Tarchin Teachings

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    Meanings of the Word Wangapeka by Tarchin Hearn
    1 August 2012
    Wangapeka Word-Play Wangapeka Educational Trust I roll the words on my lips and tongue, savoring the magical meanings revealed anew in the shifting patterns of dancing wholeness, this arising knowing that is all of us. In Māori, Wangapeka means ‘valley of the ferns’. I’ve also heard it translated as, a ‘learning corner of the area’. Given the presence...
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    What Does It Mean To Pray? by Tarchin Hearn
    20 September 2012
    with warm thanks to Karen and Rob and many others June 2006 Wangapeka Study and Retreat Centre Inevitably these things will happen more as one gets older. This year, hardly a week goes by without receiving a request for prayers. Please pray for someone. Please hold someone in your prayers. To tell you...
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    Meditation Retreat Manual by Tarchin Hearn
    20 September 2012
    Download Common Sense Retreat We are pleased to announce the availability of a free PDF, e-book version of Tarchin’s recently revised ‘Commonsense Retreat’ ‘Common Sense Retreat’ is a small booklet introducing some broadly practical considerations that will help support a solitary retreat. It was originally written in 1984 to help introduce people...
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    Meditative First-Aid: A Doorway to Health by Tarchin Hearn
    26 September 2012
    Ten simple exercises that will help balance your energies and bring more vitality into your life. They are presented in a direct way, unaccompanied by any theory, for people who just want to get on with a practice that will strengthen the body’s natural resistance to illness and speed the...
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    Sangha Work by Tarchin Hearn
    26 September 2012
    Click the Manual image to download the book This Karunakarma manual contains essays, contemplations and practical exercises to support a community of friends in the Dharma. Explore the tools for a healthy and happy community. The Karunakarma Series are published as A4 coil-bound manuals. Introduction and Table of Contents for: Sangha Work Essays, Contemplations...
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    On Being Staff by Tarchin Hearn
    28 November 2014
    In 1977 I was invited to Ottawa, Canada, to be resident teacher in a newly formed dharma house. I shared the house with seven other people. One of the residents was a bank manager during the day and she often came home from work, complaining about the problems arising in...
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    Emotional, Felt-Sense Myth by Tarchin Hearn
    28 November 2014
    The following words were triggered October 30/06, through staying with Brian and Loraine and playing with their children, young Thomas and William. Young, I was often driven by fear. Dreams of black outline hells annihilation, torture, abandonment, a dark lattice of shapeless gut twisting lowgrade terror. Survival strategies of bravado and bluster and angry striking and withdrawal and hiding conceit and...
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    Education and Buddhadharma by Tarchin Hearn
    6 December 2014
    How do we learn? How do we grow into mature, loving, wise, competent human beings? Does our vision of our place in the universe actually correspond to the biological realities that shape us? Do our religious and moral aspirations harmonize with our mechanical and energetic interactions with the rest of...
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    Surfing and Dharma by Tarchin Hearn
    11 December 2014
    People today seem to be tragically addicted to seeking future goals and results. We idolise planning and striving. It applies to virtually every realm of human endeavour. Results driven education, healing, eco-activism, industrial/military applications, business and so forth. Wise investment now in order to harvest a big gain later on....
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    A Note for Aspiring Teachers by Tarchin Hearn
    11 December 2014
    Woven throughout any overt subjects that we may teach are hidden attitudes and approaches, embodiments of living, that flavor everything that we say and do. Though we may not intend to do so, inevitably we teach what we are. We demonstrate beingness – for those with the sensitivity to ‘see’....
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    The Inner Smile Meditation by Tarchin Hearn
    5 January 2015
    This is an excellent exercise for healing physical problems. It is also very good preventative medicine. As you become more familiar with it you’ll find that you can do it in the midst of daily activities. It’s easy and pleasurable. The most difficult thing is remembering to do it when...
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    The Healing Bubble Meditation by Tarchin Hearn
    6 January 2015
    This exercise is particularly good for people who are feeling depressed. The first time you do it, get some soap bubble blowing equipment and spend a bit of time blowing bubbles. Observe the bubbles very closely and feel the way they float.   Part One Now imagine that you are inside a large...
