Mark Griffin (spiritual teacher)

Mark Griffin is an American spiritual teacher in the lineage of Bhagawan Nityananda. Griffin is an author and authority on the philosophy and practice of Yoga Tantra. He emphasizes spiritual practice (sadhana), especially meditation. He is the founder and director of Hard Light Center of Awakening, a Los Angeles-based spiritual school that offers intensive training in meditation and other practical techniques of Enlightenment. He is also an artist.

Born Mark Edson Griffin, son of engineer Jack Griffin and Barbara Griffin. Griffin attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from 1976 to 1979, and the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, and has made art continuously ever since. In 1976, at the age of 21 he met his Guru, Swami Muktananda Paramahamsa, the disciple of Bhagawan Nityananda of Ganeshpuri.

He spent 7 years studying meditation with Muktananda, mostly in his Oakland Ashram, in California. He subsequently spent 6 years studying meditation with Kalu Rinpoche.

In 1989 he founded the Hard Light School of Awakening of Los Angeles, California.

Shaktipat Guru

Griffin says that within every person lies the dormant power of kundalini shakti, the evolutionary power of the Universe. This potential can be awakened by means of the grace of the Guru and through spiritual practice or shaktipat.

Yoga Tantra

Griffin’s spiritual training techniques include: flexibility of attention, breath, insight, mind-training involving concentration, discrimination, mantra and meditation.

Griffin also teaches that the human form consists of not one, but four interlinked bodies: the physical body of flesh, the subtle body of energy, the causal body of mind, and the supra-causal body of Universal Consciousness.

Sadhana

Sadhana refers to everything an aspirant does on the spiritual path in furtherance of reaching Enlightenment. The sadhana practices that Griffin teaches include meditation, repetition of the lineage mantra (Om Namah Shivaya or So-Ham), service, study, darshan, satsang, and recitation of the Guru Gita.

In 2005, Griffin formed a non-profit called Third Millennium Awakening (TMA), with a sister charity in India, Shree Nityananda Education Trust (SNET). The mission of TMA and SNET is to further charitable work in Maharashtra, India. TMA and SNET have been making bio-sand water filtersthat are distributed free of charge to needy families in the area surrounding the Fire Mountain Retreat Center in Nimboli. The eventual goal is to provide clean drinking water to everyone who lacks it in all of Maharashtra state.

In 2005, Griffin raised a sculpture at Burning Man called Ladder, a functional aluminum and steel ladder 108 feet tall, that was described as "staggering" by author Jessica Bruder in her book “Burning Book, A Visual History of Burning Man”. In 2009 Griffin was invited by Kirsha Kaechele to exhibit the Ladder sculpture at the Voodoo Experience in New Orleans. In 2008 Griffin was invited by Lydia Takeshita of LA Artcore, to show his large scale photographic works in both Thailand and Japan. In 2011 Lydia Takeshita staged a one-man exhibition of Mark's work, entitled: Dream Red Body, at the LA Artcore Union Center for the Arts. The city of Songkhla, Thailand commissioned Griffin to do a large-scale sculpture, and the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum purchased one of his works for its permanent collection.

• Sangha Speaks ISBN 0-9759020-1-6