Jeff

Jeff’s Buddhist journey is a story of addiction, recovery, meditation, and the gradual discovery that practice cannot remain on the cushion. After years of moving between Buddhist teachings and alcohol addiction, sobriety opened the door for the Dharma to become something lived rather than simply understood.

Through Refuge Recovery, Against the Stream, meditation, and the support of Sangha, Jeff began to recognize how Buddhist practice could transform his relationship with suffering, addiction, and the people around him. What emerged was a deeper understanding that Sangha is not simply a community surrounding Buddhist practice—it is part of the practice itself.

For Jeff, the teachings become most meaningful in ordinary human relationships: listening when it would be easier to withdraw, noticing judgment before acting on it, practicing compassion during conflict, and learning to remain present with another person. His relationship with Emily became another place where loving-kindness, compassion, and awareness could move beyond Buddhist philosophy and into everyday life.

Jeff’s story reflects one of the central questions of Beyond the Cushion: What happens when Buddhist practice leaves the meditation hall and enters the complicated reality of being human?

For Jeff, the answer is found in recovery, relationship, community, and the simple but increasingly rare experience of being fully present with another person.

Experience

15-30 Years XP

Tradition

Theravada/Insight

Suffering as the Doorway

Jeff’s relationship with Buddhism deepened alongside a long struggle with addiction. For years he moved back and forth between Dharma practice and drinking. He could sit through a Buddhist teaching about craving and suffering and then stop at a liquor store on the way home.

Over roughly a decade, addiction was accompanied by divorce, bankruptcy and periods of profound instability. Eventually, in 2014, he became sober. Looking back, Jeff sees the teachings he had absorbed during those earlier years as seeds that were waiting for the conditions to grow.

At one of his lowest points, when he was suicidal, one teaching became especially important: he did not have to believe or obey every thought that appeared in his mind. Buddhism gave him enough distance to recognize that pain was occurring without allowing that pain to dictate his actions.

That insight became deeply practical. Thoughts were thoughts. Fear could be experienced as fear. Anger could be recognized as anger. Instead of immediately reacting, Jeff discovered that he could create a little space around what was happening.

For him, this is one of Buddhism’s great gifts: life does not become painless, but suffering becomes less frightening when it is understood as part of being human.

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Jeff’s story doesn’t end with recovery. In many ways, that is where the deeper practice begins.

In the rest of his conversation, Jeff explores what happens when Buddhist teachings move beyond meditation and become part of relationships, community, work, recovery, and the ordinary difficulties of being human. Central to his experience is Sangha and the importance of real human connection. After years of approaching Buddhism largely on his own terms, Jeff came to understand that practice isn’t something we necessarily figure out alone. Other people become mirrors, teachers, companions—and sometimes the very people who challenge us to practice what we say we believe.

He speaks candidly about addiction and recovery, and how Buddhist teachings on craving, suffering, ethical conduct, and awareness gradually became practical tools for staying sober and meeting difficult states of mind without immediately reacting to them.

Jeff also reflects on love and intimate relationships, particularly how his shared practice with Emily has shaped the way they approach conflict, compassion, gratitude, and everyday life. For him, loving-kindness isn’t an abstract meditation—it can be as simple as remembering to say thank you, listening when it’s difficult, or trying to see an argument through another person’s eyes.

Throughout the conversation, Jeff returns to questions about teachers, lineage, Western Buddhism, inclusion, and how the Dharma can remain authentic while becoming accessible to contemporary lives.

But perhaps the thread connecting everything is something simpler: being willing to show up.

In a world where more of our lives are mediated through screens, Jeff asks us not to underestimate how precious it is to sit in the same room, look another person in the face, and actually be together.

Register to continue Jeff’s story and explore his reflections on recovery, Sangha, relationships, meditation, and living the Dharma beyond the cushion.