Change Your Mind to Change Your World with Stephen Fulder

It is easy to assume that meditation practice is another project and a training that is a bit of a burden, especially in the context of our daily life. Non-dual meditation practice goes in another direction and is a good reminder that meditation need not be hard work. Although it does not mean that at other times we will benefit from practice, which does need some determination and consistent practice. Non-dual meditation, based on Mahamudra and Dzogchen, is a glorious attitude of allowing our experience to be just what it is, and seeing the perfection in the moment. It is a reminder and a discovery of the nature of things within and without, and gives a lot of freedom.

When things get really difficult, whether personally, such as sickness, or socially, such as violent conflict, it can feel hard to engage in normal psychospiritual development practice. We may feel too exhausted, agitated or disturbed to sit in meditation, or we may feel numb, reactive and overwhelmed. In such situations, the dharma is actually needed more than ever. It can be lifesaving. But it is not practice as usual. Compassion can kick in when everything else doesn't work. We can feel compassion for our numb, dried-out and contracted heart and soul, and for all others caught in the same situation. We can radiate healing for ourselves and all others. We can go into the shelter when the rockets are falling with deep compassion and kindness for ourselves and others there, and for all caught up in it, on all sides. Illumination is simply the ability to see things clearly as they arise, even if difficult and disturbed, as a changing field of sensations and awareness, that doesn't need us to construct summaries, narratives and views. Something breaks through, and we can feel the sadness and the richness of these moments, however troubling they are. It takes us to a bigger place, and we can look at things both from above and below.

This non-dual guided meditation is bilingual - English with some Hebrew. It is a reminder that if we drop completely into this spontaneous moment, we discover a completeness and a total presence. We see how we shine the light on everything that arises. We can get closer to the light itself. This is bodhicitta, awakened awareness.

This guided non-dual meditation is in Hebrew and English. It emphasises deep resting in the primal awareness and presence that holds us. It guides us to trust and explore the nature of presence and awareness itself, not just what the awareness knows. In the well-known language of Krishnamurti, we can go beyond the duality of the observer and the observed and be within observation itself. This is a pure, open and free movement of knowing itself.

This guided meditation is mostly in Hebrew. It is designed to help us practice open non-dual awareness at home and in daily life. We can start with refuge and coming home to presence. We practice welcoming and allowing the richness of this moment, and let go of struggle to practice in a certain way or to fight distraction. We rest in is-ness, in the kaleidoscope of experiences that come and go, and we remain at ease and open and letting go into this boundless life.

We are not in charge of things. We can live a peaceful, kind and aware life, and we get an unexpected beating from karma: whether from conflict, disease, relationships, and a host of conditions which can turn against us. We need to develop an internal protection, an internal steadiness, with which to meet uncontrollable life. We do this by a sense of inner freedom to dance with circumstances, like the Taoist image of grasses which are bent by the wind but cannot be broken. We develop a sense of being part of the universe, and a deep letting go into the big picture. We do this by deep meditative stillness and a steadiness that stays with us, whatever the challenges. We do this by love and compassion for whatever arises in this world.

We usually resist and try to stop, prevent, deny or escapefrom difficulty. But often resistance creates more obstacles to action. We are busy avoiding the difficulty and finding ways around it, which uses a lot of energy and can make us feel lost and powerless. But meeting things as they are, even surrendering to them, can activate an energy from a deeper place. If we surrender to the earth beneath, the sky above, the nature all around, and the glorious mystery of existence, it all gives us back confidence, clarity and primal resources which empower us.

Presence is a power that drives healing and transformation.It can help us look with new eyes at what we experience, including the pains and struggles of mind and body. The deep listening and caring that is part of presence will help us to hear what the pain is trying to tell us, what might be some wise and caring ways to respond, and where the healing might be. It is abit like our inner child that wants to be noticed and taken care of and will respond with love and joy.

We can sometimes feel we are swept along by life, andespecially by difficult circumstances over which we have no control. As in the Buddhist image, we can feel like a man in a boat on a rushing river that is swept along by the current helplessly. He tries to catch hold of branches to stop, but each time the current is too strong, and he cannot stop. We need tolearn how to get off the boat, to choose a different way, to examine carefully what we are living for, and what is meaningful for us, to choose a life of wisdom, caring, and wellbeing, for ourselves and others. Sometimes this will be a quiet pool rather than the rushing river, but in any case, we need to committo looking deeply at what brings the beauty and of an awakened life to ourselves and all around us.

