A Book That Changed My Life
In more recent years, our friend and mentor Lorin Roche guided what I now teach. Lorin led a style of meditation that he called instinctive meditation for over 50 years. He passed in April, at his home in California. Along the way, he and his wife Camille Maurine wrote the Radiance Sutras, a poetic interpretation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra and its 112 gateways into meditation. It has been a book that changed my life, and Daniela's, completely.
My path ran through a Zen center I walked out of, through silent retreats with Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, through the Vipassana tradition of S.N. Goenka. Every one of those was a real gift. But it was Lorin's work that named something I had felt for years and never had language for, that meditation could be an approach to life, rather than an escape from it. He offered a life-affirming approach, rather than a denial approach handed to us through some of the yoga meditation traditions.
Here is the reframe that set me free. It is said that the Buddha taught over 80,000 doorways to meditation. So when Daniela and I share Effortless Meditation, it is not a better than, or a different than. It is a recognition that what is commonly taught in yoga studios might only be one, or two, or three of them, and there are many more.
Daniela and I had the honor of spending time with Lorin in his final weeks. A couple of days before he passed, he asked that a message be shared with his loved ones. These are his words, not mine: 'All you need to know is that I am dissolving into golden light. I am in ecstasy and music. When you think of me, I am body surfing in the sunlight. If you can figure out a way to fly into the flame of your being, you can join me there.'
I wrote the full tribute, and more of the lineage behind this work, on our Effortless Meditation site.