The Gay Buddhist Forum by GBF

Deep spiritual connections in an authentic community can serve as both a refuge and a catalyst for our collective awakening.
Here René Rivera explores the transformative power of spiritual friendship, reminding us that we don't have to walk our paths in isolation. He reflects on how our shared practice environments and supportive circles provide a vital container for healing, growth, and resilience in changing times.
As René notes, nurturing genuine connection within a spiritual community involves several key qualities:
Recognizing sangha as a living, breathing refuge where we can show up fully with our shared humanity and vulnerability.
Cultivating mutual care and accountability that supports both individual liberation and collective well-being.
Honoring the depth of shared practice by leaning on one another through life's transitions, challenges, and joys.
__________
René Rivera is a meditation teacher and restorative justice facilitator working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer Latinx trans man.
René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, as a core teacher at the East Bay Meditation Center. He offers classes and retreats for many Buddhist centers and groups, with a focus on supporting LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC practitioners. He leads trainings on how to create spaces that are inclusive and accessible to transgender, nonbinary and gender expansive people. René is a facilitator in training for the School of Consent and a restorative justice facilitator, working to heal sexual and gender-based violence.
______________ 
To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/
There you can:  
 Donate 
 Learn how to participate live 
 Find our schedule of upcoming speakers 
 Join our mailing list or discussion forum
 Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995
CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

How do we discover and trust our innate luminous nature when our lived experience feels dark, messy, or entirely obscured by everyday challenges?
Roshi David Blackwell explores the famous Zen koan from Master Yunmen, "Everyone has a light." He leads us into an exploration of what a luminous mind really means in the context of our ordinary daily lives. 
David invites us to drop our rigid, idealized concepts of enlightenment and stop searching for some grand external epiphany. Instead, we learn how our luminous nature is constantly present—not despite our darkness or difficulties, but directly within them. 
He unpacks several key aspects of this teaching to help us recognize and embody this light:
The Invisibility of the True Self: The light cannot be objectified or seen as a separate thing because it is the very awareness doing the looking. 
Finding Light in the Ordinary: Rather than seeking extraordinary mystical states, David reminds us that the light manifests in the mundane aspects of daily life—our work, our relationships, and even our routine chores. 
Embracing the Dark: Our struggles, grief, and uncertainties are not failures of practice; they are the exact places where the light shines and sustains us. 
By exploring this deeply, we can bring the core Zen teachings within the koan directly into the texture of our daily life. 
______________ 
Roshi David Blackwell is a Zen teacher in the White Plum Asanga lineage. He received Dharma Transmission and the lineage name Tenryū Jōkai (天龍浄海) from Charles Tenshin Fletcher Roshi in 2014, and Inka — final seal of approval and independence — in 2022.

Originally from Wales, David moved to Southern California in 2000 to train full time. His teaching is grounded in traditional Zen forms and woven into the texture of ordinary life. He emphasizes the direct experience of awakening using contemporary language and time-honored methods. Learn more at https://becomingordinary.org/ 
______________ 
To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/
There you can:  
 Donate 
 Learn how to participate live 
 Find our schedule of upcoming speakers 
 Join our mailing list or discussion forum
 Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995
CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

What does it truly mean to look beyond our conceptual labels and rest in the direct, unmediated experience of awareness? 
In this illuminating talk, Dorothy Hunt invites us to explore how true seeing shatters the illusion of separation and brings us home to the present moment. She gently guides us to recognize that awareness is not something we achieve, but rather what we fundamentally are when we stop searching and simply notice what is here.
As Dorothy explains, softening into this deep inquiry involves a few essential shifts in perception:
Recognizing that our thoughts, sensations, and emotions are simply passing expressions of a vast, welcoming mystery rather than fixed identities to defend.
Dropping the spiritual ambition to "get somewhere" else, and instead allowing ourselves to rest fully in the ordinary, intimate immediacy of now.
Cultivating a compassionate, unshielded tenderness toward our human vulnerability, letting awareness hold every experience just as it is.
______________
Dorothy Hunt serves as spiritual director of Moon Mountain Sangha and was the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy. She is the author of Only This!, Leaves from Moon Mountain, and Ending the Search: From Spiritual Ambition to the Heart of Awareness, as well as articles published on nondual wisdom and psychotherapy.
She teaches at the request and in the spiritual lineage of Adyashanti, who invited her to share the dharma in 2004. Dorothy has a long and deep connection to the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and the nondual teachings of Zen, Advaita, and the Christian mystics. She invites a deep welcoming of the human expressions of the mystery. A licensed psychotherapist since 1967, Dorothy has now retired from her private practice. She is a mother and a grandmother. For more information, please visit: https://dorothyhunt.org or Dorothy Hunt - Moon Mountain Sangha on YouTube.
______________ 
To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/
There you can:  
 Donate 
 Learn how to participate live 
 Find our schedule of upcoming speakers 
 Join our mailing list or discussion forum
 Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995
CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