Sometimes life feels like it is confusing, chaotic and uncertain, especially today when we might feel that the kind of civilisationand values which have sustained us for generations are collapsing. And so many around us, including in the media, are responding with conflict and extreme views, or helplessness and despair. We are living in a post-truth era, and itmay not look so nice. So we all need our own compass to show us a way to live when things seem to be going to pieces. We need to carve our own path up the mountain. If things seem to be going to pieces we don't need to be going to pieces with it. We can direct ourselves to awareness and a life that makes sense, including a life of kindness and caring. Our compass is the development of qualities and capacities that we and those around us need at these times. The Paramis, in particular, are a Buddhist teaching of inner capacities derived from a bigger, freer view of reality, with which we go out in the street, we act and we relate to others and the world around.

We all want to help ourselves, help each other, support life, and look after things. It is very natural and basic. Life wants to live. This is the essence of compassion. Our heart responds to the world and vibrates with all existence. Looked at this way, compassion is a basic energy that we all have. But it is often limited by fears, concerns and our narratives. So we have a responsibility to expand the boundaries of compassion so it stretches out to those we do not know and to all living beings. The practice of awareness and mindfulness encourages a deep intimacy with all others, and also deeply resonates with the vulnerability and beautiful fragility of existence. This will empower our compassionate heart.

This guided meditation while lying, starts with ways of totally softening and relaxing all the parts of us, the stories that we carry, the tensions that accumulate, and the blocks in both body and mind. It goes on to explore the nature of trust and surrender instead of resistance, and uses the power of the earthe to reveal what it is like to let go into a vaster world.

This meditation explores a presence which is both inner and outer, our personal experience of the world of our body and mind, and the experience of he world around us, and the seamless connection and inimacy with both. It is a meditation that we can practice anywhere, while waiting in line or walking in the park. It opens worlds with kind awareness.

This is a complete sitting meditation of about 40 minutes, emphasising refuge, settling into presence, celebrating the life of the body and mind, and discovering the freedom of allowing everything to flow naturally.

The mud, or a better term would be compost, is all the stuff that gives us difficulty, that seems stuck to us, that we struggle with and sometimes feel drowned in. It could be social, personal, psychological, spiritual or the physical pains and issues with our body. These days, everything can seem muddy. In this talk, we explore how to work with the mud based on the great wisdom of the dharma, the Buddhist inspired teachings, to help us grow beautiful flowers and a fulfilling life in which the mud is a resource, not an enemy. This is beyond coping. It is about transcendence. And then we can also realise that the duality of mud and lotus, samsara and nirvana, are points of view, and we can embrace a non-dual ecological awareness that can hold it all.

The most sacred day of the Jewish practice, Yom Kippur, is a day of fasting and prayer when we remember and look directly at our existence in this world and ask ourselves what kind of world do we make, for ourselves and others. The words of Leonard Cohen, in his song, The Future, are relevant. He asks: "When they say Repent, Repent, I wonder what they meant?" He is right to ask. Instead of castigating ourselves for the harm we do, and then repeating the ignorance the day after, we can instead dive deep into our sources. There we can discover the seeds of light, in the Jewish and Buddhist traditional languages, the Tzaddik, or the Buddha Nature, hiding within under layers of conditioning. The same sources will show us how to live with purity, sensitivity and wisdom, and happiness will follow, as in the famous quote from the Dhammapada, as a cart follows the horse.

Jonah, like many of us today, was faced with an utterly impossible mission - to change a whole city that had gone into violence and crime. He sank into despair, but was saved by a kind of suicidal intuition to go down to his most basic place. The dark, primal basis of existence. Like a death. From which he was reborn into new powers and was able to achieve the impossible. We can find new power to make a difference in this world if we touch the basic sources of life within, and from that place, everything can change. Karma, fate is not fixed. It is a dance of possibilities. With awareness, transformation and compassion we can go beyond what we know.

#1 of "ליבת הלימוד הבודהיסטי"הדרך הקלאסית בבודהיזם להארה הינה הדרך הנאצלת כפולת השמונה.השקפה נבונה, כוונה נבונה, דיבור נבון, פעולה נבונה, אורח חיים נבון, מאמץ נבון, מיינדפולנס נבון, סמהדי נבון.קל מאוד להיצמד לאחדים מהם בתחילה - כמו מיינדפולנס או סמהדי- אולם חשוב לשמור על איזון, פיתוח וטיפוח של כל אחד משמונת האיברים אשר יחדיו חוברים לדרך אחת המובילה לנירוונה.

