June 14 - 2026 Hugh Byrne on Freedom

Hugh Byrne -

a video on 3 key Buddhist Teachings found under Videos

1. See for ourselves - not about beliefs as do other religiions
2. Accepting the present moment is a key to freeing our hearts - bring a kind acceptance to what is - to not judge it, 'this moment is like this' - meet this as it is. Acknowledge 'this' as it is. Accepting the truh of what is
3. When obstacles arise, not to treat them as barriers...to make the obstacle the path...make the obstacle the path. 

1. Do these teachngs lead to freedom or do these teachingn lead to freedom?  Unlike some traditions, ...

look at the Kalama community in the time of the Buddha.  The Kalama Sutta is a discourse where the Buddha advises the Kalama people of Kesaputta to test teachings for themselves rather than accept them blindly, emphasizing ethical conduct and mental well-being as the basis for judgment. It is often called the "Buddha's Charter of Free Inquiry" and highlights the importance of examining whether actions lead to harm or benefit.

 buddho.org Tricycle

2. the premise of these teachings is that freedom is found in the way we meet our present moment. Freedom is found here and now... depending on how we meet this moment..or through how we meet the present moment experience. "Welcoming the Guests' as a way to obtain insight and freedom...saying 'yes' to what is happening...'turning towards' the experience...Fredom is always here...we just have to realize it...by seeing the stories that focus on having to fix or remove what I don't like...gets in the way

Eckhardt Tolle...saying 'yes' to what is.  "Realize deeply that the present moment is all I have.'  Why create resistance to what is already here.' Surrender to what is.. see how life starts to work for you, rather than against you.   Why be in conflict w/ reality... if I do that...there is only one outcome: unhappiness. 

De Mello: 'Absolute cooperation with the Inevitable'.

Feb 8 - The three yes-ses - Hugh Byrne

 

Live Session Summary, Sunday, February 8, 2026: It was good to be with you for our live session today. The theme of the session was “Living with Beauty and Courage in Turbulent Times: The 3 Yes-ses.”

Here are some of the main themes, poems, and quotes from the live session:

I began by recognizing that the time we are living in is a very difficult one—with deep divisions, actions coming from the highest levels that many of us see as causing great suffering and that fly in the face of our aspirations for peace, justice, and compassion. In the face of these challenges, how do we live with equanimity and peace? And can we engage with the suffering of the world in ways that support love, peace, and connection?

It is very easy to get caught up in one of more of three basic illusions or misperceptions that cause us suffering:

• Believing and acting as though the world should be different than it is.

• Believing that other people and their actions should be different than they are.

• Believing that our own experience—our feelings, emotions, thoughts, and mind states—should be different than it is.

Buddhist and other wisdom teachings point to an approach that is counter-intuitive and that leads to the deepest peace and freedom by:

• Accepting that life, the world, is as it is—and arises from causes and conditions.

• Accepting that other people are as they are—including when they act in ways that are harmful or that we do not agree with.

• And accepting that our own experience is as it is—even when it is not how we would like it to be.

The first ‘yes’ is to the world as it is. When we say yes to life, we are taking refuge in the truth, in how things are—and this is a path to freedom. When we resist experiences and situations that are not to our liking, we come into conflict with life and this is a recipe for unhappiness and suffering. 

• In Zen Buddhism, they say ‘the obstacle is the path.’ That is, rather than getting in our way, the difficulty offers us a path to freedom by pointing us towards something that has not been examined or accepted. 

• The poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us to “always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience.”

• The Jesuit philosopher and teacher Anthony de Mello defined enlightenment as “absolute cooperation with the inevitable.” 

When we accept life as it is, we are then in a position to try to change what can be changed and to accept what cannot be changed. This is the path of freedom.

The second ‘yes’ is to other people. I shared Jean-Paul Sartre’s saying that “Hell is other people”—and it’s easy for us to make other people into a hell. When people cause harm or act in ways that annoy or irritate us, we think they should be different and we make them into what Tara Brach calls ‘the unreal other’. We see their faults’ and fail to see their humanity.

