Drawing inspiration from the world's great wisdom teachings and insights that have blossomed from years of meditative inquiry, I facilitate retreats and meditative classes that explore the silent awareness that arises when the mind is very quiet. In this deeper dimension of awareness, when the thinking mind has receded, we are capable of seeing what is true.
This heightened dimension of awareness is always available to us, but it's veiled by the constant noise of the thinking mind. I've come to realize that a truly quiet mind is a non-violent mind and such a mind is a gift to the world. My book Silent Awareness offers a framework for understanding and quieting the mind, and summarizes our challenges and our possibilities.
My commitment to contributing to a more compassionate world is shaped by the experience of war. During the Balkan War, I worked with United Nations humanitarian organizations as a photojournalist in front line hospitals and traveled to refugee camps to help document the impact of war, particularly on children.
It was the most difficult work I have ever done, but it helped me face the truth of our individual and collective crisis; a crisis of consciousness that calls for a radical change in how we see each other and the world. We need to learn to see through the eyes of compassion.
A very positive outcome of my time covering a war was that with the help of some wonderful people, I was able to bring one child to the United States for surgery that saved his leg from amputation. He had been wounded by a landmine; his brother was killed in the same explosion. Throughout the world today, children are suffering tremendous trauma in war, and in the denial of food, clean water, education and basic needs, including the need for compassion.
The most important lesson I learned in war is that if our species is ever to go beyond violence and exploitation, we need to fully understand the structure of our own conditioned mind and why it divides us against each other, causing repeating patterns of violence and war.
Understanding the conditioned mind is crucial to building a truly peaceful and compassionate world together, a world where children everywhere, no matter where they live, are safe and loved.
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