Open Sky Open Heart
18 months to explore and deepen Essence Mahamudra practice.
No preliminaries. No jargon., Just direct pointing.
A priceless door to freedom and transformation opens.
Are you ready + willing to step through?
Awake mind directly pointed out
These precious teachings are offered in easy to understand, everyday language. Open Heart, Open Sky explores and deepens your natural ability to awaken and connect with good heart.
Practice with the teacher
Brian brings 54 years of Dharma practice and 35 years experience as a teacher to Open Sky, Open Heart
Supportive Community
"If you want to go fast, travel alone.
If you want to go far, travel together."
Learn with other dedicated meditators with the opportunity to have your own questions answered and learn from each other
About Open Sky, Open Heart - Essence Mahamudra Intensive
The Core Practice: Essence Mahamudra
- We meet three times a week, for one hour to practice together
- On your meditation seat, recognize the nature of mind
- Test and stabilize your recognition in the company of a committed group of meditators
- Practicing side-by-side accelerates the view, grounds your momentum, and turns abstract understanding into a shared, living reality.
Direct interaction with the teacher
- Ask your personal questions at the end of each practice session and talk
- Receive direct, live feedback from the teacher
- Hear other participants ask and discuss their questions
36 Online presentations of the Essence Mahamudra
- Ask your personal questions at the end of each practice session and talk
- Receive direct, live feedback from the teacher
- Hear other participants ask and discuss their questions
The Curriculum
- Introduction to Essence Mahamudra Practice
- Exploring Pointing Out The Dharmakaya - 9th Karmapa: Wangchuk Dorje
- Exploring Tilopa's Ganges Mahamudra Teachings
- Transmission and practice of 6 Yogas of Naropa - as an Essence practice
- Integrating the teachings for stability and personal transformation
An emphasis on personal growth, transformation, and integrating the teachings.
- Transforming understanding into experience through a shared, warm, and deeply supportive practice container.
A place to start: published articles on Essence Practice
Two Questions About Your Meditation Practice
Here’s the first question.
On a scale from 1 to 10: how satisfied are you with the depth of your practice, and your connection to a real community of practitioners?
Take a breath. Give yourself a number. Not the number you wish were true. The one that is.
Now the second question. Why didn’t you rate it higher?
This is where things get interesting. The gap between your number and a 10 is your path. Not a failure. A map.
What Happens When The Meditation Shortcut Runs Out?
Essence Mahamudra Doesn't Fit in a Weekend: Let's Stop Pretending It Does
Why not a weekend? Why not an app?
Here’s the honest answer. Essence Mahamudra was never built for either one.
Depth takes time. Most of what’s on offer right now isn’t built for depth. It’s built for access.
This Isn't A Shortcut to Awakening. It's The Thing Itself.
Awareness is already here. Always has been.
You don’t need to manufacture it. You don’t need to imagine it into being. And you can’t think your way toward it. Thinking is the wrong tool for this job. You only need to recognize what’s already present.
Think of it as the sun behind clouds. You don’t create the sun. You let the clouds move, and there it is. Essence Mahamudra practice works the same way. You learn to let the sun uncover itself. You learn to rest in its brightness. You learn to trust its clarity.
Look Up! You Can See For Yourself
The Path of Direct Experience
There is a big difference between reading about the moon and seeing it in the night sky. You can study it for hours. You can learn its phases, its distance from the earth, and its place in the calendar. But none of that gives you the simple fact of looking up and seeing it for yourself.
The same is true in meditation.
https://medium.com/@dontwakeupitwillruinyourlife/look-up-you-can-see-this-for-yourself-0cda86e6fc79
A Cracked Pot Can't Carry Water
The Role of a Strong Practice Container in Advanced Meditation
Advanced meditation does not happen in a vacuum. It ripens inside a container: shared commitments, clear expectations, healthy boundaries. A setting that supports practice from the outside while it deepens the practice from within.
https://medium.com/@dontwakeupitwillruinyourlife/a-cracked-pot-cant-carry-water-24f6954ecbaa
The Door Has Been Open The Whole Time
Beyond Mindfulness: Why Advanced Practitioners Need A Next Step
A mature practice does something simple and profound. It reveals the nature of experience itself.
It cuts through the habit of standing apart from life and managing it from a safe distance. When that starts to happen, meditation stops being a way to calm the mind. It becomes a way of coming home.
Commitment: Not A Burden. A Form Of Protection
Why commitment matters
When someone enters a long, costly intensive, they are not buying instruction. They are stepping into a container strong enough to hold real change. That is the whole point of the commitment. It says: this matters enough to give it my full weight.
Mahamudra, In the Palm of Your Hand
Bringing Mahamudra home.
You do not need to master another language, another culture, or a comples system of ritual to touch the deepest meditation teachings. You need a direct way in. Ôsel Tendzin used to speak of bringing these 'teachings into the palm of your hand.' Not smaller. Not diluted. Just close enough to actually use.
What Changes When Meditation Practice Gets A Real Place
What Serious Practice Looks Like
The real question isn’t ‘how much time can I find.’ It’s ‘how much am I willing to give this, so it stops being something I do and becomes someone I am.’
You Don't Need to Create Awareness. You Need to Reocgnize It
Always, Already There, Waiting For You
The experience pointed out in Mahamudra has always been available within ordinary life.
It is present while you listen to a friend speak. It is present in moments of sudden joy, sharp anxiety, or grief. It is present in the brief pause before a thought becomes a story. It is present when your mind is perfectly quiet, and it is just as present when your mind is an absolute circus.
Awareness has already always been waiting for you.
Three Things That Keep Deep Meditation Honest
Three Pillars: Personal Practice, Learning, Personal Growth
Practice opens the door. Learning helps you understand what you find there. Growth shows whether the understanding has become real.
