Dharma means 'The Way'— it is the way things are, and also the path by which we learn to recognize things for what they are, and ourselves for who we are. It is the truth, reality, the Tao. It is God, not as a person, but as a principle of infinite creativity. It is freedom. It is life itself; ease, seeing, hearing, loving. It is poetry, it is silence, intelligence, laughter, music. It is also the thing inside all those things, at their center, beating deeper and steadier than the heart itself, beyond birth and death

Ordinary Dharma means not setting ourselves apart, through pride, or confusion, or fear, as we walk the path.
It means that life as we find it is already a miracle.

Ordinary Dharma offers

•  Classes in Meditation

•  Classes and Ongoing Training in Aikido and Iaido for Adults and Children

•  Private Meditation Instruction. Ongoing one-on-one Training and Instruction.

•  Counseling and Hypnotherapy

•  Workshops and Trainings for your Community, Organization, Corporation or School

•  Ongoing Meditation Training and Practice, and Weekly Dharma Talks. Study Groups

•  Daylong Retreats in the Los Angeles Area

•  Daylong Retreats in the San Francisco Bay Area

•  Retreats at Manzanita Village

•  Retreats and workshops at various locations around North America

A Brief History

We are a Buddhist Community, based on the teachings of Interdependence, Mindfulness, Deep-Ecology, and Nonviolence . . . for the Healing and Celebration of the Individual, Society, and the Earth. . . . rooted in Southeast Asian Theravada Meditation Traditions (Vipassana) and the Vietnamese Thien Tradition (Zen) and in worldwide movements for Social Justice and Human Rights

Ordinary Dharma was established in 1983, initially as a Buddhist meditation sitting group, in Venice, California. We organized retreats four or five times a year with Caitríona Reed (then Christopher Reed), Michele Benzamin-Miki and others, often at Ruth Denison's retreat center, Dhamma Dena , in Joshua Tree, California, but also at Zen Mountain Center in Idylwild. Caitríona has been leading retreats since 1981. Caitríona and Michele have been leading retreats together in Southern California as well as different parts of the US since 1985.

The initial principle affiliation was to the Theravada Buddhist traditions of Sri Lanka and southeast Asia and the practice of classical Burmese-style vipassana meditation.

During the late 1980s, other influences guided us, principally that of Vietnamese Zen Master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, and Buddhist scholar, activist, and Deep-Ecologist Joanna Macy. Over the years, the Ordinary Dharma community evolved. Then in February 1993 we established Manzanita Village as a permanent retreat center. We have held retreats there on a regular basis since May 1993, from one to forty days in length.

Ordinary Dharma has sponsored numerous teachers over the past nineteen years including-Lama Surya Das, Joanna Macy, Jacqueline Schwartz, the Venerable Ananda Maitreya, Ajaan Sobim, Thich Nhat Hanh and others.

Between 1987 and 1992 we coordinated the Los Angeles chapter of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship.

We have often asked ourselves the question, "What is the face of the North American Buddha?" We are by predisposition creative and in our attempts to answer that question we have learned to incorporate and adapt many practices into our work such as yoga, voice-work, martial-arts, creative writing, hypnosis, art, and performance-art work.

The community (Sangha) of Ordinary Dharma has been practicing on the west side of Los Angeles since 1983. We offer weekly meditation, meditation classes and study-groups as well as retreats.

We were formally associated with the lineage of Thich Nhat Hanh for thirteen years. We now have no specific formal affiliation to any Buddhist traditions, but maintain an open relationship of friendship and support. We are empowered by a non-aligned, non-patriarchal, feminist approach to spiritual practice in general, and to Buddhism in particular.

We maintain an ongoing informal association with many teachers and centers in various Buddhist as well as other traditions, particularly in the Theravada(southeast Asian Vipassana) tradition, and in the Zen traditions.

We remain deeply grateful to Thich Nhat Hanh, and to all our teachers from whom we continue to learn, and in whose spirit we continue to live and work, to the best of our ability. We are especially grateful to Ruth Denison at whose center we led retreats for ten years. We also appreciate the work of Spirit Rock Meditation Center where Michele and Caitríona both teach from time to time.

We enjoy a strong association with Buddhist teacher, activist, scholar, translator, and deep-ecologist Joanna Macy, with whom we collaborate, and with whom we lead retreats at Manzanita Village.

We also find the work of theater director, performance teacher, and performer Scott Kelman immensely helpful, and sometime we incorporating elements of his work into the practices we teach at retreats.

We honor all our ancestors and elders in this work of coming into awareness, integrity and responsibility in these times.

We seek ways to teach and embody Buddhist teaching, meditation practices, and life-practices based on natural awareness, passionate and human, free from spiritual pretension and pious affect - rooted in the ancient ways, applicable to the circumstances of these times.

Always, we dedicate the work to the Well being and Liberation of all Beings.

Om Svaha!

Caitríona Reed teaches meditation classes and leads regular meditation sittings in Santa Monica and elsewhere. She also works individually with serious students wishing to deepen their practice. In addition she is available in her capacity as a clinical hypnotherapist at her office in Westwood.

Michele Benzamin-Miki teaches classes. workshops, and retreats for children and adults in Aikido and Iaido, Meditation, Mindfulness and nonviolence in West Los Angeles and at Manzanita Village and elsewhere. She is also available in her capacity as a clinical hypnotherapist at her office in Westwood.

At Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Warner Springs (North-East San Diego County), we offer frequent scheduled retreats and workshops with the resident teachers, Caitríona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki, as well as with visiting teachers.

Caitríona Reed and Michele Benzamin-Miki are also executive directors of the Five Changes Foundation, an educational foundation formed on the principles of active nonviolence and community renewal; dedicated to the education, training and development of creative peacemaking strategies for individuals, organizations and communities with a special focus on empowering children and young adults."