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    Centred and Spacious Meditation by Tarchin Hearn
    14 January 2015
     When we feel centred, we feel good. Gone is the sense of being crowded or rushed. What remains is a lovely spacious quality that is profoundly healing. Try this exercise while you’re sitting. With a bit of familiarity you’ll be able to do it while standing or even when walking.  Sit...
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    A Life of Dharma by Tarchin Hearn
    23 January 2015
    ‘Dharma’ is a rich and bounteous concept. Common translations give us words or phrases such as truth, teaching (particularly spiritual teaching), natural law, law of nature, phenomena, process and ‘thing’. It’s difficult to grasp in all its dimensions – as is our life. What does it mean to ‘live a...
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    Wangapeka in Transition by Tarchin and Mary
    26 March 2015
    From our Archives: This article was written for the 2010 Newsphere.     Dear friends, both old and new, Wangapeka is one third of a century old. Many changes have happened in the world since it was established. Children have grown up. People have moved. Adults have aged, retired, and some have died. Today Wangapeka...
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    Namgyal Lineage or Walking On In Freedom by Tarchin Hearn
    19 September 2015
    It has been nearly 10 years since the body of Namgyal Rinpoché dissolved into the wider life of the planet.  His dying spurred many of his students to begin teaching and to share their understandings of dharma.   Throughout this time, I have been asked by a good number of people...
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    Wrestling with Demons by Tarchin Hearn
    30 October 2015
    Yesterday, I was asked a question about transforming negativities.  As often happens when an interesting theme is raised in class, my largely unconscious thinking process continued in its mysterious workings, merging many streams of experience, and this morning these thoughts emerged.   Young children know about wrestling.  Do you remember what it...
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    Taking Robes – Embracing a Life of Natural Awakening; Reflections on Ordination and Divine Ordinariness By Tarchin Hearn 
    26 December 2015
    I’d like to begin by briefly sketching out some personal events that led to the ideas in this essay/poem.  In my early 20s, while at Kalu Rinpoché’s monastery near Sonada, India, I participated in an ancient ceremony in which I and a few other young men, in the presence of a community...
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    Deep Healing By Tarchin Hearn
    11 April 2016
     May 22, 2010 Written in response to a request from Chani G. to support a community in which a mother of three has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. If there are a group of friends that care for each other and wish to meditatively support each other it can be good to...
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    Loving Kindness of Nature by Tarchin Hearn
    23 May 2016
    Loving Kindness at Wangapeka Here is a meditation practice based on a broad love of nature. It could be adapted to any location. Include the categories of creatures that live in your environment. Slowly read through the text letting the words merge with a relaxed appreciation of your breathing. For example,...
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    Native to this Earth by Tarchin Hearn 
    9 October 2016
    The knowing that I am is the behaviour of the ocean of being which is all there is to know by the knowing that I am. Like understanding the weather, there are countless factors, some large in form, or long in time, some of micro dimension – transient sparks, so many factors communing together making our life and living. Most...
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    Touching the Earth (in six or twelve prostrations) by Tarchin Hearn
    6 July 2017
    Download as a pdf May this be for all of us! Blessed with a life-giving intuitive sense of belonging, A capacity for radical inclusivity and a cellular knowing of home; Breathing refuge as living presence, An immeasurable communing of self and other, I prostrate in all directions to the magnificence of creation. At the heart of all...
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    A Feeling for the Whole by Tarchin Hearn
    28 May 2018
    © started in 2008, finished 2009 We were recently watching an animation by Drew Berry which glimpses, in wonderful detail, the processes of replicating and transcribing DNA. It’s as if you had a microscope capable of magnifying ten million times. Seeing the rhythmic choreography of molecules dancing together their life stories,...
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    Vajrasattva’s Hundred Syllable Mantra: A Summation Of The Path by Tarchin Hearn
    3 July 2018
    Portrayed as a radiant buddha figure, Vajrasattva represents the primordial natural state of pure and total presence – the essence of body, speech and mind activity of all Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. As a meditation, the primary purpose of Vajrasattva practice is to remove the obstacles obscuring one’s perception of the...