Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
110 episodes - English - Latest episode: 22 days ago - ★★★★ - 241 ratingsWendy Shinyo Haylett, an author, Buddhist teacher, lay minister, behavioral and spiritual coach shares the "tips and tricks" found in Buddhist teachings to make your professional and personal life better ... everyday!
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Episodes
Everyday Buddhism 60 - It's All About "Tude" But Not That "Tude"
August 26, 2021 19:07 - 22 minutes - 27 MBTo reiterate the obvious, life has been hard lately. Depressing and a struggle for many and devastating for so many others. All this suffering around us: plagues, violence, floods, fires. And those of you who follow this podcast know, I've been looking at how we might find a way to help ourselves and others through all this from many different Buddhist-oriented approaches. Finally, though, I personally came back to a practice and an attitude from my many years of Tibetan Buddhist study and p...
Everyday Buddhism 59: The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas with Frank Howard
August 09, 2021 23:17 - 1 hour - 71 MBJoin the conversation with one of my first teachers, Frank Howard, as we talk about a little book called The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. I first met this book at the Dharma Center Frank directs and teaches, where His Eminence Garchen Rinpoche is a visiting teacher. Garchen Rinpoche says the entire Buddhist path can be found in the little book of The 37 Practices of Bodhisattvas. Rinpoche had one of the little books in one hand and his prayer wheel in the other hand. I've read these 37...
Everyday Buddhism 58: Allow Joy - Chan Practice for Uncertain Times
May 26, 2021 13:47 - 1 hour - 71.9 MBJoin me for a conversation—and a gentle teaching—with one of the most clear and inspiring teachers I've met. Rebecca Li, the author of Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times, talks with me about her new book and the inspiration behind it. I used her book—and will continue to use it—to help pull myself from falling into a dark world in my mind and a heart, as a response to the suffering of the pandemic and all the fear and mistrust that came with it. When suffering ar...
Everyday Buddhism 57 - Dharma for Trauma
April 15, 2021 19:02 - 25 minutes - 30.3 MBIt seems, sometimes, that when Buddhist and other religious teachers, and serious practitioners get deeper into practice, the more they seem capable of deluding themselves—either in a performative way, posing and positioning for others, or because they have completely deluded themselves about what is really happening within them. They hide their humanness behind the beauty and strength of their words, or their teacher's words, and they hide their brokenness. They hide so well they begin to...
Everyday Buddhism 56 - Can You Lament And Still Be A Buddhist?
February 26, 2021 19:51 - 38 minutes - 44.7 MBBuddhist sutras and teachings speak of lamenting only in ways that highlight how it is to be avoided and transcended, so as not to fall victim to the second arrow of suffering. The Buddha's teaching that there is dukkha, or unsatisfactoriness, but suffering is optional through one's internal relationship to that dukkha. He teaches that is enough. But is it? I bet, at some time during the last year, you have cried out in your heart to restore life to how it used to be. We look around an...
Everyday Buddhism 55 - Introducing Where The Light Meets
February 11, 2021 17:32 - 1 hour - 48 MBJoin us for this introduction of an Everyday Buddhism spin-off podcast! Follow the conversation of 4 friends: Holly Rockwell, a spiritual director and Ignatian prayer guide; Levi Shinyo Walbert Sensei, a Buddhist Lay Minister and seminary student pursuing chaplaincy and a Master of Divinity; Christopher Kakuyo Ross-Leibow Sensei, a Buddhist Lay Minister and sangha leader of the Salt Lake Buddhist Fellowship; and me, Wendy Shinyo Haylett, a Buddhist Lay Minister and your host of both p...
Everyday Buddhism 54 - Same Crap, Different Year?
January 13, 2021 19:57 - 27 minutes - 31.4 MBJoin me as I share my struggle finding some peace in the midst of the uncertainties that have chased us from 2020 into 2021. Despite our urge to run, hide, strike out, or curl up in a ball, as Buddhists we need to remember that the Buddha never promised a rose garden. The Buddha never promised an ordered universe. He said life is suffering because we grasp to life being something other than it is. There's a post-modern paradigm that life keeps getting better and better due to technologica...
