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Jon Norris

Jon Norris took the Refuge and Bodhisattva Vows with the Vidyadhara Chogyam Trungpa in 1974-75, and attended his Vajradhatu Seminary in 1978. He has also received teachings and initiations from the 16th Karmapa, Dilgo Khyentse, Khenchen Thrangu, and Dzogchen Ponlop. Most recently, he received Dudjom Rinpoche’s Empowerment of the Lake-born Vajra transmitted by Alan Wallace at this year’s Dzogchen retreat in Tuscany.

VOYAGER

The Moon landing showed that humans can set foot on other worlds, and Hubble validated the Big Bang fourteen billion years ago, but Voyager revealed the depth of humanity’s astounding hubris by simply travelling from planet to planet and taking pictures of our solar system. It was like looking in a mirror while high on LSD and seeing 99.99999% Emptiness — a great void — with a few tiny bits of luminous matter spinning about a blob of boiling solar plasma that will eventually consume itself.

REACHING THE MOON

This is the story of a retreat I did at Karme Choling in the winter of 1977. That retreat was a bone rattling experience for me, but I was too young at the time to fully appreciate how it was going to change my life. Well, here I am on the fortieth anniversary of that retreat, and it certainly did change my life, so it might worth sharing a bit of that story before I fade away.

THE BLINDSPOT IN THE WESTERN EYE

The origin of the beliefs that lie behind the Judaeo-Christian world-view and the political systems based on them are not well known. Jon Norris has done some important detective work to shed light on western traditions that are rarely questioned and sacred truths that are little more than superstition. Buddhadharma offers the West a path back to sanity, but time is of the essence.