• When we see all beings as having the potential to wake up and experience freedom, when we see that we all have Buddha nature, then we see the other’s humanity, rather than just seeing their failings and shortcomings. If we are to build a peaceful and loving world we need to recognize that it has to include everyone. Everyone is part of the Beloved Community. If our world has winners and losers there will always be conflict. The path to peace and connection is to love everyone. This is the path of the bodhisattva—one who is committed to their own awakening and to helping heal the suffering of the world, committed to ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ transformation. 
• Dr. Martin Luther King captured this love for all beings shortly before his assassination: 

• “I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up against our most bitter opponents and say: We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you.... But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves; we will appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.” (M.L. King, ’A Christmas Sermon for Peace on Dec 24, 1967)

The third ‘yes’ is to our own experience. When we experience difficult emotions—sadness, anger, fear, grief—our tendency is to want to avoid these feelings. We escape by numbing ourselves through distraction or through transient pleasures or by acting out our anger or suppressing our grief. This is not a pathway to true happiness and peace.

• Peace and freedom come through saying ‘yes’ to our experience, ‘welcoming the guests’, saying yes to what is, radical acceptance. When we meet our experience with acceptance and kindness, all our feelings—pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral—can come and go without causing us suffering. They can, in Tibetan Buddhist terms, ‘self-liberate’, if we don’t cling or resist.
• These three ‘yes-ses’ offer us a way of living in the world where we do not make enemies of other people, of difficult experiences, or of our own feelings, sensations, thoughts and emotions. We can meet life as it is, without resistance. We can change what is possible to change without bringing the energy of hostility and aggression into the world to perpetuate conflict and division. It’s not an easy path, but it is a path that we can cultivate and practice—meeting ‘failures’ with compassion—and leading to the deepest freedom.

I shared:

• ‘There was a time I would reject those…’ poem by Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi.

• Longfellow’s "If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.”

• Extract from “Peace is this moment without judgment” , poem by Dorothy Hunt.

• Poem ‘Eternity’ by William Blake[

Wishing you all a good week ahead. I look forward to being together for our next session in two weeks, on Sunday, February 22 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

High Byrne, April 21, 2024 - 'about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses'

Live Session Summary, Sunday, April 21, 2024: It was good to be with you for our Live session today. The theme of the talk was “Making the obstacle the path.' 

Here are some of the main themes, quotes, and poems: 

In Zen Buddhism, it’s said that ‘the obstacle is the path.’ Rather than thinking that difficulties and challenges are something to be avoided or resisted, they can be a doorway to greater clarity, peace, and freedom.

Almost four centuries ago, the French philosopher and thinker Blaise Pascal said: ‘All of humanity’s problems come from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.’  There is much wisdom in this statement: When we are unable or unwilling to be present with what is arising in our experience—in our bodies, emotions, thoughts, reactions—we tend to try to escape from our experience or react in ways that lead to suffering for ourselves and others. 

When something happens to us that is unpleasant or disagreeable—like being stuck in a traffic jam, being in conflict with someone, experiencing discomfort, or wanting something we don’t have—the story in our mind is very often that ‘this should be different’—this person, this experience, this feeling, ‘shouldn’t be like this.’ 

The problem, however, is when we struggle with how things are, when we come into conflict with reality, it is a cause of unhappiness and suffering because no matter how much we want something to be different, right now it is as it is. 

• Spiritual teacher Adyashanti said: “We may think, ‘So-and-so shouldn’t have said that to me,’ but the reality is that they did. As soon as the mind says something shouldn’t have happened, we experience internal division. It is immediate. Why do we experience division? Because we are in an argument with reality. This much is assured: if we argue with reality, for any reason, we will go into division. That is just the way it works. Reality is simply what is.  