Everyday Buddhism 53 - Lessons for Covid Living From Those With Long-Term Health Challenges
December 12, 2020 20:35 - 1 hour - 76.2 MBIn this episode we are continuing our "How I'm Coping" series but with a bit of a different twist. I've brought together two podcast listeners who expressed a different perspective on how they are coping with the pandemic. Both of them come to their current coping abilities through previous "practice" as people with serious long-term health issues. We share many of the challenges, frustrations, fear, and daily uncertainties that come with serious chronic and/or progressive diseases and inj...
Everyday Buddhism 52 - How To Be Thankful in the Midst of Sadness
November 26, 2020 14:49 - 23 minutes - 28.1 MBIn this podcast, we'll explore finding ways to say "thank you" in this time of loss, fear, despair, and uncertainty. I take some time reflecting on the Buddhist teachings of the gift of our "precious human life." Our lives are a gift. We did not plan, arrange, or have any control in making our births happen. We were gifted them. And, for that gift, despite how rocky our lives sometimes seem, we say "thank you!" Listen to how you can use mindful awareness to shift your focus to what's in...
Everyday Buddhism 51 - Steady, Calm and Brave with Kimberly Brown
October 26, 2020 14:52 - 1 hour - 63.9 MBJoin me in conversation with Kimberly Brown as we discuss her new book, Steady, Calm and Brave, a handbook of healing tools to help us through the fraught times of 2020—and beyond. In a delightfully honest and personal conversation, Kimberly shares how seeing students, friends, neighbors, and family afraid, disheartened, and sad, at the beginning of the pandemic was the motivation for writing the book. Kimberly shares her personal experience with trauma and how metta, body-based, and self-...
Everyday Buddhism 50 - The Social Dilemma and Otherness
October 17, 2020 15:30 - 24 minutes - 28.6 MB"When you look around you it feels like the world is going crazy.... Is this normal or have we all fallen under some spell?" ~Tristan Harris In this episode I take a Buddhist view on the spell we've fallen under—and it is the spell of a self-involved culture, swallowed by social media and focused on the hatred of "the other." We are largely living in a world of the extremes of ignorance and false certainty. "The more fixed we get about things, the more confusion, emotional disturbance, an...
Everyday Buddhism 49 - A Missing Future with David Farley
October 08, 2020 14:19 - 1 hour - 54 MBJoin me for the first of a series of interviews with podcast listeners on how they are coping with the pandemic. In this episode, David Farley, a travel and food writer who lives in New York City, joins me for a conversation. David wrote a blog post where he mused about our seeming missing future. He wrote: We can't envision what life is going to be like in, say, a year or what we'll be doing.... It's seriously anxiety-producing for many of us.... The only way we can maneuver, even survi...
Everyday Buddhism 48 - Announcing the Everyday Buddhism Lecture Series on Mindful Writing
September 26, 2020 19:26 - 17 minutes - 13 MBAnnouncing a new Everyday Buddhism feature for the Membership Community: A lecture series/workshop on mindful writing! In this series I hope to introduce you to a new way of practicing mindfulness through writing. As Gary Snyder wrote, meditation can put you totally into the world even as it takes you out of it. Mindfulness and meditation are practices of deliberate attention that can create a spacious awareness of what is and help us escape the narrow box in our heads where the thinker l...
Everyday Buddhism 47 - Building a Resilience Bank Account
September 20, 2020 19:20 - 26 minutes - 31.4 MBJoin me as I share some insights from an article by Tara Haelle, Your Surge Capacity is Depleted—It's Why You Feel Awful, and some insights of my own, that may help you find new attitudes and practices to help you keep going. Help you go the distance of this pandemic, even though we don't know how long that distance is—or what's at the end. This time of ambiguous loss can cause feelings of helplessness and hopelessness because our solution-oriented culture is actually destructive when face...
