PROGRAMS

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The Three Paths of Practice
HEALING · TRANSFORMATION · AWAKENING

“Our true home is in the present moment.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh

The Florida Community of Mindfulness practices in the spirit of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh ("Thầy"). Thầy inspired our teacher, Fred Eppsteiner, to found this Dharma community and to create our three paths of practice. He taught Fred that Buddhism in America must be experimental, culturally attuned, and relevant to Western students. As the Charter of the Order of Interbeing affirms, it should also draw on the full breadth of the Buddha's teachings, free of sectarian boundaries. The heart of this practice is the Bodhisattva ideal: cultivating wisdom and compassion, and seeking awakening not for ourselves alone but for the benefit of all beings.

Fred joins this aspiration with the Zen and Dzogchen transmissions he received from his other two root teachers, Roshi Philip Kapleau and Kyabje Dzongnang Rinpoche. He also brings his many years of training and practice as a therapist. The result is a path that speaks to the lives, minds, and hearts of practitioners in the West. Over three decades, our community has grown into an engaged Buddhist sangha, sharing a single, unfolding journey of practice walked in three paths.

The three paths are not three separate programs but one path home. Each is complete in itself, and each opens naturally into the next. In Thầy's spirit, they carry us from emotional reactivity toward a life of depth, meaning, and freedom. Wherever you are, you can begin.

Members: our Self-Assessment, supported by experienced mentors, can help you see where you are now and which programs will best support your practice.

Member Link to Self-Assessment Guidance and Questionnaire

Mindful Living Path
Where Practice Begins


We begin with mindfulness and emotional healing so that we can begin to reorient our life in a meaningful way. We learn to calm the mind, open the heart, and meet our emotions with kindness, while learning to appreciate the many simple wonders of life that are always available to us. These are our foundational practices—accessible to anyone, regardless of faith or religious tradition.

Dharma Path
Where Understanding Deepens


With a calmer mind and a lessening of afflictive emotions, we look closely into the nature view reality—impermanence, cause and effect, the nature of the self—and begin to align our lives with what we see, awakening the compassionate heart of Bodhicitta. Newcomers to the Dharma Path are encouraged to begin with the Bridge, our orientation to this path..

Wisdom Path
Where Understanding Becomes Realization


Guided by our teacher Fred, we take up the looking practices at the heart of this path —looking at our thoughts, looking for the “self,” and looking at the one who is looking — rooted in our tradition’s own Zen, with the pointing-out instructions of Dzogchen offered as a finishing instrument. For those drawn to know the nature of mind and taste true liberation.

Florida Community of Mindfulness, Tampa Center
6501 N. Nebraska Avenue
Tampa, FL 33604

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