My name is Mark Van Buren. I’m a Buddhist author and meditation teacher, and I’ve been practicing and teaching meditation for more than 15 years.

Over the years, I’ve come to see meditation very differently than I did when I first started. I don’t believe meditation is about escaping from your life, getting rid of your thoughts, or trying to become calm and peaceful all the time.

Because life doesn’t work that way.

We’re going to get frustrated. We’re going to worry. We’re going to lose people. We’re going to have difficult days, difficult relationships, difficult thoughts, and moments when we simply don’t know what to do with ourselves.

So for me, the real question is: Can we learn how to be with all of it?

That’s what I try to teach.

My approach is grounded in Buddhist teachings and mindfulness, but I try to keep it practical and relevant to everyday life. I’m not interested in meditation being something we only do sitting quietly on a cushion for twenty minutes a day. The real practice begins when someone cuts you off in traffic, when your kid is driving you crazy, when work becomes overwhelming, when you’re grieving, or when your own mind won’t leave you alone.

Can we stay present then?

Can we notice what’s happening without immediately reacting to it?

Can we allow an uncomfortable feeling to be there without needing to fix it, suppress it, or run away from it?

A phrase I come back to again and again is: “However it is, there’s room for it.”

That doesn’t mean we like everything that happens. It doesn’t mean we become passive or stop trying to change things. It simply means we stop fighting with the fact that this moment is already here.

For me, that is where meditation becomes much more than a relaxation technique. It becomes a way of living.

I teach meditation classes, workshops, individual sessions, and retreats, and I’m the author of two books. My goal isn’t to give people another set of rules for how they should live. It’s to help people develop a deeper awareness of their own experience and discover that they may have more capacity to meet life than they realize.

Because we don’t get to choose everything that happens to us.

But we can learn how to be present for it.

And that’s really what I’m interested in teaching: how to be here for your life, exactly as it is.