Everyday Buddhism 46 - 6 Steps for Coping with Uncertainty with Gregg Krech
August 12, 2020 23:04 - 1 hour - 81.8 MBWe're currently faced with a global pandemic, which reminds us how uncertain life really is. So what do we do? How do we cope? Join me in conversation with Gregg Krech, who uses the concepts of acceptance—active acceptance—to understand how we can't take effective action until we've accepted the reality of the situation we're in. Gregg talks about how a large portion of the population has not accepted the situation and others whose impatience pushes them to make bad decisions. Is there ano...
Everyday Buddhism 45 - We're All in the Same Storm But Not in the Same Boat
July 27, 2020 13:56 - 15 minutes - 18.7 MBJoin me for a short episode check-in and sharing of how I am taking personal action despite living in our current reality of uncertainty. Awakening to the fact that I was spending too much time anxiously looking "out there" at what was or could be coming ... or focusing on the horrible feelings inside me, I decided to turn my personal boat around. As Gregg Krech of the ToDo Institute reminds us "Everyone is dealing with losses but ultimately it's an individual thing.... It's not a mass iss...
Everyday Buddhism 44 - Chaos and Order: Personal Reflections, Poetry, and Chaos Theory
June 23, 2020 21:16 - 29 minutes - 38.9 MBJoin me for an episode that is part autobiographical, part solidarity with Pride and Black Lives matter, part poetry, part science, and part Buddhism. Sounds a bit chaotic, doesn't it? Yet I hope you find some relevant order. Sharing a recent experience with my own revisiting of internal trauma sparked by the external trauma of pandemic politics and social unrest, I tried to find order in the chaos through poetry and, of course, Buddhism. Every life has some chaos because as the poet Gre...
Everyday Buddhism 43 - Awakening to the Ordinary with Dr. Christiane Michelberger
May 28, 2020 18:35 - 1 hour - 123 MBJoin me for a special guest episode with Dr. Christiane Michelberger, a retired physician, psychoanalyst, and past spiritual seeker who currently mentors seekers in their quest to awaken. Christiane talks about how more than 10,000 hours of meditation and 40 years of studying Buddhist scriptures didn’t help her deal with debilitating fear when she was faced with the reality of breast cancer. It was then that she took steps to escape from a habit of "spiritual sleepwalking" and find a way t...
Everyday Buddhism 42 - How Not to Feel Like a Victim
May 11, 2020 12:25 - 33 minutes - 44.7 MBIn this episode, I reflect on our responses when we find ourselves in life situations that don't make sense and that are out of our control. As we make our way through the global Covid-19 pandemic we see humbling examples of courage and compassion. And we also see examples of people responding in fear and anger. The symptoms of fight, flight, or freeze—our natural responses to perceived threats—are everywhere you look. We have been smacked in our collective and previously comfortable faces...
Everyday Buddhism 41 - American Sutra with Duncan Williams
April 16, 2020 13:29 - 1 hour - 74.9 MBJoin me for a special guest episode with Duncan Ryuken Williams, the author of American Sutra: A Story of Faith and Freedom in the Second World War. 125,000+ Japanese-Americans we rounded up and placed in internment camps after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Many of these were Buddhists who persevered despite their imprisonment. Circumstances that were no fault of their own but because of their "Japanese faces" and their faith in a non-Christian religion seen as anti-American. And they kept ...
Everyday Buddhism 40 - Covid-19 Mind Protection
March 28, 2020 20:45 - 23 minutes - 29.9 MBThe whole world is afraid. A tiny piece of biological stuff—this virus—brought the world to its knees. A contagion or plague of this level is not new to the world but new to most of us living today. We have very little experience dealing with this level of uncertainty. This makes protecting the health of our minds and hearts as important as protecting the health of our bodies. There has never been a better time to develop a practice of finding a healthy balance between being informed and t...