"ליבת הלימוד הבודהיסטי" - #2 חוסר סיפוק וקושי - דוקהה בפאלי - מתורגמים לעיתים כסבל רב משמעות, אולם הדרך הבודהיסטית פשוט מדגישה שאלו מצבים שלא ניתן להדחיק, ליפות או להתעלם מהם. במקום זאת ניתן להשתמש בהם כחומר גלם, כמורים אשר יכולים לאפשר לנו לחקור ולהרפות מהשקפות ודפוסים שאנו נושאים שלא לצורך.

#3 of "ליבת הלימוד הבודהיסטי"קל לראות את חיינו הרוחניים כדרך ארוכה שאמורה לקחת אותנו מהתודעה והלב האנושיים, המוטרדים והרגילים, אל אידיאל נשגב ורחוק – תודעת הבודהה. אך תרגול הוויפסנה, תרגול הראייה הצלולה, מזמין אותנו להביט בתודעתנו, בפנים הפנימיות שלנו, מנקודת מבט חדשה.האם היא חייבת להיות מוטרדת?האם היא באמת רגילה בלבד?האם תודעת הבודהה נמצאת אי שם הרחק?

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#7 of "ליבת הלימוד הבודהיסטי"ארבע האמיתות הנאצלות, אותן אמיתות ההופכות אותנו לנאצלים, הן אבני היסוד והמהות של כל הלימוד הבודהיסטי. הן מהוות את בסיס התרגול המוביל לשחרור, והן רלוונטיות למצבים בחיי היום יום, כמו גם לתרגול רוחני פורמלי או תרגול מדיטציה. האמת הראשונה היא חוויית חוסר הסיפוק האוניברסלית, היא נגרמת על ידי ההיאחזות, וזו האמת השנייה. האמת השלישית היא האפשרות של התעוררות, והרביעית - הדרך לשחרור. בהרצאה זו נתעמק בכל אחת מאמיתות אלה במספר  שיעורים, תוך שימוש בדוגמאות מניסיוננו בחיי יום - יום.

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We all have an inner beauty and a big soul that we tend to forget, especially when there is much pain and struggle in our circumstances. Nevertheless, we can recognise this Buddha Nature, through many qualities and insights, for example, our deep longing for freedom and transcendence, our moments of fulfilment, our intuitive wisdom that can just appear when it is needed, our dance with mystery and existential questions, and our deep love and awareness that is primal. The dharma encourages us to keep trusting and embracing this Buddha Nature, yet at the same time allowing and knowing the expressions of our human nature, not as a mistake or a collapse, but as the creative expressions of life and awareness that is born into forms. The forms can include emotions, thoughts, reactions, views and so on, and our task is to recognise and allow them, witness them as they arise and pass as they do with wisdom and inner freedom. Our life can be a journey in which our Buddha Nature and Human Nature, Nirvana and Samsara, are fully embraced, and we dance within both.

Compassion, Karuna, is the wise, open and loving heart that also knows the pain of ourselves and of all life. It is a natural part of the way the heart connects us to the world, and in the traditional image, compassion is the trembling of the heart that vibrates with all of life, with its joys and struggles. Today, we are living in difficult times with much conflict. We feel a natural and deep wish to reduce the suffering of ourselves and all others. Compassion is not abstract or idealistic or difficult to develop. It is the understanding, the practice and the commitment to radiate kindness as much as we can. A little kindness can go a long way. It can sometimes profoundly change the narratives and experiences of ourselves and others. This talk was given at a Tovana retreat in July 2025.

The Buddhist insight into love is that it is fundamental, primal and unlimited. Metta, love, translated sometimes as boundless friendliness, or loving kindness, is the first of the 4 Brahmaviharas. They are sacred because they are immeasurable. We mostly limit our love to addresses which feel safe, such as a particular person, family, group, tribe, nation, organization, and most powerfully, ourselves. But the practice of metta is to keep expanding the boundaries of our love. To loosen the control of our conditioned mind over the heart until it becomes a liberating sense of total relationship and belonging. This talk on metta was given at a Tovana retreat in July 2025.

