Infinite Smile

In this talk, Michael speaks about how the One Precept of "Doing No Harm" can actualize the potential of awakening in any situation. Along these lines, Michael openly shares how he and his wife have separated so that their marriage might be exposed to a more powerful expanse of clarity. He relates this shared decision to the One Precept and how both he and his wife wanted to make sure that the resistance patterns that arose out of their ten-year relationship didn't adversely affect their kids. The process of difficulty and illumination continues, as he says. As the talk progresses, Michael elaborates on Zen's Grave Precepts: Not killing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not abusing intoxicants, not criticizing others, not being arrogant, not being greedy, not harboring anger and not diminishing the Triple Treasure (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). By doing so, he points out how we can examine our own tendencies toward harming ourselves and others in very subtle ways. Making amends if we have gotten o

Actively meeting inspiration through poetry can make a huge difference as we move through the world. The same applies to uncovering the things that crack us up. Laughter matters since it is a celebration of the unexpected and defines an unattached space that we can enjoy if we're available to it. Similarly, being available to love changes us in that it allows for a felt sense of the Absolute. This felt sense of the Absolute leads us onto the path of an expanding consciousness that can be mapped. Michael starts the discussion by pointing out gross level awareness, then moves on to the subtle level, the causal level and then into what can be referred to as nondual Suchness. As a side, he also notes that the causal Witness is also referred to turiya while nondual Suchness is termed turiyatita in Hinduism. From here Michael suggests that our practice can become unbalanced when we become more interested in "becoming" than simply "being." When we stabilize ourselves in simply Being, he suggests, the Becoming takes

There comes a point in our practice where we consciously let go of everything that has supported our work. It's not that we reject or avoid anything but rather that we stop holding on to all that's familiar. This is especially true when we let go of our personal stories of right and wrong; of who we are and who we aren't; of who is with us and who is against us. Getting past all of this mind activity tends to open us in interesting ways. We begin to see that there is nothing to hold on to, but that there is also nothing holding us back from our personal and collective evolution. Our hearts and minds open, as do our bodies. Enlightenment, at this point, isn't something we experience, but rather it experiences itself through us.

When we can accept reality as it is, we can no longer find ourselves to be at war with it. There is nothing to resist, in other words, when we are no longer clinging to any expectation that things should turn out a certain way. When we can rest in this space, we open to our True Nature. When we can live from our True Nature, we find that we always have everything that we could possibly need with us all of the time. This takes practice and discipline. It takes a fearlessness that allows for us to study our own suffering. This study shows us that whatever we cling to, we end up diminishing. Loosening our grip on things through our stillness practice, on the other hand, ends up enhancing not only our experience but also the lives of all those we come into contact with. Our lives can be led not from a place of vanity where we seek a continual aggrandizement of separate selfhood, but rather we can live from a deeply connected place where abundance flows to, through and from our being. Here is where all war ends a

We often begin our spiritual journey because we're at the end of our rope. We seek ways to avoid our discomfort. Unfortunately, when our  practice centers itself around seeking we find that our progress along the path is continually blocked. Authentic spiritual work helps us shift our perspective in radical ways, especially when it comes to seeking. Rather than our meditation helping us to develop the strength necessary to hang to our rope, so to speak, with greater efficiency, we find that our sitting practice helps us let go of the rope entirely. This isn't comfortable. But all awakened beings have developed a quiet peace around this letting go as they've dealt with their tendency to cling. Awakened beings see that seeking itself presupposes a loss of something. Awakened beings know that nothing has ever been missing. As this process unfolds we begin to see that certain guideposts show up. First, we see that our practice unfolds as an expression of our identity. We look to become "good Buddhists" or "good

Kanshi Sosan's work, The Mind of Absolute Trust, offers us some great guidance in relation to meeting our lives fully. Michael leads the sangha in a reading and brief interactive analysis of the text, pointing out how we might best integrate the meaning of the text within our day-to-day lives. "Learning to trust the Universe," Michael says, "means we can trust ourselves. In trusting ourselves, we can begin to trust others more fully."

