Break the Barriers.
Open the Mandala.
Axis Mundi Awakening is your Buddhist path made efficient and whole.
Release
Fundamental Suffering
Realize
Unbounded Wholeness
Actualize
Unique Loving Purpose
Consider Motivation and Current Instruction
You are reading these words because you are walking, or are aspiring to walk, a Buddhist path into Unbounded Wholeness, realization, and Buddhahood. The important questions here at the outset are (1) whether you are clear about your motivations, and (2) whether your means of advancing to fulfill those motivations actually do so.
Wise Motivations
First, motivation. Perhaps you feel the following motivations are pressing, even urgent:
To extinguish personal suffering stemming from fundamental separation
To recognize to transformative depths the radically open essence and radiant nature of reality
To thrive in authentically joyous relationships with other beings
To actualize these realizations by fulfilling your unique altruistic purpose in the world
If you resonate with these motivations, then so far, so good.
Efficient Progress
Efficient advancement on a Buddhist path of practice means that approximately one year of consistent daily practice of about 40 minutes duration yields at least one significant attainment. In this context—and, yes, even for aspiring Great Perfection (Dzogchen) practitioners—an attainment, opening, gain, recognition, or realization is a profound, permanent off-cushion shift beyond baseline dualistic (subject-object) sensory experience.
Although Buddhist awakening involves much more transformation than sensory perception alone encompasses, both efficiency and wholeness require that we begin with the fundamentals of experience. Therefore, in the beginning and middle stages of the path, gains alter chiefly the three sense spheres with which we formally practice in meditation:
The visual sense
The auditory sense
The felt sense
Wise Means
With this basic understanding of what efficient advancement on the path means, now reflect a moment on your current resources for study and practice. Specifically, reflect on these questions:
Are you enjoying guidance that has advanced your path efficiently, with minimal frustration?
Are you steadily dismantling the subject-object duality at the level of baseline sensory experience?
Are you steadily integrating profound shifts into an increasingly happy, wholesome human life?
If your answers are yes, yes, and yes, then take an additional moment to rejoice.
If your answer is no, or I don’t know, then keep reading. Life is short. Path efficiency matters.
Identify Institutional Barriers to Awakening
Although external barriers to your awakening can take many forms, they amount to inaccessibility of the Dharma. Furthermore, these external barriers generate internal barriers: confusion, frustration, and disillusionment. Notably, preliminary meditation practices exist precisely to dispel basic distrust and replace it with basic trust. Because every spiritual opening requires a deepening of basic trust, anything less than an accessible, realized, and trustworthy teacher risks reemergence of the vicious circle of cognitive dissonance and basic distrust. Your guidance and support should nurture unshakable confidence.
Cultural Overlay
Students rarely question the Buddhist institutional structures and dynamics that were grafted almost wholesale onto the Buddha-dharma imported into the West from an intensely foreign milieu. Those structures and dynamics preserve a medieval-era monastic culture extremely alien to our Western postmodern, egalitarian, layperson world.
However unavoidable this cultural overlay was in the 1950s and 1960s, it is to no extent integral to the liberating teachings of extraordinary beings. In fact, despite the impeccable motivations of the beautiful Eastern men and women who brought us the incalculable gift of Dharma, the thick cultural overlay often obscures the teachings. Fundamentally, the Dharma is neither nationalistic nor set in twelfth-century “stone.”
For the Western student of the Dharma, nagging doubt, desperate clinging to formalities, or narcissistic pseudo-surrender can easily result from the fusion of alien cultural “packaging” with timeless, liberating wisdom. These obscurations are unnecessary and can hinder awakening.
Specific Barricades
Before you can consider solutions to this problem, you must recognize at least some of the specific forms that institutional barriers routinely take:
Local Center Bureaucracy
In traditional Buddhist centers, rigid formal hierarchies, time-in-service rules, and ingroup secrecy prevail. Instead of this status quo, all students would benefit from access and permission based on the individual’s actual insight and attainment.
Mass Classes
Often, a sage on a stage delivers discursive doctrines and foreign liturgical recitations to masses. Instead of this status quo, all students would benefit from one-on-one mentorship based in ongoing relationship and diagnosis of the individual student.
