The Dharma Overground (DhO) is in its 2.0 phase and has moved here The Dharma Overground 2.0. It is very, very highly recommended. It is where the life is at the moment, and is a flourishing on-line community where people explore the issues surrounding straightforward, open, practical dharma, find resources for real practice and try to fight the pervailing culture that sees real dharma and its effects as taboo. There is a rare collection of very accomplished practitioners with a great diversity of perspectives, attainments, and backgrounds who will talk openly about dharma and so it makes way more sense to post on the discussion section there most of the time than to ask me. I tend to pay attention to what happens here, and there are a number of other very talented practitioners who do also. This is a good place to post practical questions and thoughts on the dharma. Again, if you were thinking of asking me some question, you could just as well post it to the group there and thus draw on a much wider base of wisdom and perspective. If you want something more protected and members only, try Awake Network, run by my friends Tom Otvos and Chris Marti.

A gigantic compilation of forum posts that I wrote on the DhO has been compiled by the remarkable Pepe, and edited by Tim and Niels! Much appreciated! It is arranged by topics. May it be helpful!

The North American Buddhist Alliance (NABA): good people helping to connect dharma communities and promote constructive dialogue. From their website: "The purpose of North American Buddhist Alliance is to serve as a resource for Dharmic teachings and practices throughout the Buddhist community-at-large in North America. More specifically: (A) To foster a network of friendship and support among Buddhist groups and individual Buddhists from all traditions. (B) To encourage communication and collaboration among Buddhists and Buddhist communities. (C) To publicize and sponsor activities of interest and benefit to North American Buddhists. (D) NABA seeks to fulfill its objectives by maintaining an interactive website, publishing NABA News, and coordinating initiatives of interest among Buddhists of multiple traditions in North America."

The Fire Kasina is a website by Duncan, Florian, multiple other practitioners, and myself about a the fire kasina.

A great place to find the original Buddhist texts (suttas) and modern writings by living and recently deceased meditation masters, such as The Progress of Insight by Mahasi Sayadaw. In that same vein, Sacred Texts has a surprisingly large and wide collection of texts from many traditions. 

My friend Vince Horn is a great practitioner and has a great website, and he and his friends have a website called BuddhistGeeks where they feature podcasts, discussions and other things about practice and theory, though it has just been retired and has now been archived, and so all things pass away. Some podcasts by me and others can be found there. His wife Emily Horn is also a very interesting and intuitive practitioner and is teaching now and now has her own website. Their new project is meditate.io.

Open Sit, created by Dan Bartlett and friends, is a place to record online practice journals and connect with other practitioners about real practice. It has many cool features.

Hokai is strong practitioner and scholar. He was also very important in the founding of the Dharma Overground.

Jackson Wilshire is now doing counseling with a meditation influence.

Aeon Books is my publisher also has great books by other authors.

James Maskalyk is an emergency medicine physician, meditation teacher and author, as well as Consciousness Explorer.

Constance Casey is a counselor, strong practitioner and meditation teacher who is also active at times at the DhO. 

The full version of of Mahasi Sayadaw's Practical Insight Meditation, my favorite dharma book of all time, may be found at Google Books, where many other fine dharma books may be found for free. Part of it may be found at: http://www.mahasiusa.org/meditation.htm. The rest may be purchased from a number of sources at very reasonable cost; type the title and author into any search engine. It is also available at Wisdom Books, where you will also find many other books on Buddhism. 

Insight Meditation Online is a good place to go for straight-up Burmese-style Thereavada, and has a section on the insight maps. 

BuddhaNet is a large multi-tradition on-line resource for practice, texts and a lot more. Fun stuff: Why the Buddha Suffered.

 Phra Ajaan Mun's The Ballad of Liberation from the Khandas.

This is just flippin' hilarious scathing wit: Tutteji! I hope we all continue to be able to laugh at ourselves and this is one website helping us do that.

