Skip to main content

About Us


Blue Mountain Dharma Community offers a welcoming and inclusive space for meditation, community, and integrative awakening through a contemporary approach to traditional Buddhist teachings and practices. BMDC holds weekly sittings and discussion groups, generously hosted by T.C (Tyler) Donalds, a former monk in the Thai Forest Tradition and certified member of the International Ch'an (Zen) Buddhist Institute.

Our mission is to make accessible, and embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddhist teachings in a practical and experiential way that clarifies what awakening is while showing us how to transform our everyday experiences into the very path of awakening.

The offerings of the Blue Mountain Dharma Community do not ask us to remove ourselves from the world or reject it as illusion, in fact we fully embrace it as it presents itself as the very means for awakening.
 
We are a community led Sangha and Blue Mountain Dharma Community views spiritual friendship (kalyana mittata in Pali) as a very important and beneficial aspect of the spiritual path. The benefits of community practice are that it naturally encourages us to maintain a moral and wholesome practice, while receiving compassionate support for the continued cultivation of skillful qualities that both improve our daily lives, and our community while deepening our practice.

We welcome all!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Integrating Zen & the Theravada forest tradition

Blue Mountain Dharma Community offers traditional Buddhist meditation methods in both the Thai Forest Tradition and Chinese Ch'an ( Zen ) tradition, taught in a sequential manner. We offer the “gradual” ( Pali: samatha/vipassana ) methods of the Theravada Forest Tradition and apply them in the Ch'an/Zen context, this systematized development presents a “gradual” approach within the “sudden” path of Ch'an/Zen practice, creating effective and practical methods for practitioners of different spiritual capacities. Our Spiritual Friend & Facilitator T.C Donalds (ICBI) is a professional herbalist and clinical meditation teacher in Vancouver, British Columbia. A poet, Ch’an/Zen practitioner, and former monk in the Thai Forest Tradition, he is the author of four Buddhist inspired poetry collections. T.C views poetry as an extension of his Ch'an/Zen practice. A way of investigating the Self. For as Dogen Zenji, a 13th century Zen master said: “To study the way is to study th...

Meditation offerings

At BMDC we recognize that each person is unique and individual, responding differently to various meditation methods, thus we work with individuals on a one-on-one basis to find the most appropriate means of practice. We do not adhere to a one size fits all, cookie cutter approach. We value and respect each persons path of cultivation. The methods we offer include but are not limited to the following: ANAPANASATI Anapanasati , often translated as “mindfulness of breathing,” is a foundational meditation practice in Buddhism that focuses on cultivating awareness and concentration through the observation of the breath. From a philosophical perspective, Anapanasati embodies profound insights into the nature of mind, consciousness, and the impermanent nature of reality. SILENT ILLUMINATION Silent Illumination does not involve visualization, observing our thoughts or breath, or continually scanning the body. Instead, it simply involves minding the act of sit­ting, staying with that reality ...