Where Unfettered Mind Started
In 1987, a couple of years of teaching and running a center had convinced me that the center approach wasn’t providing what students needed. Often I became aware of a practice problem only when they had struggled with it for weeks or months and were just about to quit. They also had difficulty in figuring out how to apply the traditional teachings in daily life. The gap between the culture of Tibetan Buddhism and post-industrial Los Angeles was too big.
That winter, while in Bodhgaya, India, I worked out a teaching model that would allow for regular interactions about practice and how to apply practice in life. I also wanted to avoid the structure and hierarchy of institutions and sought a more flexible approach that allowed students to develop individually. The outcome of those reflections was the individual consultation and small group format that became the core of my teaching in 1988.
It quickly became clear that this way of teaching did not sit well within the institutional framework of Tibetan Buddhism. In 1990, I set up Unfettered Mind and it soon evolved into two offices (Los Angeles and Newport Beach), small practice-study groups in both locations, the curriculum now published as Wake Up to Your Life, a long series of successful retreats with students, and a body of capable dedicated students, a number of whom can now guide others.
Nevertheless, the Buddha’s fundamental principle applied: all things change. As time passes, any way of teaching accumulates accretions and projections. Energy flows in established channels, inertia builds up, and vitality gradually fades into routine.
By late 2004, it became clear to me that this teaching model was no longer working. The time had come to start over. I killed the old model, returned to my core intentions and started to rethink teaching from the ground up.
