About Kirk
Welcome. I'm Kirk and I'm slowly experiencing what I can only describe as a spiritual awakening.
If I try to trace its origins, I might begin around 2012 or 2013 when I meditated for the first time. For a few years I meditated infrequently -- maybe a couple times a week or maybe never for a few months. I never sat for more than 20 minutes.
When I spent six weeks hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2014, I became aware of my monkey mind. Being alone and walking day after day introduced me to the scattered, repetitive, and largely unhelpful river of thoughts flowing through my mind.
In an effort to better understand my self and my mind, I attended a 10-day vipassana silent meditation retreat while traveling in Argentina. There I felt my own chi, or life energy, for the first time.
Just a couple weeks later I attended a week-long ayahuasca retreat in the Amazon jungle outside of Iquitos, Peru. It was my first psychedelic experience and opened further the doors of perception.
I continue to explore. These are some of my thoughts.
Thoughts
Each Rectangle Tells a Story
the same
they say
but each rectangle tells a story.
Though their grandparents built the Great Wall
these here bricks lie prone
timid
unable to repel even a midget Mongol horde.
They sit here
beneath my feet
waiting to be trod upon.
Their story is a peaceful one
asleep at the Snowbasin
Mountain Resort.
Awaken!
Arise!
Commerce cannot sit still.
Sections of it have been rebuilt
re-told.
It’s for tourists, of course.
For education.
There’s even an alpine slide
they say.
It’s up at the Great Wall of China
they mean
not at the Snowbasin
Mountain Resort.
Kirk Merlin
Teachers
Ram Dass is the legendary former Harvard professor Richard Alpert who was among the first westerners to use psychedelics and travel to India to learn from a true guru.
This podcast is a collection of many of the hundreds of dharma talks he's given since 1969 when he returned from his first trip to India.
Jack has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. The Jack Kornfield Heart Wisdom hour celebrates Jack’s ability to mash up his long established Buddhist practices with many other mystical traditions, revealing the poignancy of life’s predicaments and the path to finding freedom from self-interest, self-judgment and unhappiness.
"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
- Mahatma Gandhi