In this special podcast, we'll revisit the topic of "Right Speech" through a reflection and practice tip from my upcoming book. We'll focus on how right speech depends more on listening than speaking. Speaking is dualistic. Listening is a non-dual activity of Oneness. Most of the time, the reason we speak is to speak TO or AT someone, expressing ourselves to the other. And, frequently, expressing how they ARE the other. And so much speaking is completely unnecessary. The trick is to maintain an ...
Jul 28, 2019•22 min•Ep. 29
What is a perfect day? A perfect relationship? Join me for a discussion of perfection in a podcast featuring a wedding Dharma talk. Stay until the end to respond to the challenge of making your own vows, allowing for the perfection of 'the other' in all your relationships. The perfection of life exists in impermanence and interdependence—the very things that end up messing with our plans. A perfect relationship happens at the intersection of person, place, and time. And can only happen when each...
Jul 01, 2019•24 min•Ep. 28
In this episode we'll talk about the 7th and 8th steps of The Noble Eightfold Path, Right Mindfulness and Right Meditation, also called Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. It takes one to know the other and it all starts with an openness of mind. Studies show that meditation seems to cease the activity of the lobes in the brain that determine where self ends and non-self begins. Meaning, meditation can dissolve our sense of separateness and heighten a sense of interconnection. This is the...
Jun 12, 2019•1 hr 1 min•Ep. 27
The Three Jewels: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. I think many connect with the *jewel* or treasure aspect of the Buddha and Dharma, but Sangha? The Buddha taught the Dharma as an experiential path. His advice is to try it for ourselves, rather than taking his or anyone else's word for it. It is Sangha that moves Buddhism beyond a study or philosophy to something lived and alive. But you have to practice or it doesn't work. Sangha is where you perfect your practice with others doing the same thing. ...
Apr 22, 2019•24 min•Ep. 26
In the 4th of the "talking with my teachers" series, I am talking with Rev. Satya Robyn, a priest in the Amida Order, about how the whole of messy humanity is met by the divine when we relax our sense of control and know that life accepts us just as we are. Satya talks of her journey from atheist to psychotherapist and Pureland Buddhist priest. And how she was "grabbed" by Amida, the celestial Buddha of Infinite Light and Life, the Buddha of acceptance and compassion. She describes the simplicit...
Mar 23, 2019•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 25
Meditating on death is a traditional Buddhist practice. In this podcast, we'll talk about how thinking about our own and others' death can help us live more fully. All the things that keep us busy and entertained might help us forget about the certainty of death, but it won't help us escape it. Reflecting on death can help us remember that the "shiny" things we find attractive and desirable will soon lose their appeal. We can try to avoid the suffering the thought of death brings or we can look ...
Mar 14, 2019•29 min•Ep. 24
The "Eastern Way" of psychology offers a profoundly different paradigm than Western psychology. Join me as a talk with Gregg Krech, one of the leading authorities on Japanese Psychology in North America, about this difference. Using the Buddhist concept of "skillful means", Japanese psychology offers methods to master the skills of acceptance, attention, co-existing with unpleasant feelings, and self-reflection. Rather than talking it out, we can develop skills to cope more effectively with anxi...
Feb 18, 2019•58 min•Ep. 23
In a listener-requested podcast I relate how the story of releasing cows from Thich Nhat Hanh’s book No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering, helped me find freedom from suffering over a series of minor personal losses and disappointments...and freedom FROM the losses themselves. We each have "cows" we're grasping onto. According to Thich Nhat Hanh, our biggest "cows" are our narrow ideas of happiness. We suffer because of grasping to those ideas. Every one of us has cows to be relea...
Jan 26, 2019•26 min•Ep. 22
Tibetan Buddhism seems mysterious, intriguing, and sometimes scary. In this episode I talk with Frank Howard of the White Lotus Buddhist Center in Rochester, New York—continuing my series of "Talking with My Teachers"—who explains that it's not as mysterious as it seems and it's certainly not scary! As Frank explains, there is only ONE Dharma and Tibetan Buddhism is a sort of a misnomer. It is Buddhism, containing all Buddhist forms, but also the Vajrayana or Mantrayana path. Like the Mahayana p...
Jan 05, 2019•1 hr 11 min•Ep. 21
In this first of a special series of episodes dedicated to honoring my teachers, I have a conversation with the spiritual head of The Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism, Rev. Koyo Kubose. It is with Bright Dawn and my Sensei, I learned how bring Buddhism into the everyday. Listen as we discuss what the Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism and its Lay Ministry program is all about, from Rev. Koyo's perspective ... its historical influences, its mission, vision, and special niche as a progra...
Dec 20, 2018•1 hr 9 min•Ep. 20