Twilight Language
Even novices entering most Buddhist scenes must struggle for basic understanding of old metaphor-encrusted translated texts. Instead of this status quo, Western students would benefit from pragmatic plain-English documents with diagrams for visual learners and summary tables for easy reference or memorization.
Thickets of Formalities
Arbitrarily quantified requirements, such as 10,000 prostrations and three-hour daily sits, tie students down for many unfruitful years and can lead eventually to burnout. Instead of this status quo, all students would benefit from precise core methods transmitted with cultural sensitivity to busy laypersons committed to the core work of insight.
False Dogmas
Three main dogmas, among lesser ones, cultivate ignorance instead of reveal truth:
already-enlightened enlightenment
instantaneous enlightenment
impossible-in-this-lifetime enlightenment
Instead of these unhelpful dogmas, all students would benefit from a realistic progressive map of methods culled from multiple traditions’ “greatest hits” and sequenced for success in this very lifetime.
Sectarian Silos
Blanket rejection of other schools, other Buddhist “vehicles,” and adjunct Western wisdom rules the day. Instead of this status quo, synthesis, cross-mapping, and outright method innovations would fulfill authentic Buddhist aims more efficiently and holistically. Western self-psychology brings additional specificity and evidence to the Dharma.
Stagnation Sold as “Purity”
Standard are the claims that the Buddha-dharma was “set in stone" centuries ago, by the specific school of the claimant, and must remain forever wrapped in that packaging to be “pure.” Instead of indulging this anachronism, logical consistency demands that the Dharma world acknowledge that change informs the very heart of Buddhist psychology and always has.
A teacher’s natural authority, as well as his or her genuine empathy, is vital to any teaching situation that you can trust. By contrast, reification of ancient forms merely for form’s sake is stagnation—not purity.
Teacher Typology
You can spot external barriers to enlightenment not only in traditional centers, but also in various teacher types inside and outside of such centers. If you haven’t encountered these teacher profiles yet, have a look around and you will recognize them soon enough. Otherwise, failure to survey the various scenes and teacher types out there can result in years, even decades, of delay on your path of awakening.
Worse, failure to survey the Dharma landscape can lead to trauma. Many, if not most, practitioners have suffered spiritual abuse. If you have recognized signs of trouble and you feel that you are “stuck” or abandoned on the path, know that options exist for true healing and high realization on an authentic, accessible Buddhist path.
“Meditation” Teacher
Because these sincere but often half-mapped teachers, often psychologists, follow the psychotherapeutic model of one-on-one sessions, they often can help students more than traditional Buddhist centers do—so long as they have mapped the early attainments and their stage-specific supporting methods. Unfortunately, when that early path knowledge is exhausted, the student typically must find a new teacher and adjust to a new map, or else not advance.
Charismatic Jet-Setting Guru
Usually a man, often with a wifely “assistant” in tow, this maestro arrives in movie star shades and chic scarf or gold satin kimono. He oozes charm, magnetizes devotion, and induces group trance in fluent poetry, reducing all retreatants to puddles of ecstatic tears on the high-end resort floor. Because so sought after, he likely will prove too overextended or expensive for sustained one-on-one instruction.
Sutta-Head Line Inspector
These leaders, often running local Theravadin study and practice meetings, assess all members’ input against quoted scripture, because you are, well, wrong. Similarly, online Tibetan Buddhism traditionalists, particularly fundamentalist Great Perfection (Dzogchen) wannabe authorities, can match the tedious Theravadin sutta-head version of this type any day for rigidity, so they too fit the type.
Bro-Dude Brigade
All hopped up on yang, these “hardcore” guys hang out on peer online forums for hours daily instead of, say, cracking a Dharma book. They boast their latest mind “hack” for besting the other bro-dudes in the thrilling race to reach “enlightenment” first and school the losers.
Some members of this type do study the Dharma, follow the Noble Eightfold Path, attain states and stages, and give novices sound one-off advice. But, with all the multilateral Dharma dodge-balling that persists online, sorting mastery from puffery proves difficult at best.