Everyday Buddhism 39 - Let's Not Talk About Politics
February 16, 2020 20:38 - 27 minutes - 36.3 MBThere is a view of Buddhism that is idealistic. That it's all about meditating and chanting in an incense-filled room, hidden away from the world. That the peace promised in Buddhism comes from being away from, above, or different from, the troubles of the world. If your mind is full of what you think Buddhism or spirituality "should" be, no matter what teaching is placed at your feet, the grip of your expectations will prevent you from absorbing it or finding a new perspective that might ...
Everyday Buddhism 38 - And Yet, And Yet
February 02, 2020 22:00 - 16 minutes - 22 MBThis is a special episode dedicated to the life of our good friend and neighbor—too soon lost. It focuses on the haiku by Issa: This world of dew is a world of dew, and yet, and yet. Listen as I read writings of my grief and how I come to the realization that maybe "and yet" is not just "nevertheless it hurts" but also "but yet." It's all in how you show up for yourself and for others. In that showing up, false borders of belief and concepts disappear in our shared precariousness. I...
Everyday Buddhism 37 - Pragmatic Buddhism with Ken McLeod
January 15, 2020 22:14 - 1 hour - 92.3 MBJoin me for a special episode and conversation with Ken McLeod, author, translator, and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. Ken and I talk about his innovative approach to teaching and writing about traditional Buddhist texts and practices. I reached out to Ken because I connected on a deep level to the material in his books and in the written and audio presentations on his website, unfetteredmind.org. Ken McLeod's ability to accomplish a sort of direct pointing to a knowing experience beyond the...
Everyday Buddhism 36 - Random New Year's Thoughts
December 31, 2019 22:41 - 20 minutes - 26.8 MB2020 seems like something out of Sci-Fi. But here we are. And from my perspective—approaching my 67th birthday in a little under 2 weeks—we ARE living in what was the sci-fi from my childhood perspective. I imagine, though, that for most of my podcast listeners, how we are living today doesn't seem like sci-fi to you. It's not that new for you. It all depends on where you stand—your perspective. Here we are. From where you sit, listening to this podcast, you may be filled with hope...
Everyday Buddhism 35 - Bodhi Day: The Light is Inside!
December 08, 2019 20:46 - 23 minutes - 30.3 MBIn this episode, we celebrate Bodhi Day, the traditional celebration of the historical Buddha Shakyamuni's enlightenment. Yet, listen as we discover how it is a celebration of our enlightenment, too. The message of the December darkness is a messenger of our own enlightenment. Without darkness, we couldn't know light. Shakyamuni's enlightenment experience is ours. He proclaimed, "I and the great earth, and all beings are naturally and simultaneously awakened." We don't chase the darkness...
Everyday Buddhism 34 - The Book is Here! Book Launch Special
November 23, 2019 23:54 - 23 minutes - 29.8 MBIn this special episode, I celebrate with podcast listeners the publication of my book Everyday Buddhism: Real-Life Buddhist Teachings & Practices for Real Change. The book officially launches on Monday, November 26th. In this special episode, l'll share a bit about why I wrote the book and a few snippets from the book, plus announce a special offer to the Everyday Buddhism podcast tribe about a special, 1-day offer on the Kindle eBook valid only on Sunday, November 25th. So check out...
Everyday Buddhism 33 - Halloween: What Scares You? What Masks Do You Wear?
October 29, 2019 19:36 - 28 minutes - 36.4 MBIn this episode, we'll look at the overlaps between the pagan origination, rituals, and concepts of Halloween and Tibetan Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism ... and also examine it all from an Everyday Buddhism perspective. What scares you? What do you NOT want to look at? What masks do you wear? Do you show yourself as someone without a shadow or demon side? Is the so-called "spirituality" we want, we crave, and grasp onto something that is both grounded while reaching to the sky? Buddhism i...
Everyday Buddhism 32 - Buddhism, Baseball, and Life
September 28, 2019 18:18 - 19 minutes - 25 MBJoin me and round the bases for a look at baseball as a metaphor for the Buddhist teaching of the Three Marks of Existence: Impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and the lack of a discrete self. Life, like baseball, is a team sport. In baseball, it's not just about the pitcher. In life, it's not just about me or you. All the players and contributing causes and conditions come together to score runs in a dominating offensive win or through a defensive no-hitter. In life, we can't do anything on...
Everyday Buddhism 31 - The Boundless Heart: Bodhicitta
September 14, 2019 20:39 - 40 minutes - 51.9 MBIn this episode, we talk about Bodhicitta. Bodhicitta characterizes the path of a Mahayana practitioner. It is Bodhicitta that creates a Bodhisattva and it is Bodhicitta that ultimately creates a Buddha. In Tibetan, compassion is translated as the nobility or greatness of heart which implies wisdom, discernment, empathy, unselfishness, and abundant kindness. Bodhicitta is compassion working with a mind awakened by right view. It is the joining of compassion and emptiness. We'll examine h...
Everyday Buddhism 30 - The Buddha Sat Right Here with Dena Moes
August 04, 2019 20:32 - 54 minutes - 66.9 MBIn this special guest episode, join me in a conversation with Dena Moes, the author of the book The Buddha Sat Right Here: A Family Odyssey Through India and Nepal. Listen as we share some laughs, talk deep Buddhist philosophy, explore the difference between Indian and U.S. cultures and the way children are raised, and how in India there is a complete incorporation of interdependence as a reality, not a spiritual concept. Sample a taste of Dena's award-winning book that is equal parts tr...
Everyday Buddhism 29 - Right Speech is Right Listening
July 28, 2019 19:24 - 22 minutes - 28.5 MBIn 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 main...
Everyday Buddhism 28 - June Weddings, Relationships, and Perfection?
July 01, 2019 21:06 - 23 minutes - 30.5 MBWhat 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 whe...
Everyday Buddhism 27 - Right Mindfulness and Meditation
June 12, 2019 20:49 - 1 hour - 78.2 MBIn 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 ...
Everyday Buddhism 26 - Why Sangha? Bringing Buddhism to Life
April 22, 2019 13:37 - 24 minutes - 31 MBThe 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 ...
Everyday Buddhism 25 - Pureland Buddhism with Satya Robyn
March 23, 2019 18:19 - 1 hour - 81.6 MBIn 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 sim...
Everyday Buddhism 24 - Appreciating Life Through Death Meditation
March 14, 2019 15:02 - 28 minutes - 39 MBMeditating 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...
Everyday Buddhism 23 - Japanese Psychology and Buddhism with Gregg Krech
February 18, 2019 20:14 - 57 minutes - 69.7 MBThe "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 wit...
Everyday Buddhism 22 - Release Your Cows
January 26, 2019 21:32 - 26 minutes - 35.6 MBIn 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...
Everyday Buddhism 21 - Tibetan Buddhism: There is Only One Dharma
January 05, 2019 20:48 - 1 hour - 102 MBTibetan 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 Maha...
Everyday Buddhism 20 - A Bright Dawn: Conversation with Rev. Koyo Kubose
December 20, 2018 19:03 - 1 hour - 90.4 MBIn 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 ...
Everyday Buddhism 19 - Bodhi Day Special: The Grace of Light
December 08, 2018 15:57 - 10 minutes - 13.3 MBJoin me for a special episode in honor of Bodhi Day, celebrating Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. The long nights of December are marked by numerous celebrations using light as a symbol. Bodhi Day can be adopted as a holiday for your own personal or family "culture." Light symbolizes a rekindling of the spiritual impulse and a turning toward awakening, toward enlightenment. Bodhi Day is a time to celebrate our own awakening to the spirit of our Buddha Nature that is lighting our path w...
Everyday Buddhism 18 - The 5 Precepts: Gentle Guides Not Commandments
December 04, 2018 18:02 - 54 minutes - 67.7 MBIn this episode I'll talk about my uneasy relationship with the 5 Precepts. Do they produce more questions—and more confusion—than answers? Do they cause more suffering than they prevent? I'll explore how, if looked at as rules and "thou shall not's", they set up barriers between Right View and the Dharma I believe the Buddha taught. And they can also separate people from each other and themselves, if they feel like failures. When we work with the precepts, we do so with the understanding ...