The Malaysian Buddhist Meditation Centre, located on the island of Penang, is by far my favorite retreat center in the world. I absolutely love this place: great food, great instruction, great technique, nice meditation halls, it is safe and clean, you can drink the water (or can you? recent reports say maybe not...) basically no worries about malaria, very inexpensive, and they speak English, in short, one of the rarest shining gems in the meditation world, the perfect fusion of best of the East and the West, like Burma without the hassles. It is traditional, has monks, and you should go with the attitude that you will meet them on their own terms, follow instructions and respect the schedule and culture there. Address: 355 Jalan Mesjid Negeri, 11600 Penang, Malaysia. Tel : +604 - 282 2534. They are now on Facebook. If you fly into Bangkok, the Butterworth Express is a very nice sleeper train ride down. UPDATE: That all said, there are recent concerns about the varying quality of teachers, so perhaps inquire before you go as to the current state of the place and its suitability for your needs. A substitute that gets recommended a lot these days is Panditarama-Lumbini in Nepal, and, while I haven't been there, reports from friends are very positive.

Bhavana Society - A fine forest retreat center in the mountains of the West Virginia panhandle, in the Sri Lankan style, with a particularly emphasis on the Samatha Jhanas and Insight Meditation. The home of Bhante Gunaratana, a world-class scholar and meditation master. All retreats on a donation basis. 

Gaia House - A very nice retreat center set in gorgeous Devon, England. Offers retreats year-round in various traditions, all dedicated to the development of wisdom and freedom of the heart and mind.

Bodh Gaya Retreats - Christopher Titmuss and his fine crew conduct yearly retreats in the Thai Monastery in Bodh Gaia, India. I am extremely grateful to everyone who contributes to making these retreats possible. The time I spent there during my year in India were key to making my practice what it is today. Highly recommended.

Dhamma Sukha Meditation Center - Located in Australia. I haven't been here, but their abbot, Sayadaw U Pandita, Junior, is a remarkable teacher and practitioner, and I recommend studying with him if you can. 

In that same vein, I sat with Subhana Barzaghi briefly many years ago in Bodh Gaya with Christopher Titmuss and was impressed by how open and down to earth her teaching was. She is both a lineaged Zen Master and Vipassana teacher who teaches mostly in Australia, India and New Zealand. There are few that bridge that gap well, and so is a valuable resource. The chances of her remembering me are nearly none, but I was impressed with her.

True North Insight Meditation Centre - Located in Eastern Ontario. It sounds like this center is still getting organized, and I haven't been there, but Norman Feldman is a fine teacher who is associated with this project and I recommend him. 

Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha may also be found at Meta Pleroma, The Spiritual Seeker's Portal, where you may also find discussions, links, downloads etc. about meditation and other topics from a wide variety of traditions. 

Leigh Brasington's Jhana Page is also fun stuff.

My friend Mike LaTorra teaches Zen in Las Cruses, New Mexico. 

Shinzen Young has been teaching a very straightforward, clear, secularized and powerful mix of Vipassana, Zen and Shingon Vajrayana for a very long time. He is one of our modern grandfathers of the dharma.  Bill Hamilton, one of my most important teachers, is dead now, but he and Shinzen were good friends back in the day.

Here is a link to a list of various spiritual texts and websites: 101 Top Sites on Sacred Texts

The Neuroscience Connection: I have had the privilege of getting to know and hand out with some really interesting people studying the neurophysiology and neurophenomenology of meditation, including Dr Willoughby Britton and Dr Jared Lindahl of Brown, Cheetah House, and the Dark Night Project (renamed the Varieties of Contemplative Experience for funding reasons, apparently), Dr Jud Brewer, and Jake Davis. They are doing really interesting work.

Regarding the wisdom of death and dying, definitely check out the work of my friend Dr Monica Williams-Murphy at It's Ok to Die.

Any of these lead to many other fine links.