… [T]here isn’t a justified reason to argue with reality, because we’ll never win the fight. Arguing with reality is a sure way to suffer, a perfect prescription for suffering.’ (Adyashanti, The End of Your World, p143)

The alternative to arguing with reality—wanting things to be other than they are; not being willing to be present with what is—is to turn towards the difficulty and accept this moment as it is. When we do this, we make the difficulty into an opportunity for growth and freedom. 

• Eckhart Tolle puts it this way: “Make the Now the primary focus of your life. Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment. What could be more futile, more insane, than to create inner resistance to something that already is? What could be more insane than to oppose life itself, which is now and always now? Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life—and see how life suddenly starts working for you rather than against you.’ (Tolle, The Power of Now, p28)

When we resist any experience, we create division and suffering within ourselves. As Carl Jung said, “What you resist persists.” When you bring awareness to a difficult experience—without resistance or judgment—the feelings, thoughts, and sensations can come and go and cease to be a ‘problem.’ 

• Eckhart Tolle: “What you accept fully you go beyond.”

When we learn to stay with our experience, things become much less problematical because we’ve stopped resisting reality, we’ve ceased to throw fuel on the fire. We can welcome all our experiences, all the ‘guests’ in Rumi’s image. Then, difficult feelings, thoughts, and emotions can come and go in their own time. When we cease to resist what is, we allow life to be life. We can be at peace with all our changing experiences and, seeing that clinging and resisting lead to inevitably to suffering, we find freedom in meeting everything with acceptance and kindness. 

Saying yes to our experience doesn’t mean passivity, doing nothing, or not trying to change anything. It also doesn’t mean we have to like what’s happening. We can take action to change what we can change—and when our actions come from acceptance of the truth, from non-resistance to reality, we bring peace and compassion into our engagement in the world rather than fueling division and suffering:

• Eckhart Tolle: “To be in alignment with what is means to be in a relationship of inner non-resistance with what happens. It means not to label it mentally as good or bad but to let it be… Does this mean that you can no longer take action to bring about change in your life? On the contrary, when the basis of your action is inner alignment with the present moment your actions become empowered by the intelligence of life itself.”  

Other quotes and poems I shared include:

• Poet Rainer Maria Rilke: “If we only arrange our life in accordance with the principle which tells us that we must always trust in the difficult, then what now appears to us as the most alien will become our most intimate and trusted experience. How could we forget those ancient myths that stand at the beginning of all races, the myths about dragons that at the last moment are transformed into princesses? Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage.” (Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet)

• Poem by Muhyiddin Ibn al Arabi, “There was a time…”

It was good to be with you today. Wishing everyone a good week ahead—and Happy Passover to those celebrating. And happy Earth Day tomorrow. See you for our next live session on Sunday, May 12 at 9am eastern. Warmly, Hugh 🙏🏻 💜 🌻

Practicing with the Five Hindrances - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

Practicing with the Five Hindrances - Tricycle: The Buddhist Review

• Anger - ill-will - aversion, 
• Desire - greed, 
• Restlessness - Remorse - Anxiety, 
• Doubt - uncertainty,
• Sloth - Laziness. 

• 
  
  

Obstacles & Resistance - from Ezra Bayda

Detours and obstacles are a fact of practice life. Some arise out of our own psychology and conditioning: patterns of self-judgment and perfectionism, a tendency to procrastinate or seek diversions, addiction to control, and the like. Other obstacles seem to be more universal, and these are the ones that nearly every practitioner faces at one time or another. These obstacles are at the heart of practice, yet they are seldom given the emphasis they deserve. But until we can see them clearly—see how they manifest in our lives—it will be difficult, if not impossible, for our practice to move forward. 

There are three obstacles in particular that we need to address. 

Misunderstanding the depth of waking sleep 
The first obstacle to practice is not understanding the magnitude and power of waking sleep. “Waking sleep” refers to the state in which we live most of the time—identified with, or lost in, our thoughts, our emotions, and our actions. In the first place, we’re addicted to our thoughts: believing that our thoughts and opinions are the Truth is the veil through which we perceive reality. But we also have difficulty controlling our emotions; in fact, we love to indulge them. Furthermore, we can’t seem to stay in the present moment for more than a few seconds at a time; the present is the last place we want to be. Because we are so frequently lost in the obscuring confusion of our thoughts and emotions, we lack the clarity and presence that come when we are more awake. 