Consciously meeting the grace brought on by deep meditative work allows for us to develop a steadiness in our day-to-day lives. This doesn't mean that we won't experience discomfort and pain. In fact, when we let both our physical and emotional discomfort inform our lives, instead of defining them, we can begin to fearlessly welcome the change. Each bit of discomfort, in other words, is an invitation for each of us to shift toward greater depth. With enough practice, this shift allows for us to stare at the Infinite with eyes that are infinitely informed.  

What happens when we realize that we can no longer live the way we have always lived? What happens when we stop our attempts at escape and instead face our lives fully, totally and completely? The answers to these questions are the foundations to a path that takes us deeper and deeper into the harder to reach places of the mind. This path of self-study has the potential of putting us into the heart of a divine flame that is at once glorious and painful. We begin to feel more of life as our many protective layers of behaviors and patterns are burned away. The mystery, as it turns out, is that the stuff we lose on the path to awakening is precisely what we no longer need. Having said this, exposing ourselves to this fire is neither easy nor comfortable. Often we find that it's increasingly difficult to participate with people that we've come to notice as impediments to our journey. While "moving on" is a natural part of the work, it should also be noted that this doesn't necessarily mean that we must "move awa

In this talk, Michael explores the inherent limitations that fear puts on each of us. At the beginning of the talk he asks how we might live if we knew we couldn't fail. How might this alter our approach to life? Without the constant threat of failure, he argues, we would be able to approach life without fear. Living fearlessly, he continues, means that we are orienting our lives from love. Living in this way allows for us to embody the sacred teachings of many traditions.

Do we have the courage to be truly ordinary? It's a great question that helps us uncover whatever egoic attachments we might have about who we think we are and who we think we should be. Those individuals that can let go of these deep stories have an opportunity to share something deep and worthy: truth. This truth arises whenever we allow for our clinging to release, and this released style of living can't be anything other than helpful to all those we might meet. Topics in this evening's talk include finding what is holy in our everyday experiences; learning to live in the gap that lies between the recognition of the One as well as the Many; and, how progress along the path can show up in unexpected ways.

We usually think of Karma in terms of "good" and "bad." And yet these cliches don't do much to serve up a deeper understanding of Karma's spiritual implications. In this talk, Michael touches on several topics that center around the human tendency to act and behave from a profound sense of separation. Action from this orientation, in Buddhist terms, generates Karma. With this in mind, Karma that we might consider good, would be activity that is spontaneously and deeply rooted in generosity. On the other hand, Karma that we might consider to be bad would be the kind of activity that springs from the self-serving drives of the ego. So how might we straighten out the tangles offered by a lifetime of egoic activity? This is the very question that Michael begins to address in this talk.

The ego maintains a state of inertia that tends to cloud our experience. So often we don't even recognize that we give ourselves over to an inherently incomplete story rooted in separation and alienation. Michael points out that we are made up of Emptiness and what arises out of it and what dies back into it. Once we see that we are infinite at our core, we can begin to see that this self we've always believed in is a partial reflection of what's real; that we're more that what we think we are; that we're more than anything we might identify with. From this perspective we can see that we can't take anything with us. Once we can open around this truth, we can stop resisting life and begin to live more fully as a conscious expression of freedom.

This podcast features one of Michael's students, Gina Rocca, who offers an introductory talk prior to a previous sitting. Gina's beautiful talk is then followed up by one of Michael's talks as well as Q & A. ___ Michael addresses the enlightened message of several traditions and suggests that they begin to intertwine at some key places. Among these points is the notion of being good to each other and recognizing the power of surrendering to what is actually happening. Issues like attachment, identification and vanity and the distortions are addressed. Instead of resisting our lives, meditation helps us take the "backward step" that helps us fall into awakening. Crushing heartbreak as well as bliss offer us a direct path into the heart of awakening. This is our path.  

