For years, my son Jason encouraged me to write about Buddhism. I kept putting it off. One day, exasperated by my excuses, he said to me:
“Imagine you’re on a desert island, surrounded by trees. All you have to do, all you can do, is talk to the trees. If anyone else happens to come along and listen, so be it. But it’s you and the trees.”
Jason understood how much I wanted to share what my wife Hillary and I learned on our twenty-five-year journey into the Buddhist world. He also understood why I was so reticent.
For one thing, I felt our practice tradition, called Vajrayana or Tibetan Buddhism, was stuck in the past, bound to old dogmas and cultural forms. I had made some inroads to change that, but I had grown weary of feeling like I was swimming upstream.
I also wasn’t sure anyone outside the tradition would be interested. At first glance, Vajrayana Buddhism is an unusual mix of meditation, philosophy, and ritual. It can be hard to understand. It took Hillary and me years to make sense of it.
Then there was the language. Words like “enlightenment,” “liberation,” “guru,” and even “Buddhism” were so loaded with misunderstanding that I wasn’t sure how to talk about them.
And yet.
I believed in the tradition. In the hands of the Tibetan masters, Buddhism had evolved into a beautiful, sophisticated system of thought and practice, one I loved and practiced every day.
At its core, I believe, Vajrayana Buddhism is about unlocking our capacity to shine. It holds that we all have an aspect of our nature that is bright, open, and free, but is often obscured by the habits, worries, and preoccupations of daily life.
Many of us have glimpsed this possibility. Think of a moment when you were so absorbed in wonder, awe, love, or even laughter that life’s concerns fell away, and you felt intensely present and alive. Usually the moment is fleeting. The world comes rushing back. What if we could live from this place more of the time, maybe all the time?
Vajrayana Buddhist teachers call this capacity the luminous potential of the mind. The goal is to awaken that potential and bring more of it into our lives.
Jason’s words struck a chord. So I started to write what I’d long wanted to share. Meditation with Friends is the result: me, talking to trees about what I learned.
I didn’t arrive here on my own. I have a teacher, Segyu Rinpoche, who spent decades studying with several of Tibetan Buddhism’s contemporary masters. Hillary and I have spent many years with him, learning, practicing, and asking hard questions about which parts of the tradition were cultural overlay and which were essential. Rinpoche has long urged me to tell all this in a language suited to today. The reluctance came from me.
I’ve organized Meditation with Friends into four areas, which you’ll find in the Collection:
Vision & Influences presents big ideas, past and present, that have been important inspirations. The first piece, Why Friends?, explains why I call this Meditation with Friends.
Everyday Mind introduces the fundamentals of meditation and explores the patterns that shape our day-to-day experience. It begins with a piece called Stray Sheep, about the relationship between meditation practice and everyday life.
The Middle Way is the heart of Buddhist thought, a philosophical examination of mind, self, and reality. It has been a North Star for me. The first piece, First Principle, explains how Buddhist thought approaches truth.
Deity Yoga is unique to Vajrayana Buddhism. It uses meditation, imagery, and mantras to help us try on a more luminous way of being. The practices center on different figures, called deities, who embody aspects of this luminous nature, such as Medicine Buddha for healing, Manjushri for wisdom, and Tara for compassion.
The Map shows how it all fits together.
There are moments in life when what we’re doing stops feeling like enough, or we sense its limits. Sometimes the answer doesn’t lie in the usual directions but through a new door. I hope Meditation with Friends might open one.
Relax, take your time, and explore. And feel free to reach out anytime. I’d love to hear from you. Trees are wonderful, but they don’t send emails.
I’ll end with a small story.
Hillary and I were once on safari in South Africa. Every time we drove away from some animals we’d been watching, our guide, Johan, said the same thing: “Stay in peace, my friends.” It was beautiful—almost like a mantra—and it has stayed with us.
So I’ll close on that note.
Stay in peace, my friends.