Change Your Mind to Change Your World with Stephen Fulder

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...

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 wis...

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, oursel...

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...

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...

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 an...

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...

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...

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 th...

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 shape...

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...

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 o...

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 meetin...

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 i...

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...

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 s...

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...

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 t...