Buddhism teaches that we are all born with buddhanature and that our spiritual aspiration is to allow our true nature to reveal itself, just as an acorn aspires to become an oak tree. Yet emphasizing our basic goodness, as important as it is, is only part of the picture. No matter how strong our aspiration may be, if we don’t develop deep insight into the power and magnitude of waking sleep, we will be blindsided by it again and again. It’s imperative for us to understand that spiritual practice is not just something we do when we’re sitting in meditation or when we’re on retreat. Just as there is no end to the power of life means practicing at all times, with everything we encounter, not just when we’re on the cushion or when something upsets us. Failing to see everything as an opportunity for practice is a setup for frustration and disappointment, keeping us stuck where we are and limiting our possibilities for inner growth. The more we include in our practice, the more satisfying our life can be. 

Underestimating resistance 
The second obstacle we encounter in practice, closely related to the first, is underestimating the degree to which resistance is a predictable and inevitable part of a practice life. Resistance comes in many forms: not wanting to sit in meditation, not wanting to stay with our experience for more than a few seconds, spinning off into thinking about the past or the future, suppressing or avoiding emotional pain, finding fault with ourselves, finding fault with others. We can see resistance in our commitment to believing such thoughts as “This is too hard,” “I can’t do it,” or “I’mYet another, more subtle form of resistance is thinking and talking about practice rather than actually experiencing our life. Thinking and talking about practice are easy substitutes for the real effort that a practice life requires. We resist facing life as it is because that would mean abandoning our views of how we think it should be. The most basic form of resistance is wanting life to be other than it is. 

For the most part, we don’t really want to wake up. We have to be honest about this. We want to hold on to our beliefs and even to our suffering. Afraid of the unknown, we cling to the familiar. We don’t want to give up our illusions even when they make us miserable. Resistance is the ego’s effort to maintain control. Yet no matter what form it takes, it brings us no peace. Pema Chödrön tells a story about a friend who as a child had recurring nightmares in which ferocious monsters were chasing her through a house. Whenever she closed a door behind her, the monsters would burst through the door and frighten her. Pema once asked what the monsters looked like, but her friend couldn’t tell her, because in the dream she had never turned around to see. 

At some point, however, she decided not to turn away from what she feared. The next time she had the nightmare, just as she was about to open a door to avoid being caught by the monsters, she stopped running, turned around, and looked the monsters in the eye. They were huge, with horrible features, but they didn’t attack her; they just jumped up and down. As she looked closer, the three-dimensional multicolored monsters began to shrink into two-dimensional black-and-white shapes. At that moment, the girl awoke, and she never had that nightmare again. 

It is in running away from our “monsters” that we make them seem so solid. Whatever we resist exerts a strong hold on us: in solidifying it, we empower it to stay in our mind and our life. But when we cultivate the willingness to be with life just as it is, our relationship to what we’ve avoided starts to change. Once we see through the solidity of our resistance, our lives become more fluid and workable. We’re able to move beyond where we were once stuck. Even if we don’t like our life as it is, we don’t need to wage war against it. We can start meeting our resistance squarely by noticing all of the ways in which we avoid the present moment, the ways in which we avoid practice, the ways in which we resist what is. Understanding the depth of our resistance is of major importance in furthering our practice. 

Another form of resistance arises when we hit the “dry spot.” The dry spot is the moment when we lose our connection with the aspiration that originally brought us to practice. Often we hit the dry spot when our expectations of practice are unfulfilled—when it isn’t bringing us the immediate peace, calm, or freedom from fear that we had hoped for. Disappointment leads to anger, and anger to resistance. 

