
Venerable Ajahn Sumedo with Master Hsuan Hua
Buddhism is not involved in a rivalry with any religion.
Buddhism has no supreme God that sits in judgment on human beings, but Buddhism does not sit in judgment on religions that have such a God.
Buddhism has no sacred texts that are the word of God, but it does not deny that such texts exist.
Buddhism recognizes that the Great Chain of Being does not end with us humans.
Buddhism has no gurus, no quarrel with science. It respects the great teacher who was known as The Buddha, but does not worship him.
As we progress through this course, we'll understand what happened when Moses went up to the top of a mountain and conversed with a bush that was burning but not consumed by fire.
Every visitor to this website who practices the ten steps of this course with diligence will climb that same mountain and have the same conversation with the same burning bush.
Here we will find the sixteen step meditation that the Buddha followed to full and complete enlightenment.
A year from now, you won't be the same person you are now. Of course, that will happen whether you take this course or not! But the change will be for the better even if you just practice the first three steps of Beginning Zen.
If you resolve to master this course at all three levels, a year from now you'll be glad you did. We look forward to hearing from you at Contact Us when you "complete" all three levels.
We put "complete" in quotes because practice has no beginning and enlightenment has no end...Dogen Zenji.
This site will seem quite strange at times to those who are unfamiliar with Buddhism. However, truth be told, it is the conventional, mundane world that is really the strange one...

Chuang Yen Monastery, Carmel, New York
Some people tell me they don't want to become enlightened because it is the end of all being. The Buddha said, however, that the views of eternal life or eternal annihilation were both wrong views. Anything we say about enlightenment will miss the mark because it cannot be described in words.
"What arises is only suffering arising, what ceases is only suffering ceasing." The Buddha (The Kaccanagotta Sutta).
The Buddha said he taught only the arising of suffering and the cessation of suffering. The ten dharma realms of the Mahayana or northern school and the thirty one dhamma realms of the Theravada or southern school are just planes of existence, planes created by ignorance, i.e., planes that don't exist at samyak sambodhi - full and complete, perfect enlightenment.
The dharma/dhamma realms exist only in the cloud of ignorance. Our minds, awash in sense desire, create dreams and fantasies and that's what we are - ignorance-born minds awash in stupidity, utterly ignorant of reality, and suffering as a result thereof.
That's why the Buddha told us to wake up and taught us how to wake up.

Dharma Drum Mountain Retreat Center, Pine Bush, NY
Through daily practice that is diligent, ardent, and resolute we gradually realize that the mundane world is just a mirage, a fantasy, a dream without substance, a fog created by a deluded mind.
As the mirage lifts with daily cultivation, we discover that Nirvana/Nibbana is all there is and there never was anything else.
Builders used to put up large billboards by busy highways to advertise their developments to commuters stuck in traffic, saying:
If you lived here, you'd be home now!
A Buddhist-inspired New Yorker cartoon provided the perfect retort:
If you lived now, you'd be home here.
Thanks to the down-to-earth, easy-to-follow instructions provided by the Venerable Ajahn Brahm, we can guarantee that at this website you will learn how to live now, and to be home where ever you are.
When you experience the beautiful breath for the first time, you'll be happy that you stumbled here. Just follow the practices, every day, until they become second nature. You will eventually see the nimitta, the sign of Nirvana, during the ninth of the sixteen steps.
Emptiness is the jewel at the heart of the lotus.
If you follow the concrete, step-by-step instructions disclosed by the Buddha, you'll experience that truth; you don't have to believe anything.
The first three practices appear in Beginning Zen.
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