This is a guided meditation on all 4 of the Brahmaviharas, the immeasurable powers of the heart. In this meditation, we will dive into the natural capacity of our heart to embrace ourselves and the world, to radiate kindness and love, and to experience basic compassion. The meditation was given in a Tovana retreat on July 2025

Equanimity (Upekkha) is the 4th. of the 4 Brahmaviharas or boundless qualities of the heart. It is our capacity to see things from a more unlimited sky-like and less subjective pint of view. It allows us to surf the waves of change, of pleasant and unpleasant experiences, rather than being knocked over by them. It is a vast serenity. This talk was given at a Tovana retreat on the Brahmaviharas in July 2025.

This is based on a famous quote from the First Tsoknyi Rinpoche, who lived in the 19th century. It points to the basic truth that the ordinary conditioned mind is like clothing that covers a beautiful, inherently aware and limitless being that is our real face. We are all made of the same heart-mind as The Buddha. We just forgot. Our spiritual journey and the practices that we learn on the way are about uncovering and appreciating what is already there, as much as developing capacities and powers for that purpose. Our wise heart already knows this, let it call us!

This is a guided meditation that will help us access and discover the inner powers and potentials that we need to cope with and transcend the struggles and conflicts that we meet in daily life. It includes a simple appreciation of the truth of this lived experience, moment by moment. It also touches on trust, kindness and the empowerment that presence can give us.

We look around and see that there are brief moments of happiness and lots of struggle. Wars, violence, conflict, environmental destruction, sickness; it seems we are born into endless struggle. But maybe life is not the problem. It is just life. We long for relief, and there is much we can do to help ourselves and our community. We can develop skills and qualities such as steadiness, compassion and joy of life, that help us meet uncertainty. In addition, we can develop and access a more transcendent perspective, in which we take the pains of samsara less personally. Nondual Dharma  invites us to see life as perfect just as it is and yet transform the way we receive it moment by moment.

An authentic journey of transformation, the opening of doorways to the beyond, is utterly dependent on reducing the dominance of the self over our consciousness. We can gradually realise that the self point of view, which seems so dominant over everything we think and perceive, is transparent, illusory, and a will-o'-the-wisp. It is also a construction and a thought, although primary. When we soften its hold on us, we can let life and liberation get in.

We are so busy trying to get things better that we forget how to be in intimacy with this life, with all its surprises, gifts, joys and pains. Can we gradually become aware that this life is vast, mysterious and less personal, and let it take us.

The endless quixotic struggle to control things for our own benefit is hugely ignorant and counterproductive. We end up with a life of busyness, frustration, meaninglessness and even violence and destruction. Instead, let us discover the one that needs to control, to relax, allow and dance with the uncontrollable life. Let us discover that we can live a happy life by getting off the wheel.

Mediation is normally focused on objects, such as breath and body. But what is it that knows, that brings the object into awareness, that is the source of attention? Meeting the knowing and the knower is transformative. Try it!

I am in the midst of a war, here in the Middle East, near the Lebanese border, hearing the bangs and booms of rockets and artillery daily, and feeling the heartbreaking violence, suffering and misery which crosses borders and engulfs us all. But we do need to find the sources of equanimity otherwise we simply drown in fear, despair and misery. This talk explores many wise ways, both externally and internally, to develop steadiness in the midst of uncontrollable circumstances, whether war, climate change, conflict, or confusion. We look at forms of mediation, lifestyles and inner realisations that help us to dance freely with a life that we cannot control.

This is a talk about awareness. It explores a knowing that is an open space and a luminous and radiant power within. It is like a womb that is empty itself but gives birth to forms. In ordinary everyday language, we will examine what is thought and what gives thought its qualities and attributes.

In difficult times we get swept away - by the voices of society, by the media, by strong opinions of others, by our identity, and of course by fears and insecurity. Then we tend to lose our centre and often begin to feel blame and labelling of others who easily become the problem the cause and the enemy. A way to cut this process is to see ourselves fully. Our beauty, our freedom, our rich mind that reads books and sees stars at night, our wise heart that has an intuition of what is helpful and beneficial. Not just to ourselves. In this talk, we will explore ways of coming back to our big self and our primal wisdom and using it to make a difference in the world.

The Sacred Triangle in classical dharma is Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. But in all spiritual traditions, there is a similar triangle. Sat-chit-ananda from the Vedic teachings for example. Buddha is the pure awareness, empty, radiant and present. Simply being. Like the sky behind the clouds. Dharma is the transformation and liberation of content or experience that arises. It is working with the shapes of the clouds and letting them go on their way. Sangha is the whole web of relationships that we build. And the joy of being alive. All of these can be a way of guiding our inner work. Each meditation, for example, will have all three of them. In this talk, we will explore how to notice and benefit from each of them in our practice.

