The DharmaMind Teacher

I was born in Oxford, England, in 1946, and I've been a practising Buddhist for over 30 years. I began training with Zen, practising with the Venerable Myokyo-ni, a teacher from the Rinzai school, at the Buddhist Society in London. This was my practice for more than six years, before travelling to Sri Lanka in 1980. Here I lived for three years as a Theravada monk. It was while I was in Sri Lanka that my spiritual breakthrough took place, and it is this that forms the framework of my first book, A Record of Awakening, published in 1999.

Since my return from Sri Lanka I practised the path on my own for a number of years, although I managed to retain my links with the Theravada tradition. In recent years I've been associated with the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (FWBO) and have been leading retreats at various centres in Britain and abroad.

My second book, Dharma Mind Worldly Mind, was published in 2002.

At the end of 2006, my relationship with the FWBO changed and I gave up pursuing my request to join the Order. This came about because of the fallout experienced after I published an article entitled The Spiritual Plateau posted to this website in February 2006 that may pose challenges to the Buddhist authenticity of the system that underpins the FWBO's identity.

DharmaMind Buddhist Group

As well as being a guest leader of retreats at FWBO centres around the country and abroad, I have also been leading my own seperate Dharma group for several years, whose practice framework is within the all-embracing spirit of Mahayana Buddhism, and focuses primarily on the formless approach to practice sometimes known as the nature of mind. This independent Buddhist group first started in London in 1997, and is now located  in Birmingham, where I have lived since 2001. Now that all these changes have taken place the group has entered a new era, including a new location for its monthly meetings. We moved to the Friends Meeting House in Kings Heath, Birmingham, in January 2007. It is a superb facility ideally suited to our needs.

The name 'DharmaMind' is my term to denote the type of mind that it is crucial to cultivate in order to aspire to freedom from self and enjoy happiness of heart. The heart and spirit of our training is closely allied to Zen and Dzogchen - a practice of 'no-practice' that embraces all of life, which is practised in the body through direct experience, before thinking. It is a practice whose spirit nurtures the ability to live life without the burden of spiritual ambition and goals, and which has the delicious taste of freedom from attachment.

The group has now grown beyond the weekly and monthly meetings that has been its limit over these past few years. Retreats are now scheduled at various locations and regional groups are being set up. For more information on these activities go to the Group page.

David Smith.