The Gradual Path Blog
Are we broken beyond repair, or already free?
I hear the first half of that question every week in my practice, usually phrased more quietly: I've always been like this, nothing works, I can never change. And I ask the same question of the world when I read the news. It is the same question a...
Why healing grief isn't about letting go. It's about seeing through the story built around the loss.
Most people who come to me carrying grief or trauma do not arrive thinking that is what they are carrying. They come looking for a technique, a meditation practice, something they can put in t...
What does suffering actually require of us — and why does the answer always begin inside, not outside?
Most people arrive at Buddhist teachings not through curiosity but through pain. Something broke, something was lost, something became unbearable. And in the rubble of that experience the st...
Why healing grief isn't about letting go — it's about seeing through the story built around the loss.
Most people who come to me carrying grief or trauma do not arrive thinking that is what they are carrying. They come looking for a technique — a meditation practice, something they can put in...
Long before modern life taught us to seek healing in therapy offices or through medication, people walked. They left home, crossed thresholds, endured discomfort, prayed, listened, made offerings at shrines, sky-gazed and decoded the stars, devoted themselves to a higher power and purpose, gained ...
Tsum Valley is a remote Himalayan Buddhist region in northern Nepal near the Tibet border, home to Rachen Nunnery, hidden yogic traditions, and the endangered Mu Monastery. Through annual pilgrimage, retreat, and service work with Geshe Tenzin Zopa, we explore why this extraordinary valley offers ...
By Jean Shields Fleming
Just before arriving at Mu Monastery, some 12,000 feet in the sky, just shy of the Tibet border, walking up a long traverse, suddenly something speeds downhill directly at us. A man. On a small horse. Dust trails him, stirred by hooves. In his traditional clothes he could
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A rare Saturn-Neptune conjunction at 0 degrees Aries occurred on February 20, 2026, the first degree of the zodiac, and astrologers are reading it as a reset point: a dissolving of an old world order, a new vision meeting form, our highest dreams or deepest delusions meeting structure, imagination
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It seems everything is heating up at once, just when we thought geopolitics and civil unrest couldn’t become any more volatile. ICE scandals erupt in Minnesota. Corruption and outrage spill over simultaneously. Trump maneuvers on the global chessboard, removing Maduro in Venezuela and pursuing Gre
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It has been years since I last taught the lam rim, the subject of my second book Gradual Awakening. In that time, I was living the journey and writing Return with Elixir, guided by visions, synchronicity, dreams, and the stars themselves. But the lam rim, the gradual path, never gets old or dated.
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Preamble:
When the world feels uncertain and the headlines sound apocalyptic, it’s tempting to look for someone—or something—to tell us what happens next. But prophecy, as I learned on pilgrimage in Bhutan, isn’t about prediction. It’s an invitation to remember how our consciousness is complicit in...
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The image above is of my eldest son Bodhi, age 11, who, together with his younger brother Pema, age 8, completed the five-day trek over the Himalayan pass to Rachen Nunnery in the remote Tsum Valley on the Nepal–Tibet border. Emily and I brought the boys on the Tsum pilgrimage for two reasons: as...