It’s important to understand, however, that vacillating between aspiration and resistance is the natural rhythm of practice and that the dry spot is a natural manifestation of this cycle. But the first few times we hit the dry spot, it doesn’t seem natural at all. We may even feel as if we’re failing at practice, since the thoughts that arise in these moments seem like fixed truths. It’s hard to see them for what they are—simply automatic reactions to the inevitable ups and downs of practice life. 

Hitting the dry spot is the point at which students often leave practice. But if we can wait it out, we begin to understand the natural cycle of resistance. We even come to expect the doubting mind to arise. Doubt in itself is not the problem. The problem comes from identifying with the doubting “me” and believing that this is who we really are. But if seen for what it is, doubt can even be a positive force in practice. Provided we don’t get lost in the negative beliefs that arise with it, it can lead to a deepening of our quest. As practice takes hold, we can learn to use doubt as an opportunity to experience the grief of our unfulfilled expectations about practice. We can learn to surrender to, and reside in, the physical experience of what doubt feels like in the body, instead of following the story line of negative thoughts. Not following the story line can be difficult, because the thoughts seem so true, so solid, so compelling. But if we can stay with the visceral experience of doubt, even as the anguish of not knowing remains, the dryness is transfused with a deeper sense of aspiration. 

Thomas Merton expressed this clearly: “True love and prayer are learned in the moment when prayer has become impossible and the heart has turned to stone.” When we understand the cycles of resistance and can wait out a dry period by resting in the direct physical experience of doubt, we will gradually come to feel a renewed sense of direction and hope.

Wanting to feel a particular way 
The third major obstacle we encounter in practice is a deep-seated desire to feel a particular way, whether calm or clear or spacious or simply free of anxiety. Probably all of us share the illusion that if we practice long enough and hard enough, we’ll get what we want: enlightenment, good health, a satisfying relationship, or whatever else we’re seeking. We can tell that we’re still harboring this illusion if we believe that experiencing difficulties or distress means that something is wrong—specifically, that something is wrong with us. This persistent belief drives us to do whatever we can to alleviate our discomfort. We believe deeply that if we just practice harder, we’re sure to feel better. 

We should never underestimate the extent to which we equate feeling better with being awake. But a key point about spiritual practice is that we don’t have to feel any particular way. Nor do we have to be any particular way. All we can do is experience, and work with, whatever is arising in our life right now. No matter what is going on or how we feel about it, the essence of practice is to honestly acknowledge whatever is happening in the moment and stay present with our experience of it. In this way we can come to feel a true appreciation for life just as it is. 

There’s a famous Buddhist story about a man who was shot in the chest with an arrow. The pain was great, but the Buddha pointed out to the man how much greater the pain would be if he had been shot with a second arrow in the exact same spot. What this teaching suggests is that however painful or disappointing our experience may be, adding the second arrow of our judgmental thoughts about it will only deepen the pain and lead to greater suffering. 

If, for example, I wake up not feeling well, adding the judgment “This shouldn’t be happening to me” will only make me feel much worse. The countermeasure to judging is to move out of the mental world and our thoughts about what’s happening, and into the physical realm and what we’re actually feeling in the moment. Judgments are based on ideals or expectations, and these thought-based pictures are at least one step removed from what is real. Coming back to what is, minus our thought-based pictures, is a step toward freedom. 

When we can see through our deep-seated desire to feel a particular way and realize that we don’t have to feel different in order to be free, we can experience the equanimity that comes with staying truly present with what is. 

Fully grasping the three obstacles that we’re sure to encounter on the spiritual path—misunderstanding the depth of waking sleep, underestimating resistance, and wanting to feel a particular way—is the essential foundation for learning how to work with them effectively. And working with them, in turn, will take us to the heart of what it means to be free. 

Ezra Bayda has been practicing meditation since 1970, and currently teaches at Zen Center San Diego. He is the author of five books, including Beyond Happiness: The Zen Way to True Contentment. 

Artwork by Bill Jacobson