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ABOUT ADYA
Adyashanti (whose name means “primordial peace”) is an American-born spiritual teacher who has been teaching for more than 20 years. His teachings include evening meetings, weekend intensives, silent retreats, live internet broadcasts, and online courses. He has taught throughout the US and also in Canada, the UK, the Netherlands, Denmark, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia. More than 30,000 people in 120 countries are connected to his website through free email subscription. He is the author of ten books.
Born Stephen Gray in 1962 in Cupertino, California, Adyashanti grew up as an athlete and competitive bicycle racer. At age 19, he became interested in enlightenment, began to meditate, and became fully absorbed in a quest for ultimate truth.
At age 20, he began studying Zen Buddhism under the guidance of Arvis Joen Justi, whose teacher was Taizan Maezumi Roshi. During that time, Adyashanti also attended long retreats with Jakusho Kwong Roshi (a disciple of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi) at the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center. While working at his father’s machine shop, Adyashanti built a meditation hut in his parent's backyard and began meditating two to four hours a day.
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Welcome to The Way of Liberation, the teachings of Adyashanti. These teachings are oriented toward awakening to your true nature as efficiently as possible, and embodying the awakened condition in your humanity, within the context of your everyday life.
Whether you are new to Adya’s teachings, or have been around for some time, he recommends that you review his most foundational teachings on The Way of Liberation, which you can find on the Introduction to the Teachings pages.
Also, if you wish to stay up to date on his latest teachings and programs, be sure to join our mailing list.
We hope you enjoy exploring our site and discovering what resonates most.
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We stand for racial equality and social justice. We are for finding actions that speak as loudly as words, perhaps even louder than words. And, we are for creating together a more inclusive Sangha experience for everyone.Read full statement here: Antiracism and Open Gate Sangha: What We Are For and What We Are Doing
Spirituality is not something set apart from life; rather, it is a plunge into the heart of existence. It is vitally important that our spirituality is in no way an avoidance of life, for then it only reinforces the unrealities that so many of us human beings feed upon.
The spiritual life is a turning away from unreality in all of its forms, and turning towards the completeness and unity of life. Such completeness has been called by various names throughout the centuries: God, Buddha Nature, Liberation, to name just a few. But the ability to perceive absolute completeness, or God, in all things as well as in oneself, is to see and perceive the reality of life here and now.
Let us understand that reality transcends all of our notions about reality. Reality is neither Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Advaita Vedanta, nor Buddhist. It is neither dualistic nor nondualistic, neither spiritual nor nonspiritual. We should come to know that there is more reality and sacredness in a blade of grass than in all of our thoughts and ideas about reality. When we perceive from an undivided consciousness, we will find the sacred in every expression of life. We will find it in our teacup, in the fall breeze, in the brushing of our teeth, in each and every moment of living and dying. Therefore we must leave the entire collection of conditioned thought behind and let ourselves be led by the inner thread of silence into the unknown, beyond where all paths end, to that place where we go innocently or not at all—not once but continually. ~ Adyashanti
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TEACHINGS
The Introduction to the Teachings area is designed to help you become oriented to Adyashanti's . . .
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PROGRAMS
Retreats are an opportunity to spend extended time over several days in full silence with Adyashanti and . . .
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