What would it be like to be able to welcome any challenge as an invitation into awakening? Our relationship to our troubles determines the answer to this question. Are we avoiding anything? Are we at war? Harboring ill-will? Acting from desperation? Hungry for something, anything, other than what's actually happening? Are you going for pleasure instead of going for consciousness? Trying to find where pleasure and consciousness can coexist? The answers to these and other questions often arise out of the heroic exploration of what makes each of us tick. Uncovering what, for example we most identify with offers keys to what is sacred within each of us. For example, if we assume that the sum of our past experiences creates our identity, we are bound by our own sense of deficiency? Or what happens when the dreams and future goals we've set for ourselves and those around us fail to meet our expectations? Here, again, we pin ourselves to a deeply held internal sense that we are inadequate. Depression can ensue and

In this evening's Dharma talk, Michael addresses how beauty, and our sense of it, can be impediments to awakening. "It's not," he says, "that there is anything wrong with beauty. In fact, beauty is everywhere, all the time. The problem is that by labeling something as 'beautiful' we limit the potential expanse of its power with our definition. We miss the mark, or 'sin,' as we attempt to stabilize an experience of awe that feels so intense." Michael goes on to discuss the natural expression of letting go as activity that does no harm. Ahimsa, as Buddhists call it, begins to guide the ways we meet our experience, he says, as we begin to evolve into deeper expressions of awakening. He also goes on to explain how the egoic clinging to thoughts, feelings and time can prevent this evolution. Additionally, he maps out the way the mind moves from its primary 5 senses into the 6th sense of mind; following this up with the 7th sense of time, the 8th sense of the hidden observer, then bridging into the 9th sense of th

In this Dharma talk, Michael addresses how the ego is more comfortable with its own misery than it is uncovering the mystery of existence. This presents some problems for most of us since we rarely have either the courage or the guidance to move past this kind of psychological or spiritual block. Failing to move past this block offers us no lasting solace. Working through this tendency, however, helps offer clarity of who and what we are as well as a deepening sense of purpose. The one thing, as Michael says, that the ego truly can't handle is complete and utter peace. Uncovering a peace that is total would mean that the ego would be out of a job. So in order to maintain its job security, it creates war in various forms. Once we see through this, we recognize that there is an infinite opportunity to take advantage of an infinite array of choices. Choosing well by choosing consciously builds a sense in each of us that there is wholeness present in each of the situations that we face. Not only is peace at hand

In this Dharma talk, Michael challenges each of us to look for the source of the ego. In doing so, we find that the "eGO!" as his 3 year-old daughter refers to it, is simply the name we give to the mind in motion. This label isn't anything substantial unless we identify with it. Seeing the mind in motion, without clinging to any of it, helps us have an opportunity to stop the mind's tendency to attach and identify with its own motion as long as we engage sincerely in the practice of stillness. As our practice deepens, everything that is timeless and free is revealed through conscious stillness. This means that no matter what our situation might be, no matter how great or how awful, stillness can support a steadiness that allows for us to meet anything that arises from a position of steadiness.

In this Dharma talk, Michael discusses how we can begin to look at pain as an invitation to deepen our perspectives on how we live. This isn't always easy, but it's at the core of everyone's Dharma practice. When we know, in other words, that some disaster is immanent, can we, as Michael points out, "get ready for lots of stinging" in the moments prior to whatever event is coming? Along these lines, Michael's talk revolves around how getting on an authentic spiritual path usually is the result of no longer having answers to the questions that are coming up. For example, something in life seems somehow wrong or off. Or we've been dealt a blow by life that we simply can't find our way through. Using these challenges as a way to help along a deep shift in perspective, from a personal one, into one that is oriented from the Deep Singularity of enlightenment, is waiting for each of us.

In this Dharma talk, Michael McAlister starts by pointing out how the PBS NewsHour's Mark Shields helped contextualize the killings in Tuscon, Arizona. In doing so, we find that there may be some significant reminders of how tribal-centrism can be extended toward global-centrism if we allow our own hearts and minds to open fully and repeatedly. With this in mind, Michael points out how this corresponds in deep ways with what Dr. Martin Luther King spoke of in his "I Have a Dream" speech. For example, King reminds us of the "fierce urgency of now," as well what it means to connect with "all God's children." He also warns us not to "drink from the cup of bitterness and hatred." In celebration of Dr. King's birthday, Michael celebrates his words, pointing out how living from this place allows for us to become, freedom, justice, equality and love. And this is the work for us as we commit to the spiritual path.