremony, and may even contribute your own parts to it – poetry perhaps, or song, or practices of gratitude, or dance, or prayer. With this ritual, you and your companions will orient your minds in a good direction, which will help keep you safe during the voyage. 

Then, taking the sacrament together, you will set sail under the careful, loving, ethical and respectful care of your guides, fellow students and master practitioners, who, by this time, you will know well and be at ease with. They will make sure you are safe and will take care of you every step of the way.

Returning to your hometown and neighborhood after the journey, you will form integration groups with your spiritual adventuring party. These small groups will meet regularly – for dinner at one another’s homes, for walks in nature or conversations at the spiritual academy. Together, you will discuss what you saw, what you learned and how, week by week, you are striving to weave this learning into the fabric of your life, becoming stronger and more flexible and trying your best, together, to be better neighbors, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, fathers, mothers, grandparents, community members and citizens of the nation and the earth.

As you walk this path with your friends, you will let go of old habitual patterns of mind, you will gaze in awe upon the universe and seek to give of yourself, to help others heal as you are made well, to help others flourish as you come to celebrate life more and more. You will deepen your knowledge of the Dharma and grow in skill and wisdom when it comes to ceremony and connecting with the fullness of nature and of mystery. The spiritual academy, through you, will grow in knowledge and in wisdom, and you will grow with the spiritual academy.

As you gain knowledge and skill, you will become a senior student, and may be asked to mentor others, to offer Dharma talks and to support people on their own adventures.

In time, and with the blessing of the community’s lines of lineage, you may wish to open your own spiritual academy, and so, from one oak, a forest may appear, offering shade and fruit to other seekers.

Together, we will love and protect our great-grandmother, the earth, and her many creatures, from generation to generation to generation.