In the year 2000 I was living in Brisbane, Australia and steadily growing disillusioned with the goals of our modern society. It seemed ridiculous to work most of your time for food and shelter, desperately looking forward to the weekend and that longer holiday getaway once a year. I also had a growing interest in Buddhism which started when I learned mindfulness techniques to improve my performance and control my emotions when I was training to be a professional tennis player. The combination of these two things led me to a Chenrezig Buddhist Institute on the Sunshine Coast, Australia.
I decided to follow my heart and ‘drop out’ of the rat race. I gave away what little possessions I had and moved to the Buddhist Community where I soon had the privilege to stay in a retreat hut situated remotely on the 160 acres of land at the centre.
I volunteered (karma yoga) as a receptionist in the Dharma shop and joined the full-time study program the monks and nuns and serious lay practitioners would attend. It was an awesome lifestyle studying Buddhism with the community, doing only 15-20 hours a week work, hanging out in the Big Love Café having profound discussions and meeting some amazing people including other volunteers from all around the world.
I loved the philosophical study which cut to the heart of what reality really was and the best way to live as a human being. I loved my daily practice which focussed on generating great compassion for all sentient beings and meditating. I would often meditate in silence in my retreat hut, accompanied only by the sounds of nature and simply bliss out. My hut used was very primitive without electricity or drinking water but that was its charm and it was an incredible experience to live there for so long. Literally carrying water and chopping wood for the fire as the Zen saying goes.
As many others did living this lifestyle, I made the commitment to become an ordained Buddhist monk. This was a big challenge and perhaps too much of a culture shock going from board shorts to wearing robes and other issues like how to support myself financially as it was not free to live there even as a monk. My time as a monk lasted about a year before putting back on my board shorts and living as an average guy again. Don’t get me wrong I loved being a monk for that time and would recommend it to anyone to experience the discipline and the freedom being a full-time spiritual practitioner has to offer.
Things were going great for a few years living that way and then one fateful day in 2002 I was working at reception and a visitor came in and said there were a bunch of people waiting in the meditation room for someone to lead a guided a meditation. It appeared the person who was scheduled to do the guided meditation had forgotten to turn up. There was a bit of embarrassment on management’s part, but no-one wanted to do it, so I jumped in eagerly and said I’ll do it. As a former tennis coach I was not shy in teaching people or talking to an audience so I borrowed a singing bowl from the shop, ran up the steep hill to the meditation room, turned up huffing and puffing, sat on the meditation cushion and gave my first guided meditation class.
Apparently, I was good at it and started to take regular meditation classes. It soon became clear that I was not leading people strictly in the orthodox Tibetan Buddhist approach. I would always ‘freestyle’ my classes not reading from a book as others would do but spontaneously guiding people from my own knowledge and experience from my own practice and study. I always prayed and meditated myself before giving a class and when giving the classes I felt like I was channelling a higher/deeper state of consciousness that was not actually ‘me’. It was very rewarding and a beautiful experience to have the honour to guide people in that way and I felt like I got just as much benefit from leading the class as others would being guided.
In a debate once I was told by a senior nun that I should be teaching beginners about the hell realms not as a psychological state, as I saw it, but an actual place people will go if they commit negative karmic deeds. I was told people were not there to relax or feel good but to be taught the harsh reality of the human situation. I disagreed.
This tension steadily grew between myself and the orthodoxy until the breaking point came when a woman who had attended one my guided meditations had somewhat of a mini orgasm doing the breathing exercises. She decided to talk to one of the nuns about her experience to get some clarity about what happened to her and all hell broke loose. I was summoned again by the senior nun and asked exactly what I was teaching people. I told them I was teaching breathing exercises, visualisation and other practices but unfortunately these were considered Tantric in nature and meant to be secret in that particular Buddhist tradition.
I was told in no uncertain terms that if I wanted to teach my way to leave the property and do it somewhere else and that’s what started my pursuit of leading classes my way.