Zen Zero-Path Priest
Zen Buddhism, an inspiring but map-bereft tradition, is fruitful as a post-realization finishing school. Zen is sacredness found in ordinary acts of daily living, the cosmos prismed through each grain of sand or drop of dew. It returns us to life’s manifold particulars after boundless transcendence of them has been met. Speaking of and from the already-enlightened mind, Zen’s allure yet limitation for the unrealized aspirant is its lack of stage-specific pedagogy and diagnostic rigor.
Partly Awake Perpetrator
As in secular organizations, those suffering from personality disorders too often rise to the top of spiritual organizations. As teachers, they may have some or even much awakening of their perceptual faculties, but that awakening will be continually coopted by pathology woven into the very basis of their character. Avoid spiritual abuse by remaining clear-eyed about its signs.
Outright Charlatan
False teachers are deliberately after something unwholesome at your expense. Some come from Tibet with falsified lineages. Research anyone you plan to call teacher. One benefit of your studying the Dharma seriously is that you will know when a charlatan’s so-called teaching smells “off.”
Welcome a New Turning
How wonderful it would be, I thought, if only we could practice the teachings of the Buddha as he really taught them from his own experience—free from the clouds of religiosity that often surround them. Yet it's difficult to distinguish the tools themselves from their cultural packaging.
—Dzogchen Ponlop
Open Fully with Down-to-Earth Guidance
Entering the path in 2010 at a local Tibetan Buddhism center, I was mystified by the utterly blank gap between beginner breath meditation methods and advanced secret tantric practices. One was expected to practice for many years before even being permitted to attend classes that read the old lamrim maps. I was even more dismayed by the carefully guarded one-on-one access to a lama. I know firsthand how confusing it can be to navigate the Dharma world for even the initial way into sound practice, let alone intermediate steps to full realization.
Vision and Mission
My name is Jenny Jennings Foerst. After reaching Great Perfection (Dzogchen) realization in settings quite different from the traditional center that I’ve described, I founded Axis Mundi in 2016 to reenvision liberating wisdom through the lens of a contemporary Western laity earnestly seeking truth, goodness, and sustainable happiness. The mission of Axis Mundi is to help aspirants navigate a barrier-free progressive path of methods leading efficiently through successive levels of awakening to Dzogchen realization.
Not Only Meditation
Although in the previous section I had a little fun typing teachers, I nonetheless benefited from teachers belonging to half those types. I aim to share those benefits with students well matched to the Axis Mundi program, while cutting through the customary noise and multiple restarts occasioned by obstructive norms. In this sense, I resemble the sincere but half-mapped private meditation teacher, except that I retain no adjunct day job and, crucially, am not merely half-mapped and toolbox-oriented.
I’m not, in other words, another among many secular “technical meditation teachers.” I counsel lifestyle integration grounded in the sacred. Awakening is a comprehensive way of life, after all, beyond formal sitting practice. It is known by its lived fruits, the actualization of personal realization in loving relationship with other individual beings and the world as a whole.
Conversely, liberating meditation is not mere relaxation therapy but a discipline demanding technical precision. At best, it is exceedingly rare across eons for anyone “off the streets” to be able to sit down and cut through all layers of obscuration at once by vaguely “letting go.”
The Great Seal (Mahamudra) and Great Perfection (Dzogchen) opening of awake awareness (rigpa) isn’t about merely “resting” in default “naturalness” or even cultivated clarity. Rigpa and subsequent cutting-through practice (trekcho) require a precision-guided, multifaceted, multi-gated progression from zero insight to Great Perfection view (tawa).
Shortcuts as Longcuts
The Axis Mundi emphasis on a path of insight bridges the Ordinary Special Insight of the Theravada and Mahayana traditions with the Extraordinary Special Insight of the Great Seal and the Great Perfection essence traditions. In terms of meditation methods, this bridge precisely sequences “greatest hits” from among various Buddhist sects.
This sequence, unique to Axis Mundi Awakening, is “gated,” meaning that each attainment has been observed and documented for any required other prerequisite attainments. The gates are not imposed by tradition or by me, but instead present naturally. They have been tested since 2015 for applicability to all student practitioners.