There is no special, singular way; no separate chosen elite. Such constructs are the the stuff of cults and fundamentalism; based on primitive, separatist fear. Spiritual practice draws us into the human family. It does not pull us apart from it. Sectarianism invariably leads to violence and oppression, and is no substitute for genuine commitment to transformation, and a long-term practice that helps us realize that commitment.

At a time when so many different expressions of the dharma are available, it is certainly appropriate to skillfully use all teachings and practices that are beneficial to us. Our 'work' is to realize the truth of our life; and our capacity for awakening, and for helping other to do the same. This does not mean that we should casually shop around for whatever seems to appeal to us at any particular moment. It means that we can be renewed and inspired by various expressions of the Dharma, even though there may be dramatic cultural differences between them.

There are ten thousand 'Dharma doors'.
There are ten thousand paths leading to the ocean.

The word Vipassana means both to 'look deeply' as well as 'to see clearly'. It is both active and passive. Open your eyes and you will see, and then keep on looking. Or perhaps, 'keep looking until you can really see'. Vipassana is sometimes also translated as insight—deeply learned insight into the basic interconnected nature of things — of everything! — all phenomena, people, plants, ideas, cities, tiny details, everything! — and that if you forget, and become invested in singular outcomes, in things having to always go your way, then you are liable to be uncomfortable, unhappy, distracted, and to make unskillful choices, which cause harm to yourself and others — this is the basic Buddhist teaching! .

Vipassana meditation practices have evolved in large part from the Mahasatipatthana Sutta (The Longer Discourse on the Practice of Mindfulness) or (The Discourse on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness) and other teachings given in the Pali Canon.

These teachings are instructions to systematically "observe of body in the body, feelings in feelings, objects of mind in objects of mind, and mind in mind." The wording specifically implies that these practices are for grounding ourselves in the reality of our experience. This is not a meditation practice for distancing ourselves from our experience, or for sedating ourselves.

Many translations and commentaries of the Mahasatipatthana Sutta are available. We recommend Thich Nhat Hahn's "Transformation and Healing." It is particularly useful as it compares three versions of the text; one from the Pali Cannon, another from the Sarvastavada Canon, and another from the Chinese Canon, and is at the same time accessible to beginners.

The teachings of the Theravada lineages handed down from generations of teachers, though sometimes different in style from each other, tend to be methodical and systematic. They support an approach to practice which is in many ways quite different from the approach of Zen.

Practicing for many years in both traditions we find that the two styles are entirely complimentary, each informing and supporting the other. We feel blessed to live at a time when diverse style and teachings are cross-pollinating each other once again, as they did in India two thousand years ago; and in China, Tibet, Korea, and elsewhere in more recent subsequent centuries.

If you seek direct understanding, don't hold on to any appearance whatsoever, and you'll succeed. I have no other advice. The sutras say, "All appearances are illusions." They have no fixed existence, or constant form. They're impermanent. Don't cling to appearances and you'll be of one mind with the Buddha. The sutras say, "'That which is free of all form is the Buddha."

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the Buddha. The Buddhas of the ten directions have no mind. To see no mind is to see the Buddha.  
from Red Pine's translation of Bodhidharma's Wake-up Sermon

Someone once asked, "We have been practicing meditation for a couple of weeks now, when are we going to do it for real?"

'Practice' means we never stop, we always learn. Even Shakyamuni, the Buddha, continued to 'practice' sitting and walking meditation throughout his life.

'Practice' is not just meditation, or Buddhism. It is your whole life. It is the means by which you become real, whole, happy, human. Like those things, it is never static, never based on a formula or dogmatic presumption.

What you practice is what you become. You can practice fear or happiness, greed or understanding, generosity, resentment, creativity, anxiety, or love—you choose.

On retreats the teachers sometime points out that the sound of the raven or the coyote in the distance reminds us that raven and coyote are simply practicing being themselves. Their practice is ongoing, mysterious as life itself, and effortless. We never doubt raven as raven, coyote as coyote.

The same is true of our own practice, whether it is sitting in meditation, preparing food or sweeping the path. In each case we do our best to simply embody who we are without expectation or hesitation.

If you want to explore meditation, if you want to study the Dharma, try it for ten years!
Give it a shot, and then decide if you want to pursue it seriously.
What a luxury that is!
What a luxury not to have to hurry to get it done, to savor the process, to take your time.

And after the ten years is up, continue for another ten!

People usually laugh. So I say, "I'm joking. I really mean - try it for twenty years. Give it your life!"

It's not that it takes a very long time to recognize the direct benefits of paying attention to your life; learning to respond rather than to just to react; taking 'response-ability'. These are things that you can start to do right away. You can even feel the difference in this very moment.

The important thing is not to put too much time and energy into measuring your progress. . . ."is it working yet?" . . . "is my mind more concentrated?" . . . "am I a more compassionate person?" . . .. "am I happy?"

These are not usually very useful questions to ask. Sometime they can even make you feel like you're going backwards, getting more confused, more neurotic and uncomfortable.

When I think of those people who seem to have benefited most from their practice I have to say it is those people who gave up any idea of actually gaining anything. It might seem paradoxical to a beginner, but the most benefit often come to those who look to the process itself, as well as to the community that supports the process. We taste the fruits of any spiritual practice when we relinquish our sense of separation, when we just show up. Give it ten years, give it twenty, give it your life!

Keep practicing! Just show up!

Contact information for Ordinary Dharma, based in Los Angeles, as well as Manzanita Village Retreat Center in Warner Springs,

Ordinary Dharma,
PO Box 67,
Warner Springs,
CA 92086

310-470-8443 Voice mail
760-782-9223 Manzanita Village
760-782-0655 Fax

manzanita@ordinarydharma.org