When I say I teach ‘my way’ it’s actually not as unique or original as it sounds. My style of understanding and teaching stems from great meditation masters who have also taught advanced practices to beginner students in modern times and translated ancient teachings into the vernacular of the current culture. One such teacher was Lama Thubten Yeshe who ironically founded that particular Buddhist centre and many more around the world and he would teach this way. He even wrote a book about the advanced practices and far from being secret it was available to anyone who bought it. When I brought all that up in one of my ‘meetings’ with the nuns they said he was an enlightened master so he can do it, but I was not allowed.
I do not consider myself an enlightened master in any way but the techniques I taught were also similar to pranayama (breathing techniques) you would find in an average yoga class and actually not that complicated and easy to learn. It was in the easy to learn and the attainment of quick results that Lama Yeshe said were the reason they were perfect for Westerners and I agreed whole heartedly as I experienced the results myself and saw it in others too.
I still did the guided meditations at the centre, but a nun attended my next few guided meditation classes to keep an eye on me and I was ordered to only teach the basics of mindfulness and other beginner’s practices which were not ‘practices’ at all but more like reading out Buddhist teachings. I wasn’t even aloud to turn the lights down or light a candle which I had been doing up until then because that was considered ‘new age’ and nothing to do with meditation according to the fundamentalists in power at the time. I was also told people could not lay down either and must sit up straight. I would teach the correct meditation posture but I would also allow people to get as comfortable as they liked even if that meant lying down. One particular person had a back injury and unfortunately stopped coming to classes because she could not lay down during the sessions. So with the horrible fluorescent lights shining bright and everyone sitting up comfortable or not I attempted to continue leading classes at the Buddhist Institute.
It wasn’t until I filled in for a nun running meditation classes outside the Institute that it all took off. The nun had started to lead a regular group close by at Maroochydore and when I filled in for her, as Frank Sinatra said, “I did it my way”. It was away from the centre and they were my clear instructions to only teach my way ‘off site’. However, when the nun returned to take over the class a few students secretly told me they liked my meditations better. They invited me to lead a guided meditation covertly in one of their garages and that’s when my ‘career’ as meditation teacher really began.
My meditation group soon secured a more suitable location (not in a garage) at a nice hall in nature and the class grew. I left the Buddhist Institute and my sangha (Buddhist community) who I felt rejected me somewhat and I also left behind my beloved meditation hut which I ended up living in for five years in total and re-joined the world. I started to record a few classes and started my own website where I put the recordings and starting writing blogs and that was the birth of The Way of Meditation and my career as a meditation teacher.
I now hold regular meditation classes and
retreats around the Sunshine Coast, have a following of over 210,000 on my Facebook page The Way of Meditation where my posts reach a million people a month and I also offer online meditation coaching. I am still finding a place as a meditation teacher balancing the traditional aspects of Tibetan Buddhism with the ever-growing modern secular approaches to mindfulness.
Ironically the meditation the nuns tried to stop me from teaching is now one of my popular guided meditations and blogs. It’s called
Tummo the Bliss of Inner Fire (Tibetan Kundalini) and I continue to teach it in my retreats and now have an online course which people seem to be loving and get a lot out of it.
I hope continue to teaching, continue to learn and grow myself from the honour and privilege it is to teach meditation. I hope to help guide people to connect with the inherent positive qualities of their own minds and awaken Buddha nature which I believe is one of the most urgently needed transformations needed in this modern world.
Written By Chad Foreman
Chad Foreman is the founder of The Way of Meditation, has been teaching meditation since 2003, determined to bring authentic meditation practices into the lives of millions of people in the modern world. Chad is a former Buddhist monk who spent 6 years living in a retreat hut studying and practicing meditation full time and has now has over twenty years’ experience teaching meditation. Chad holds regular
Meditation Retreats on the Sunshine Coast Australia, has
Online Meditation Coaching, delivers three online programs - The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to help guide people gradually from the basics of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of awareness.
Breath-work to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and
The Bliss of Inner Fire which is a Buddhist tantric method for purifying energy blocks and contacting the clear light of bliss. You can also now get Chad's free e-book Insights Along the Way.
