How Madhyamaka Unknotted My Life

The Unknotting

I was once extremely knotted — in my own views and opinions, in my likes and dislikes, in my self-image. My mind felt like a fog of thoughts; I was completely covered by whatever emerged out of it. No clarity, no perspective, just an endless blanket of words, images, and mental noise.

This changed in 2010 when I signed up to a beginner’s meditation course. I arrived and sat cross-legged on the floor, soaking in the vibrant colour scheme of the small temple. The teacher was jolly, easy going, with a clear grasp of English. Within twenty minutes, we were doing our first body scan.

I felt alive. I was scanning my body with no reference to the fog. I had mistaken the fog as my mind, but focusing on my body sidelined all of that. The teacher rang the singing bell and said “do this every day for fifteen minutes.” I knew I had to.

The unknotting begins

So I sat for those fifteen minutes each day. I began what I call unknotting. The ability to collect my concentration enabled me to guide my mind out of the fog. When I focused on my body, a rich point of experience bloomed — a harmony between bones, muscles, organs, and the motion of breath and heartbeats. This combination of feeling and awareness was something no philosophy class ever gave me, or ever could.

At the time I was studying philosophy at university in Australia. I was exposed to historical pillars of western thought, tested on my use of mental tools to learn what makes a good argument and how to apply them to ideas about the mind, physical objects, human behaviour, and the limits of logic itself. I was working with diligence to be no slouch.

What Buddhist thought offered

Within this context, my early reading of Buddhist thought revealed a worldview with answers for both complex philosophical positions and everyday ethical questions. These ideas made logical sense, showed consistency between concepts, and stood up to basic scrutiny. What I found most intriguing was its completeness — a kind I had not experienced before or since. It is a feature of western philosophy that ideas in ethics don’t attempt to answer metaphysics, and the logicians may not understand the theory of mind. There was none of this segregation in Buddhist thinking; it provides an internal logic for all of it.

My interest became a passion when Buddhist ideas became stronger the more I tried to break them. There is no deference to any position in this style of learning — attempting to prove it incorrect is the learning. I decided what made sense not because someone else said it, but because my own intellect was stretched to realise it directly.

Going deeper

After graduating, while my peers broke into the workforce, I moved to a rural Buddhist retreat centre. I volunteered my time and skills in exchange for room, board, and a place to practice. I helped run retreats, maintain the grounds, and was mutually supported by the other volunteers. One year became two, which slowly became four.

These years were enriching but also challenging. Chief among the friction was a sense of otherness. The logical power of the teachings and their capacity for life-changing insight was clear. However, their method of delivery was from a different cultural world: texts were translations from thousands of years ago, with their own language and assumptions. The Buddhism I was steeping myself in was from a foreign land, and to practise “Buddhism” was to wear this cultural garb too. Increasingly, I realised it did not fit.

The cultural gap

A lot has changed since those days. We have more western lay teachers speaking as one westerner to another. Buddhist podcasts and teachings on apps are freely available. But even teachers born and raised in the west “sing from the same songbook” as the cultural teachers who taught them. This is not negative per se — it is a teething pain of Buddhism laying foundations in a new culture. But this gap increasingly felt like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. These Buddhist cultures didn’t match the world I grew up in or the world that surrounds me right now.

Finding the approach

So I went looking for how to change this. I enrolled in a two-year Master’s program on Applied Buddhist Studies. This was the culmination of both my philosophical training and my lived meditation experience. I was asked not just what does Buddhism contribute, but so what and now what: what does this look like at the level of applied human life, and how do we help bring it about?

At the end of these two years, I had everything I needed: fifteen years of practice, degrees in both western and Buddhist thought, and a beacon of light clearly pointing: a transformation is on offer, now what can you do to bring it about?

Why this work exists

As a result, this work is written by a western householder for a western householder. This is not to draw boundaries around skin colour or place of birth. It is to place these transformative teachings in the soil in which we are rooted. This reframing is less concerned with ornate cultural displays in temples, cooking certain food on certain days, or chanting in languages you do not understand. It is more concerned with taking your human experience as the standing point, removing the baggage of ignorance, sadness, and extreme views with theories and practices — then celebrating what is left, which is the real way to be in and of the world.

Buddhism is a large field of inquiry: 2,500 years, multiple sub-traditions, adapting to local cultures. I have searched, practised, tested, and re-searched virtually all the Buddhist approaches. One unknots me more than any other. It is called madhyamaka, and to it we now turn.

If this resonates, I write regularly about living madhyamaka as a western householder. Sign up below to get new essays in your inbox — or message me on Bluesky to continue the conversation.