Our Mission
To cultivate a supportive, inclusive, and growing community of practice and study of the Buddhadharma for the benefit of people within and beyond Heart of Awareness and the pueblos of Lago de Chapala.
Our Values
As a Sangha, we seek to cultivate these core qualities:
• Tolerance, built on a basis of mutual respect
• Receptivity, to create space in the mind for new ideas, and open possibilities of deeper communication
• Curiosity, an inquisitive and flexible mind that desires to understand
• Discriminating awareness – the disciplined, mindful examination of possibilities to discern what
- makes sense or doesn’t
- is helpful or harmful
- reality or not reality
- a doorway to accessing penetrating insight and wisdom.
Our Lineage
What is the Heart of Awareness’ Buddhist Lineage?
The Heart of Awareness community centers on sharing and supporting the practices and teachings of the Buddha. In our founding years we drew primarily from the Vipassana (awareness or insight) meditation stream of teachings which continues to be a central dimension of our approach. At the same time, we appreciated and continue to cultivate an inclusive ‘non-sectarian’ view. This ‘non-biased’ perspective recognizes and respects the value and benefit of multiple experiences and lineage pathways, including Mahayana Zen/Chan, Vajrayana Tibetan, and India/Southeast Asia’s Theravada. Holding this attitude and approach, many great masters of the past were able to present and guide students to discover the essential meaning of the Buddha’s teachings. And as modern ‘western’ Buddhists, we also pay attention and seek insights available from a broad worldwide spectrum of spiritual traditions and within our own cultural and societal contexts.
The Tibetan term rimé, meaning “unlimited, non-partisan, or without bias,” is one example in Buddhist history, of this attitude that helps people work with diversity in a way that supports personal development while promoting greater harmony with those who may hold different understandings or reference points. Heart of Awareness believes that this characteristic, recognizes that our openness is a strength, encouraging our members and visitors to share everyone’s unique experiences and to reach out to teachers, sources and presentations that will enrich access to the rainbow of Buddhist wisdom.
As we progress along the path of dharma, access to various insights can help us overcome obstacles by offering alternative ways of thinking about a given situation. And finally, when we progress to more senior stages of study and practice, it provides us with a greater flexibility of mind that can be used to adapt to a wide variety of situations, helping us to bring greater benefit to those around us. In this way, a rimé philosophy is helpful in the beginning, middle, and end. Along the way we commit and strive to be rooted in a blend of qualities that contribute to our gradual path over time. As we strengthen one quality, it naturally encourages the conditions for the other qualities to arise. In this way, we can think of our rimé philosophy as being like a flower that starts off as a seed and eventually blooms into a beautiful display of color.