Buddhist Geeks

Episode Description: We’re joined again by spiritual teacher and author Terry Patten to discuss the multidimensional nature of practice. We speak about the form he teaches, called Integral Life Practice, one that has it’s roots in the work of Sri Aurobindo, Michael Murphy and George Leonard, and according to Terry goes back even to the time of Patanjali and the Buddha. We also go into depth on the topic of practice itself, exploring some of the many phases, or seasons, that a practitioner often experiences, including the honeymoon phase, the plateu, falling from grace, and awakening. This is ...

Episode Description: Terry Patten--spiritual teacher and author--joins us to speak about some of the challenging issues involve in teaching and practicing an empowering form of dharma. We begin the conversation by exploring his history with infamous teacher Adi Da. Patten spent many years practicing intimately with Da, and shares his incredible love and appreciation for his guru, while also openly acknowledging the many challenges and paradoxes inherent in his approach. He also speaks about the problem of the “rare specimen” and the ways that incredible teachers inadvertently create “demotional”, as opposed to devotional, cultures around themselves. This topics leads ...

Episode Description: We’re joined by spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen to explore the story of how he came to teach what he calls “evolutionary enlightenment.” Andrew begins by sharing an early spiritual experience, that really set him on the path of seeking. He also shares some of his background with Buddhist meditation, which he began with Joseph Goldstein and the famous Indian teacher Anagarika Munindra-ji. And finally he speaks about the most profound encounter he had with a spiritual master, with the late H.W.L Poonja, a teacher in the non-dual tradition of Advaita Vedanta. From here, he shares ...

Episode Description: We’re joined again on Buddhist Geeks by one of the most influential figures in the transpersonal psychology movement, Dr. Charley Tart. We cover a huge range of topics in this interview, covering many things related to what he refers to as a “broad scale approach to meditation.” Charley starts off by speaking about several hypnosis and sensory deprivation research studies, wherein the “demand characteristics” of the experiments dramatically affected the results of the research. We explore the implications this might have on the “set” or context that is used to set up meditation practice, and on ...

The following video took place at the Buddhist Geeks Conference in 2011, and was the opening Keynote of the event, delivered by Shinzen Young. Talk Description: How the cross-fertilization of Classical Enlightenment and the Modern Mind could radically alter the course of human history.

Episode Description: We’re joined this week by Dr. Kelly McGonigal, to discuss her work at Stanford University, where she is teaching compassion-based practices from the Buddhist tradition, taught in a way that pulls from scientific research and appeals to a secular sensibility. As part of her work with CCARE she shares some of her background with Stanford as well as her long-standing Buddhist practice, which pulls from both the Zen and Tibetan traditions. We close the discussion by exploring some of the difficulties with teaching meditation in a secular context, as well as some of the benefits that come ...

Episode Description: We’re joined again this week by Brown University neuroscience researcher Willougbhy Britton. Willougbhy begins this episode by going into further depth into some of the typical experiences that have been reported during her research into the difficult stages of the contemplative path. She lists out typical changes in cognition, affect (emotion), perception, and other psychological material. She also explores the typical duration of these experiences and explores some of the philosophical and practical ramifications of these stages. Toward the end she also speaks about how she and her colleagues--all part of this emerging group of ...

I just watched the keynote from Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, at their annual f8 developer’s conference. He introduced some very interesting new features to the Facebook platform, including what their calling Timeline and another feature called Ticker. The timeline provides a way to view your entire life history on FB, including anything you decide to add before you starting using the service. And the ticker functionality shows a real-time updating of day-to-day activities from your friends, like what their listening to (the bg podcast anyone?), what their reading, what their cooking, etc. This doesn’t appear ...

Episode Description: We’re joined this week by Brown University neuroscience researcher Willougbhy Britton. In this episode Dr. Britton shares some of the details of a research project that she’s working on called, “The Difficult Stages of the Contemplative Path.” She goes into the purpose of the research project and also some of the research methods she’s using to establish a helpful subjective phenomenology for these difficult stages. She also speaks about how she has collaborated with both meditation teachers and Buddhist scholars to help determine what the common experiences are for practitioners, and whether they have textual references ...

Episode Description: This week’s episode comes from the recent Buddhist Geeks conference where Ethan Nichtern, a Buddhist teacher in the Shambhala tradition, speaks about ways in which the internet falls as a an aid in dharma. He uses the Tibetan teaching on co-emergence to frame the simultaneous benefits and harms of the internet, while also speaking about the limitations of a DIY (Do it Yourself) approach, especially when not being open to genuine human contact, with your community or with a teacher. And he argues that in order to go beyond a surface level dharma, which is mostly what ...