Within the sequence of gated attainments exist others that can emerge at more than one possible phase on the path. Often the order in such cases is best determined by the practitioner’s psychological attachment style, visual-spatial or auditory-sequential learning style, preferred practice style, or a combination of these factors.
My goal is to help determine which sequencing options, as well as method points of entry, will give the practitioner the best conditions for early success. Early success fosters confidence and momentum to continue on the path.
Informing this dogma-free, no-nonsense syncretic approach is a first principle: Stepwise sub-attainments and attainments ensure a more precise and therefore truly efficient path than do single practices that presume automaticity.
For example, in the West the Dzogchen cutting-through (trekcho) practice, which relies on automaticity, is frequently transmitted to novices who arrive “off the street” and lacking prior practice and gains. Years later, these practitioners often continue to lack openings.
By contrast, those who have earlier, easier attainments are “set up” to land trekcho, which is not merely a method, but also an advanced practice level. Remember: You cannot practice well from where you are not.
The problem with presuming automaticity early on the path is that many—or dare I say most—of its practitioners bypass integral facets of the high recognition (rigpa) of reality’s open basis. This recognition is, after all, multifaceted, not homogenous.
If any facet is merely assumed to be part of some ill-defined instant enlightenment “package deal,” then the practitioner later must (1) discover the hard way that the facet is indeed missing, and (2) backtrack to remediate. Much calendar time is therefore lost to a premature plunge into highest practices.
At best, missing a facet slows the path; at worst, it thwarts all higher openings because the practitioner never learns that any facet is missing, nor what that facet is. Far more efficient and nurturing of wholeness is a “layering” in of the liberating recognitions individually so that each can be clearly recognized, phenomenologically understood, and thoroughly integrated into life.
Automaticity may sound alluringly simple, but simple is neither easy nor fast for the novice or intermediate practitioner of even relatively high capacity. Stepwise realization safeguards both wholeness and whole-path efficiency. It is therefore a first principle of the Axis Mundi program.
Main Gains
Both in writing and in one-on-one sessions, I teach only knowledge that became my firsthand baseline experience while I practiced within authentic lineages. Theoretical knowledge is important in a teacher, but know-how from firsthand insight and its fruit is a qualifying must. The following broad groupings of my own transformative openings offer a high-level glance at what students of Axis Mundi learn:
All eight meditative absorptions (jhanas)
All four paths of the Theravadin Progress of Insight (as refined by my first mentor, Dr. Daniel M. Ingram)
Cessation of Feeling and Perception (Nirodha Samapatti)
All four yogas of the Great Seal tradition (Essence Mahamudra, as taught by my teacher, Dr. John Churchill)
Bonpo Great Perfection (Dzogchen) cutting-through (Trekcho)—and beyond
Unity through nonlocality (as first theorized in the Hua-yen tradition)
For a thorough introduction to the Axis Mundi curriculum, see the Curriculum Overview page. Then follow the more detailed Book and Articles offerings, which feature draft sections of my forthcoming book, The Critical Path to Awakening: Model, Map, and Method for Contemporary Buddhist Meditation Practice.
Get Help in Two Complementary Ways
My mission offers two ways for you to get help: (1) a comprehensive map with stage-specific methods, and (2) one-on-one appointments and correspondence to project-plan, diagnose, encourage, and customize your pratice in accordance with your individual traits, background, proclivities, and strengths.
Forthcoming Book
Since 2015 I have been constructing, reality-testing, and refining a metamap, which comprises submaps from various Buddhist traditions. The metamap guides the practitioner through a series of prospective frameworks, traditionally called “views” (Tib. tawa), all leading to the Great Seal (Mahamudra) and Great Perfection (Dzogchen) view, and, ultimately, to the end of all views.
Submaps include the eight meditative absorptions (jhana), the seven-chakra system, the Progress of Insight (vipassana-ñana), the third and fourth yogas of the Great Seal (mahamudra), and the final stages of the Hua-yen model of enlightenment, among other elements.
With these meticulously sequenced frameworks and their carefully selected supporting practices, the map proceeds logically through the most effective “hits” of the Foundational Vehicle of early Buddhism, the Universal Vehicle of renaissance Buddhism, and the Indestructible Vehicle of Buddha-nature extraordinary insight.