Tom Moon addresses the challenge we face of staying grounded, peaceful, and resilient when our world feels overwhelmed by political turmoil, cruelty, and constant outrage.
How? By inviting us to reframe our spiritual focus: true liberation doesn't come from trying to suppress negative emotions or forcing empty, feel-good affirmations, but from intentionally cultivating what is wholesome. Tom draws on Buddhist history, Mary Oliver's poetry, and his own experience recovering from a stroke to remind us that while evil and suffering are real, our brains are also hardwired with a "negativity bias"—acting like velcro for bad experiences and teflon for good ones. 
Additionally, when we fall into "survivor guilt" by believing that experiencing happiness during hard times is selfish or disloyal, we actually drain ourselves of the vitality needed to resist harm and care for others.
Tom offers several key insights and practices to help us counteract this bias and incline our minds toward genuine light and joy:
Reframing Liberation: We learn that we aren't freed simply by turning away from greed, hatred, and delusion, but by actively cultivating wisdom, compassion, and love.
Overcoming "Survivor Guilt": We recognize that letting ourselves experience happiness isn't an act of disloyalty to those who suffer, but a vital spiritual duty that preserves our well-being and capacity to serve.
Taking in the Good: Guided by Rick Hanson's practice, we learn to linger on positive moments—such as the warmth of loved ones or supportive community—for at least 20 seconds so those feelings can truly register in our nervous system.
Directing the Heart: We remember that we become whatever we focus on; by intentionally turning toward kindness, truth, and present-moment awareness, we anchor ourselves in an underlying stillness that outer turmoil cannot destroy.
______________
Tom Moon is a native San Franciscan who lives within walking distance of where he was born, with Craig Wenzl, his husband of 21 years. His engagement with Buddhism began in 1995 when he learned Vipassana and Metta meditation from Jack Kornfield. He is a psychotherapist who works primarily with gay men. and his professional commitment is exploring the interface between Buddhist practice and psychotherapy.
______________ 
To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/
There you can:  
 Donate 
 Learn how to participate live 
 Find our schedule of upcoming speakers 
 Join our mailing list or discussion forum
 Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995
CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

In this reflection on retreat life, four GBF community members explore how taking time away from our relentless routines, news cycles, and digital devices offers a quiet sanctuary to examine our habits and cultivate genuine peace. 
Rather than an escape, a retreat serves as a vital "laboratory for daily life"—a container where the cloudy, stirred-up waters of our busy minds can finally settle so we can see the deep substrate beneath. By immersing ourselves in extended silence, noble heart practices, and simple daily rituals, we reconnect with a thousands-year-old lineage and experience the profound benefits of collective practice:
Clearing Sensory Overload: Stepping back from constant stimulation allows our habitual mental chatter to quiet down, revealing clearer insights into how our minds work.
Anchoring in Loving-Kindness (Metta): Focusing on simple phrases of goodwill—wishing that all beings be happy, healthy, safe, and free—transforms both sitting and walking meditation into a deep practice of love.
Forging Deep, Silent Community: Sharing quiet meals, silent meditation, and heart-centered connection exercises builds an unseen bond of trust and intimacy across the Sangha without the strain of social performance.
Transforming Everyday Moments: The clarity and patience we cultivate on retreat directly spill over into our ordinary lives, turning everyday delays—like waiting for the bus or sitting in traffic—into opportunities for mindfulness and generosity.
Ultimately, going on retreat gives us a powerful chance to "level up" our practice and return to our daily lives re-energized, softer, and more present. Whether we are chanting ancient Pali verses or engaging in heartfelt group sharing when silence is released, the gifts we receive on retreat naturally ripple out to benefit everyone around us. 
With our upcoming Fall Retreat September 25-27, 2026 featuring teacher Prasadachitta, we have a wonderful opportunity to step back into this transformative space, test these teachings in our own lives, and bring the Dharma vividly to life.
SPEAKERS:
Cass Brayton
Henry Rabinowitz
Matthew Perifano
Tom Bruein
______________ 
To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/
There you can:  
 Donate 
 Learn how to participate live 
 Find our schedule of upcoming speakers 
 Join our mailing list or discussion forum
 Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995
CREDITS
Audio Production: George Hubbard
Producer: Tom Bruein
Music/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter