Dhammamegha speaks to Bodhidasa in Sydney, Australia, about his upcoming book Approaching Enlightenment: A Guidebook for Buddhist Ritual . The conversation covers: Bodhidasa as a practitioner, teacher, and self-declared geek. We’ll hear about his interests in magic, games, popular culture, and literature, and how these are part of his practice and the book. How ritual, archetypes, and myth enable a connection with transpersonal and enlightened qualities and potentials. Different approaches to Bu...
Aug 28, 2024•47 min•Ep. 15
Today, Dhammamegha speaks with award winning author and speaker Valerie (Vimalasara) Mason John about their soon-to-be-released pocketbook First Aid Kit for the Mind: Breaking the Cycle of Habitual Behaviours. We hear about Vimalasara’s life and writing, and the deep well of experience through trauma and addiction recovery and mindfulness. They speak from the heart about all the tools to connect what you already have to live more embodied, skilful and free. These tools are all laid out in this s...
Apr 28, 2024•28 min•Ep. 14
In this episode, Dhammamegha speaks with Cindy Rasicot - the author of a new book This Fresh Existence: Heart Teachings from Bhikkhuni Dhammananda. Cindy speaks about meeting her teacher Venerable Dhammananda, and responding to her challenging message of kindness and forgiveness rather than anger and hatred. The podcast conversation covers what it is like to be a student and disciple, different ways of practice in Asian and convert American Buddhism, and the radical transformation that can come ...
Feb 07, 2024•39 min•Ep. 13
Today we have a wonderful and insightful conversation with River Wolton, a poet, writer, activist, Buddhist teacher and author of her new book titled The Subtle Art of Caring. We talk about her life and practice and the Buddha’s teachings of the Brahma Viharas or divine abodes. In this book, River looks again at these ancient teachings as a resource for sustaining compassion through moments of pausing, befriending, enjoying, caring and letting be. As Dene Donalds, Dharma teacher in the lineage o...
Nov 08, 2023•53 min•Ep. 12
In this new episode of the Windhorse Publications podcast, our publishing director Dhammamegha speaks to the author of a book we’ll be bringing out later in September – Starting on the Buddhist Path: An Invitation. In the conversation, the author Sagaraghosa muses about her first encounters with Buddhism, the importance of friendship in practice and how the dharma can change our lives for the better. She also tackles that great Buddhist question of the nature of the self, and how we can reflect ...
Aug 30, 2023•41 min•Ep. 11
The Dharma is a universal teaching and an array of practices for liberation. In history, it is embodied by teachers who respond to the particular forms of suffering and bondage that they are born into, human and social. In its spread between India and what could broadly be called the West, the Triratna Buddhist movement and order is rather unique in contemporary convert Buddhism. In this episode, Dhammamegha is in conversation with Vajratara about the recent developments in the Refuge Tree of th...
May 24, 2023•35 min•Ep. 10
Thirty years after the first publication of Meeting the Buddhas, Dhammamegha speaks with Vessantara about the new edition of this classic Dharma text. After learning how the book came to be, the discussion turns to the qualities of the enlightened mind, and the nature and power of these Buddha and Bodhisattva figures, and a whole path to living in freedom. We had this conversation in Vessantara’s lounge in January this year, and the sound quality isn’t as good as we would have liked, but still d...
Mar 29, 2023•47 min•Ep. 9
A great storyteller and author, in this podcast Nagabodhi tells us about his life in relationship to Sangharakshita, and the interesting process of writing about him. Who was Sangharakshita, and what was his life’s project – working out what it is to be a Buddhist in the world today. We have a candid conversation about Sangharakshita’s sexuality, his relationships, his legacy, his experiments in ways of being, and the nature of community or Sangha. The book Sangharakshita: The Boy, the Monk, the...
Feb 08, 2023•1 hr 3 min•Ep. 8
Windhorse Publications recently acquired the rights to a fantastic memoir, first published earlier in 2022. In this episode of the podcast, Dhammamegha speaks with its author, Satyadasa. Perhaps we all have a fantasy about what it means to be a Buddhist; what a life in the Dharma looks like. Satyadasa, born with one hand, recounts meeting the Dharma in London as a young man, and the joy, questions, friendships and choices that followed. It’s unusual to have such a fresh, brilliantly-written, tou...
Nov 23, 2022•53 min•Ep. 7
A lot of life is spent online these days. It is the medium for news, entertainment, work, debate and perspective, music, keeping up with friends, dating, and, for some, pornography. In this podcast episode, Dhammamegha speaks with new author Prajnaketu about his upcoming book Cyberloka: A Buddhist guide to digital life. Prajnaketu wants to open up ways of thinking and talking about our digital lives that draw on the teachings of the Buddha. We talk about hyper-availability and how to go mindfull...
Oct 19, 2022•45 min•Ep. 6
It’s always good news when one of our books starts selling well. But in this case, the popularity of Eight Step Recovery: Using the Buddha’s Teachings to Overcome Addiction points to the rise of compulsive and addictive behaviour and thought over lockdown and beyond. Dhammamegha sat down to talk with the book’s co-author, Valerie Mason-John (Buddhist Order name Vimalasara). Perhaps you’re aware of compulsion in yourself or others? In this podcast, Vimalasara and Dhammamegha talk about ‘stinking ...
Sep 13, 2022•45 min•Ep. 5
In this episode, Dhammamegha interviews Nagapriya, author of the forthcoming book: The Promise of a Sacred World: Shinran’s Teaching of Other Power. It is due out in early September 2022. Nagapriya encountered the writings of the Japanese Pure Land teacher Shinran at a point of crisis in his own spiritual life. After a decade of enthusiastic striving towards enlightenment, Nagapriya came up against the limits of self-directed practice. In that moment, Shinran and Other Power opened a different w...
Aug 09, 2022•1 hr 8 min•Ep. 4
In February this year, we published a memoir by a man diagnosed with life-threatening prostate cancer. The book is called Entertaining Cancer the Buddhist Way. That man is Devamitra, and his book covers his remarkable story of working with his mental states through diagnosis, treatment and recovery. In this podcast Dhammamegha interviews Devamitra to learn more about the man behind the cancer journey, and finds out what conditioned his strength of character, and his Buddhist practice. After a pe...
Jul 06, 2022•53 min•Ep. 3
In this episode, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo continues the conversation with Dhammamegha about two mindfulness books published by Windhorse Publications in 2019. The conversation covers the crucial question of the place of mindfulness of others in meditation, the importance of sangha or community, and the relationship between what happens on the cushion and our ways of being in the world. Getting closer to some of our collective challenges, Bhikkhu Anālayo talks about climate change and the Six...
May 30, 2022•19 min•Ep. 2
In this episode of the new Windhorse Publications podcast, scholar-monk Bhikkhu Anālayo talks to Dhammamegha about two books we published in 2019, written for mindfulness practitioners interested in the Buddhist background to mindfulness. Along the way he talks about bare mindfulness and how it differs from mindfulness in the context of the Buddhist path. The interview covers the basic function of monitoring and acceptance to protect the mind, and the wisdom part of mindfulness practice. Anālayo...
Mar 14, 2022•34 min•Ep. 1