I am committing the result of all these years of practicing, testing, and mapping to a manual featuring plain English, technical illustrations, and reference tables. It is titled The Critical Path to Awakening: Model, Map, and Method for Contemporary Buddhist Meditation Practice (CP2A).
This book fulfills several purposes: It is a way for those who currently lack resources for individual teaching to begin practicing well with a detailed, integrated metamap that works. It also serves as a résumé of my approach and communication skills for those readers considering applying to study with me. Finally, it is a comprehensive, self-contained practice manual and tool set for my established students’ reference.
For a detailed sampling of my map of attainments and methods, as well as Buddhist theory, submit the contact form to be alerted to posts featuring draft sections of CP2A.
Personal Guidance
For those ready to power their path optimally, I offer one-on-one guidance that personalizes the standard map. A reliable student-teacher relationship means that you can offload the project planning instead of searching for and piecing together optimal submaps, niche practices, and exoteric lexicons from disparate sources.
In addition to offloading the project planning, you can advance faster through customizations to submap sequencing and specific practice steps. I customize on the basis of your psychological attachment style, sensory processing leanings (visual, auditory, or felt sense), and natural proclivity for insight, ritual, absorption, or devotion. All of the terrain is covered, but with entry points and details individualized for maximum efficiency.
Of supreme importance among reasons for one-on-one support is diagnosis. I work with you toward agreement on what aspects of a practice level have been gained, and which have yet to open or stabilize. My map—and I daresay any map worth your investment—must advance within a clear results framework. That goes even for Great Perfection (Dzogchen) realization.
If you apply yourself with diligence and sincerity, this potent syncretic approach to Buddhist realization can make your path efficient; your life, whole.
Dissolve and Grow Anew
Directly arriving here, you will be able to recognize the mind-ground dharma-field that is the root source of the ten thousand forms germinating with unwithered fertility. These flowers and leaves are the whole world. So we are told that a single seed is an uncultivated field.
—Hongzhi Zhengjue
Meet Uncommon Teaching Commitments
Accessibility
The standard monthly teaching session is 1 hour, 15 minutes, and you are invited to email three question sets to me between sessions. Tuition for all is $149 per month.
Personalization
To maximize path efficiency by integrating your specific strengths, challenges, and life situations, I emphasize individualized daily practice over general group retreats.
Continuity
I keep detailed notes about your practice and provide you templated forms for journaling, reflecting, and monthly agenda-setting, all to maintain a throughline.
Precision
I link precise current instructions to precise prior diagnosis of your level of practice and attainment. I teach expression of insights into self-diagnosis and wisdom.
Direction
Unlike other teaching scenes, I provide you theoretical orientation and practice sequence prescriptions not only orally, but also as customized written instructions.
Holism
I teach opening of mind, body, and heart. Wholesome lifestyle, somatic healing, and sacred relationship with the world’s beings extend the realization into actualization.
To apply
to study,
complete 3 steps.
Thoroughly read the curriculum overview.
Complete an intake form and follow-up email.
Book a half-hour confirmation-of-fit session..
Contact
Contact me to receive notifications about The Critical Path to Awakening (CP2A) or to inquire about one-on-one teaching.
Because I provide intensive, individualized guidance, I keep my student body small and selective. Candidates must be suited to the Axis Mundi program and committed to the progressive CP2A map. Read this Home page and the entire Curriculum page before contacting me to explore a possible teaching relationship.
I teach a map composed of naturally “gated” levels. New students are expected to begin at the “trailhead” so that prerequisites checked off as attained before advanced practices are introduced. Do not contact me with the expectation of beginning your study and practice with Mahamudra or Dzogchen.
I cannot offer you one-on-one teaching if you yourself are leading others in meditation, mindfulness, or retreats.
For a practitioner to receive sound instructions based on ongoing diagnosis, a responsible teacher must follow the student’s practice closely over calendar time. For this reason, I cannot offer one-off diagnosis or an isolated general advice session.
By using the contact form below, you acknowledge that you have reviewed the Axis Mundi privacy policy and agree to its terms.
Jenny
Jenny Jennings Foerst, PhD
Founder, Axis Mundi
