Love and Kindness: Stories of Rideshare Driving as Dharma Practice

Описание: This is video performance of my most recent substack piece.
Love and Kindness

Read it here and subscribe.
https://substack.com/@robertbeattymed...

For the past months, I've been driving for Uber and Lyft here in Portland, and what started as practical work has become a profound meditation practice. Each shift is an opportunity to meet people - my "other selves" - in moments of service and connection. The encounters that arise, the way dharma concepts naturally emerge from actual lived experience, have given me rich material that I'm now sharing through writing.
I've published three pieces so far on Substack:

"I May Kill Myself" - The raw, honest opening that introduces this project and what it means to meet life as it actually is.

"A Sacred Meeting" ♪ "The Grand Old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men..." - How I approach each passenger pickup as a privilege, a sacred encounter, with rituals and intentions that transform ordinary rideshare work into practice

"Love and Kindness: Encounters with Suffering" - How the simple act of transporting people becomes a spontaneous field of compassion when love meets suffering in the world
This is life-affirming Buddhism - practice that doesn't retreat from the world but meets it fully.

Not Buddhism as an escape from ordinary life, but as a way of being completely present to what's actually happening. The spiritual and the mundane aren't separate. My meditation cushion is the driver's seat. My sangha arrives one passenger at a time.

This isn't Buddhist instruction in the traditional sense - it's showing how the teachings live and breathe when you're paying attention to life as it unfolds, without jargon or preaching.

Dharma Driver serves as both contemplative practice and a tributary that supports my expanding teaching work. I'm developing new classes and guided meditations, and this writing deepens what I bring to that formal practice.

If you'd like to follow along, you can subscribe here: https://substack.com/@robertbeattymed...


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