Secular Buddhist Association

Jason Siff Jason Siff speaks with us about Unlearning Meditation in the second of a two part episode. Jason Siff was a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, where he began studying Pali and teaching meditation. After he left the Buddhist monastic order and returned to Los Angeles in 1990, he studied …

*~*~* The first time I am aware that I met another Buddhist, I met several.  There was the man who would become my teacher, