“When we practice with all conditions, we gain improvisational skills for life; we learn how to creatively adapt to things outside our comfort zone, thereby widening the experience of peace […]
Blog
Yin Meditation: The Rhythmic Pulse of Consciousness (Episode 124)
“You know, you get a lot of people who are supposed to be hip. And they act like they’re supposed to be hip, which makes a big difference. But being […]
Improvising Through Fear: Dharma Talk (Episode 123)
“The more we realize that most of our views of ourselves, of others, and of presumed limits regarding our talents, our health, and our happiness were mindlessly accepted by us […]
Dr. Ellen Langer: Mindfulness Without Meditation (Episode 122)
“Social psychologists argue that who we are at any one time depends mostly on the context in which we find ourselves. But who creates the context? The more mindful we […]
Flowing From Self-Doubt to Confidence: Dharma Talk (Episode 121)
“To borrow language from music training, meditative training can be seen as a development and refinement of capacities for improvisational flow within and across the changing landscapes of rhythmic (physical), […]
On the Varieties of the Sleepy Experience: Dharma Talk (Episode 120)
One form of drowsiness and low energy that can arise in meditative practice is the sort that stems from discouragement and disappointment. Very often, unacknowledged expectations can fuel a subtle […]
Howard Axelrod: The Point of Vanishing (Episode 119)
During his junior year of college, a tragic accident during a game of pick-up basketball disrupted Howard Axelrod’s course in life. As a way to make sense of himself and […]
The Way of Yin – Receptivity and Creativity on the Path
Just as a musician trains their ear, their sense of time, their technique, their sensitivity in relationship to other musicians, in other words, just as a musician can develop these various musical capacities, I see different meditation approaches as ways of deepening and refining contemplative capacities.
A Tale of Two Selves: Dharma Talk (Episode 118)
“The ‘transcendent’ big ‘S’ Self is one hundred percent present on and within each and every experience. In fact, the Self is what is conscious of every experience.” – Josh […]
Fundamental Wrongness to Unconditional Rightness: Dharma Talk (Episode 117)
“The path tends to move along a continuum from personal dukkha – or fundamental wrongness – to a transformational awakening – or unconditional rightness.” – Josh Summers
Jenny Odell: How To Do Nothing (Episode 116)
“To me, the only habit worth ‘designing for’ is the habit of questioning one’s habitual ways of seeing, and that is what artists, writers, and musicians help us to do.” […]
The Biochemistry of Qi
When our Qi is harmonized we feel physically relaxed, emotionally grounded, mentally calm and engaged. In other words, Qi harmonization is the basis for a thriving life.
On Meditative Process and Experience: Dharma Talk (Episode 115)
“The perch is the seed of stillness. Receptivity is the seed of awareness. And choice is the seed of surrender. In the beginning, these principles feel distinct, but with time, […]
The Tao of Progress
Recently, a question came in about how to assess one’s “progress” in meditation. The question captivated me because I’ve heard many ways of describing meditative progress. In a recent talk, I took a first pass at answering the student’s question.
Anxiety’s Antidote: Dharma Talk (Episode 114)
Natural selection did not program humans to be happy or to see the world accurately; it simply optimized our ability to get our genes into the next generation. This calculus […]
Robert Wright: Averting the Apocalypse (Episode 113)
The rapid acceleration of technological evolution paired with the slower evolution of human psychology poses a serious existential threat. Will human psychology evolve to avert the apocalypse? Robert Wright has […]
The Touchstone of Witness: Dharma Talk (Episode 112)
“But no matter the medicinal virtues of being a true friend or sustaining a long close friendship with another, the ultimate touchstone of friendship is not improvement, neither of the […]
The Tao of Progress: Dharma Talk (Episode 111)
“The yin-yang symbol is not, therefore, what we call a dualism, but rather an explicit duality expressing an implicit unity.” – Alan Watts
Angulimala’s Karma: Dharma Talk (Episode 110)
“Most people think there are a lot of bad people running around in the world. There aren’t a lot of bad people, there are a lot of bad ideas and […]
Attuning, Atoning: Dharma Talk (Episode 109)
“On the path we open to the experience of bad karma – created by ourselves and by others – and we turn it into good dharma, the development of compassion […]
V for Vendetta: Dharma Talk (Episode 108)
“The untrained mind gets lost and follows these things; it forgets itself, and then we think that it is we who are upset or at ease or whatever. But really, […]