Everyday Buddhism 17 - Radically Happy: Conversation with Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon
November 10, 2018 20:39 - 1 hour - 79.4 MBJoin me in a conversation with Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon, authors of the just-released book, Radically Happy: A User's Guide to the Mind. In the book and in our conversation, ancient wisdom meets modern methods as we explore the universal search for well-being, for happiness. As Rinpoche and Erric discuss with me, the root of happiness has somehow slipped through our fingers, as we gallop through are always-on, always distracted modern world. And they discuss how their new book w...
Everyday Buddhism 16 - Simple Awareness and the Many Forms of Meditation
October 21, 2018 15:24 - 56 minutes - 71.3 MBWhen we think of Buddhism, we think of meditation. In this episode I will take you on a tour of the many ways to meditate. But at the core of the episode is the simple awareness that all meditation rests on ... and that everyday happiness rests on. Join me as I talk about what simple awareness is. Awareness is simply that and our minds are aware by their very nature, yet that nature is obscured by thoughts and emotions. Simple, clear awareness exists between our thoughts and underneath our...
Everyday Buddhism 15 - A Buddha Belongs to the World
October 09, 2018 17:37 - 32 minutes - 40.4 MBJoin me as I explore the very earthly foundations of Buddhism itself, as we turn the light of Dharma towards ecology. Siddhartha Gautama asked the Earth to confirm his enlightenment, his Buddhahood. He did not ask for help from heavenly beings. He asked the Earth. In an episode celebrating "Earth Care Week", we'll reflect on climate change and think about our own personal relationship with the earth, as spiritual practice. In giving up grasping at heaven "out there", our home, Mother Earth...
Everyday Buddhism 14 - Protesting? What's in Your Mind?
September 23, 2018 21:22 - 1 hour - 76.3 MBIn the first "Ask Me Anything" Episode, I respond to a listener's question about Buddhist insight into protesting. I circle around this question by sharing thoughts I had from my own life and two Dharma talks I gave in January and July of 2017. Instead of focusing what we're protesting and why, I talk more about what was in my mind and how it made my feel. This is where I think the focus needs to be: "What's in your mind?" Does your urge for speech or action come from an intention of anger...
Everyday Buddhism 13 - Right Effort: Joyful Balance
September 04, 2018 22:10 - 54 minutes - 70.3 MBIn this podcast, we'll look at the sixth part of The Eightfold Path and the first step into the area of meditation: Right Effort. Is your energy, your efforts, positive contributors to making you more content ... and making the people around you more content? If not, maybe you need to bring attention to and tweak your habits a little bit. We'll look at the hindrances to right effort and the obstacles to concentration or destructive trains of thought. It's all about noticing and removing or...
Everyday Buddhism 12 - MORE Koans: Bringing Them Into the Everyday
August 26, 2018 20:06 - 18 minutes - 23.7 MBIn this podcast, we'll look more closely at koans, poetry, koan practice in general ... and we'll see how to work with one koan, specifically ... to start your practice. We'll look at the koan, "Manjushri Enters the Gate." I will provide an interpretation from Rev. Gyomay Kubose, as well as how I worked with this koan. But each person must bring his own wisdom to a koan. Koan practice IS for everyday life! It is for taking up your everyday — the kitchen or the office — as a koan. How can...
Everyday Buddhism 11 - Koans: Reaching the Limit of Thought
August 20, 2018 12:52 - 44 minutes - 55.8 MBUp for a fun challenge? In this podcast, I talk about my love of Zen Koans, as one of the rarest practices for 'messing with' your conceptual mind and shaking your false trust in the stability of what we think is 'knowledge.' A koan is, in essence, a problem that can't be solved by the intellect. In trying to understand it, you run up against the limitations of thought and, hopefully, tap into a direct and non-verbal awareness of reality. Most people think of koans as riddles or puzzles to...