It Is My Home

Practitioner, John Godwin, writes about his connection to Karmê Chöling:

It is my Home. 

I really have no other home, even though, physically, I am rarely at Karmê Chöling. So the idea of home for me is, that place, where I have the most genuine experiences of my life, both of myself, and of others, whether it is joy, sadness, anger, humor or anything else. 

Having had these experiences, I go out into the world and try to extend this truth of genuineness to everybody I meet, usually with just a look, a gesture, or a tone of voice. What often comes back to me is genuineness, from 'total strangers.' People are genuine right off the bat, or they are not genuine, and the pain of that is obvious in their faces. 

So everybody naturally understands genuineness, and in his or her heart wants to express it. 

Genuineness is home. It becomes a matter of creating a container, an atmosphere, an environment, which promotes that inherent openness, which leads to expressions of genuineness. 

Karmê Chöling is, of course, such a place, and, in some sense, we are all such a place.