When things get really difficult, and we are faced with challenges that seem beyond us, whether violence, anger, uncertainty, helplessness, sickness, and other possible slings and arrows, it is hard to keep our centre and stay steady. Yet we need it more than ever so as not to be swept away, to be able to make wise decisions, to plant seeds for the benefit of us and others and to be helpful. This is where the Buddhist teachings and practices of equanimity are really important. This is the capacity to meet such challenges head-on, without being knocked over by them. Instead of shutting down, covering over, avoiding denying, or building dramas out of difficult experiences, we meet them but they don't take us over. This is practised by meeting pleasant and unpleasant experiences repeatedly, in meditation and in life, and watching them arise and pass as visitors. We develop the capacity not to carry everything on our shoulders, but to drop stuff on the way. Equanimity arises from a bigger, less personal view of things, a life point of view, and more space in the consciousness to absorb experiences as they arise and pass.

Mindfulness is not just a practice. It is a way of life. It becomes a way of seeing the world. Read my book: What's Beyond Mindfulness: Waking Up To This Precious Life. A poem there asks: Have you forgotten that your troubled mind still loves stars, and can see the pain behind another's eyes? Can you allow yourself to love yourself just the way you are and do the same with every stranger on the road? Mindfulness opens us to the world - its richness, its mystery, its generosity and its poetry. We see the world and know we belong to it. Mindfulness indeed can heal the disconnections, friction and disturbances, but it is so much more than that.

In times of conflict, our usual sense of what is spiritual practice needs to change. It can no longer be just meditation that calms us, or about classical mindful awareness. It needs to include ways of developing our powers and potential to deal wisely and heartfully with the challenges, and even more, to make the challenges our high road to awakening. One power is trust. It is the constant meeting of things as they are, accepting and allowing our experience rather than living with friction, denial and anxiety. Other powers include confidence, love, searching for the truth and self-transcendence. They can all be part of our daily life and practised on the meditation cushion.

These are difficult times, with so much conflict, insecurity and suffering in hotspots such as Israel and Ukraine, but also at some level globally as the old certainties break down. We have to go in the opposite direction and feed it if we are to contribute. The opposite of hate and conflict is simply love; love that fills us with warm caring and intimacy to all the parts of ourselves. Love that includes and feels the pain of others. Enduring friendliness and kindness is in the end the only way to be in the world, and it is certainly, as the Buddha once said, a primary pathway to awakening.

The Parami of determination, effort and motivation is a key to our inner development. It is what propels our journey of transformation, like the effort needed by a snake to wriggle out of its old skin. It is what keeps us climbing up the mountain, but also what helps us to enjoy the small flowers on the path and the amazing view from the top. Sometimes we do need more effort and determination, and sometimes we just need to surrender and no effort at all. But we always need a bit of fire in the heart, the love for liberation.

This is a recording of the book launch for my new book. There is an interview with Lila and myself that includes some tough spiritual questions, and a talk with extracts from the book.

Our issues and challenges, wheteher internal or external, seem so real and solid. With a clear and meditative insight they will seem like clouds in the sky of awareness, and as transparent and ephemeral. This happens in 3 ways. We can look directly at our stories and feelings and they appear as passing, dynamic and self-arising. Secondly we can see the gaps and spaces within and around them that show them to be less real or dense, and to take less space. Thirdly we can get a glimpse of primal impersonal basic awareness, which gives birth to all our content and stories, which then appear as empty.

Living with the truth of things is a profoundly liberating way of life, and brings much fulfillment, depth and freedom. Even when the truth is about difficulty or pain. Yet it is not so easy as our attention and perspective are so easily swept away by the media, by the consensus or by beliefs. What helps is an atmosphere of questioning, of openness and of contemplation. So often we need to ask if something is really so. And continue to unwrap the packaging and dive deeper into our direct experience. In the end the truth is constantly calling us

The storm of life sometimes feels like a tsunami. And we can find places to rest, some shelter from the storm. This may be for example with the love of those close to us, with spiritual friendships, with connection to nature and the big world around us or within us, as we walk in nature. It is in the hope in the heart which is our basic positivity. Yet we should not forget that sometimes we need to be right in the middle of the storm, for example in order to help others. And sometimes there is no refuge or shelter. In those times we need equanimity and steadiness. It comes from awareness of the truth of life and our compassionate heart that is big enough to include ourselves and all others affected by the storm. Meditation and spiritual practices build a quiet steady mind and a great wide heart. Let's do it.