Jean Bouchart d'Orval invites us to an exploration based on the forefeeling of being and its actualization in life. He doesn't belong to any particular school, but his thinking has been fashioned by the tradition of non-duality.

Jean Bouchart d'Orval was born in Montreal in 1948. After studying classics, he graduated in physics and got a Master degree in nuclear engineering at the Université de Montréal. During all those years, he kept asking himself questions that are more fundamental then those science and even thought can answer. This questioning led him to a meditative approach of life and a disimagining of reality. After many stays in India, it is in the West that he really deepened his search.

According to him, there exist a simple way to turn towards the Simple. The emphasis is therefore not put on the learning of techniques and on what refers to becoming. A practice that suggests to put our attention on anything else than what is there right now in our life is a postponement. One only has to bring a honest look on what is here and now, and soon his attention is taken by the breath of the silent peace. Stripped of our stories, which all refers to what we are not — an image, some self — reality appears as it is : profoundly joyful.

It is when we remain without program and when we no more entertain opinions about what we perceive and what we do that an uncompromising joy begins to really set the tone : how we are starts to reflect what we are. The phenomenal existence is then only what it has always been in fact : an actualization of the possibilities of joy.

The irruption of light cannot be the fruit of a deliberate strategy, which would only be another form of burden, pretension and agitation in order to perpetuate what we are not. Any will to become anything, including someone free, is only adding refinements of misery in our life. Nothing to attain, nothing to become, no obstacle to surmount, only occasions of beauty. No ideal to pursue, no behavior to adopt, no technique to practice, no leader to imitate, no organization to join in order to become « awakened » or « realized ». God save us from that spiritual poverty ! What path can lead us from our home to our home ? What technique can bring us to astonishment ?

Only an honest and humble gaze can save ourselves from the stupidity and the suffering we inflict to ourselves. Nothing is the opposite of profound joy and tranquility : from that evidence, none of the changes of life is problematic. In that opening, the energies that used to be wasted are liberated: we then live with passion, but without calculations and their worries.

Jean Bouchart d'Orval can be met in the context of talks, seminars or individual sessions, in North America and in Europe. These meetings are not meant to convince anyone nor to prove anything ; they only are a way to live with the window open.