I decided to follow my heart and ‘get out of the rat race’. I gave away the few possessions I had and moved to the Buddhist community, where I soon had the privilege of staying in a retreat hut, secluded on the 160 hectares of land downtown.
I volunteered (karma yoga) as a receptionist at the Dharma Shop and participated in the full-time study program that the monks, nuns and serious lay practitioners would follow. It was a great lifestyle studying Buddhism with the community, working just 15-20 hours a week, hanging out at the Big Love Café, having deep discussions and meeting some great people including other volunteers from all over the world .
Like many others following 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, ranging from board shorts to wearing robes and other issues such as 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 I put my board shorts back on and started living like an average man again. Do not get me wrong. I loved being a monk at the time and would recommend it to anyone to experience the discipline and freedom that being a full-time spiritual practitioner has to offer.
Apparently I was good at it and started taking regular meditation classes. It quickly became clear that I was not leading people strictly in the orthodox Tibetan Buddhist approach. I would always ‘freestyle’ my lessons, 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 teaching a class and while teaching the classes I felt like I was channeling a higher/deeper state of consciousness that wasn’t actually ‘me’. It was very rewarding and a wonderful experience to have the honor of mentoring people in that way and I felt like I benefited from leading the class as much as others would be mentored.
This tension between myself and Orthodoxy grew steadily until the breaking point came when a woman who had attended one of my guided meditations had a kind of mini-orgasm while doing the breathing exercises. She decided to talk to one of the nuns about her experiences to get clarity on what happened to her and all hell broke loose. I was summoned again by the senior nun and asked what exactly I was teaching the people. I told them that I was learning breathing exercises, visualization and other exercises, 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, I had to leave the premises and do it somewhere else, and that is what started my quest to teach 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 comes from great meditation masters who in modern times have also taught advanced practices to beginning students and translated ancient teachings into the vernacular of today’s culture. One of those teachers was Lama Thubten Yeshe, who ironically founded that particular Buddhist center 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 at one of my “meetings” with the nuns, they said he was an enlightened master, so he could do it, but I wouldn’t let him.
I still did the guided meditations at the center, but a nun attended my next few guided meditation classes to keep an eye on me and I was instructed to only teach the basics of mindfulness and other beginner exercises, which were not ‘exercises’ at all ‘ were, but more like reading Buddhist teachings. I wasn’t even allowed to turn off the lights or light a candle, which I had done until then, because that was considered ‘new age’ and had nothing to do with meditation according to the fundamentalists in power at the time. I was also told that people couldn’t lie down either and had to sit up. I would teach proper meditation posture, but I would also allow people to be as comfortable as they wanted, even if that meant lying down. One particular person had a back injury and unfortunately stopped coming to classes because she could not lie down during the sessions. So while the horrible fluorescent lights shone brightly and everyone sat comfortably upright or not, I tried to continue teaching classes at the Buddhist Institute.
It wasn’t until I filled in for a nun who was teaching meditation classes outside the Institute that it all started. The nun had started leading a regular group near Maroochydore and when I filled in for her, as Frank Sinatra said, “I did it my way.” It was far from the center and my clear instructions were to only teach me the way ‘off site’. However, when the nun returned to take over the class, a few students secretly told me that they liked my meditations better. They invited me to secretly lead a guided meditation in one of their garages and that’s when my ‘career’ as a meditation teacher really began.
My meditation group soon found a more suitable location (not in a garage) in a beautiful room in nature and the class grew. I left the Buddhist Institute and my Sangha (Buddhist community), which had somewhat rejected me, and I also left behind my beloved meditation hut, which I eventually lived in for a total of five years and rejoined the world. I started recording a few classes and started my own website where I posted the recordings and started writing blogs and that was the birth of The Way of Meditation and my career as a meditation teacher.
I now regularly teach meditation classes and…
retreats around the Sunshine Coast, have over 210,000 followers on my Facebook page The Way of Meditation, where my posts reach a million people every month and I also offer online meditation coaching. I continue to find 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 doing is now one of my popular guided meditations and blogs. It is called
Tummo the bliss of inner fire (Tibetan Kundalini) and I continue to teach it in my retreats and now have an online course that people seem to love and get a lot out of.
I hope to continue to teach, continue to learn, and grow from the honor and privilege that it is to teach meditation. I hope to help people connect with the inherent positive qualities of their own minds and awaken the 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 and 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 lived in a retreat hut for six years and studied and practiced meditation full-time. He now has over twenty years of experience teaching meditation. Chad likes regularly
Meditation retreats on the Sunshine Coast, Australia
Online meditation coachingprovides three online programs – The 21 Day Meditation Challenge to gradually guide people from the basic principles of mindfulness and relaxation to profound states of consciousness.
Breathwork to help manage stress and go deeper into meditation and
The bliss of inner fire This is a Buddhist tantric method to clear energy blockages and connect with the clear light of bliss. You can also get Chad’s free ebook now Insights on the go.