The following text is an edited excerpt from a talk by Patrick Sweeney given at a meditation program entitled “The Mahamudra Path” on December 1, 2000 in Ojai, CA.

The Path of the Insider
To properly practice the dharma, it is essential that, to some degree, you know what you're doing, and have some confidence in it. It's important that you have experienced the basic impetus of renunciation. You might call it a conversion experience. It's very important that you've gone through some sort of process which has brought you to a point of clarity within yourself that you are no longer interested in defining your life by a continued hankering after various strategies to manipulate the external world. In the Tibetan tradition, there isn't a word for “buddhist”. Rather, one is referred to as a nangpa, which means “insider”. To follow the path, you must be an insider, which means that you have come to the realization that searching for satisfaction through manipulation of the external world is fruitless, and have therefore turned inwards.

Renunciation
To be an insider, you have connected with renunciation, or ngejung, which literally means “to become real.” You have started the process of becoming very intimate with yourself and you want nothing more in this life than to become completely and utterly in sync with reality. You have seen and tasted the physical, psychological, emotional, mental, spiritual body of fear that is endemic to our human situation. You've tasted it, lived it, and suffered through it for long enough, and you want to fight back in the tradition that Trungpa Rinpoche gave us, the tradition of spiritual warriorship. You are ready and involved in the process of overcoming fear, overcoming, as the Buddha put it, the maras. You have seen that there is no other purpose to this human life other than that.

Glimpsing Buddhanature
On one hand, you have seen that a life based on ego clinging, a life based on hope and fear leads nowhere and on the other, you have glimpsed this much talked about elusive buddhanature. You have had a glimpse of actually operating in the world from the point of view of clarity, compassion, courage, and self-existing joy. Whether it was the moment you walked out of Shambhala training, or in the loneliness of your own bedroom, or after your morning meditation session, or when you get up to make a cup of tea, you've had some glimpse that it's possible to actually connect in a much deeper way with reality. You have recognized that this welling up of buddhanature, this welling up of awakened experience is what you really want.

Spiritual Materialism
It is very important to say this right at the beginning, because people get confused and they align themselves with spiritual discipline and spiritual path when they don't really need that. It's very important that you know what you're looking for. Sometimes people come to spirituality just simply because they're in a lot of pain. There's been a lot of literature recently about a phenomenon called spiritual by-passing, which is when one comes to spirituality hoping that old wounds will be healed simply by adopting a spiritual posture or spiritual identity. In the end, this approach will backfire. This is what Trungpa Rinpoche called spiritual materialism. Ultimately, only you know what you're really doing, and its important to check in with yourself. I know why I’m here. If you know why you're here, then we can go forward.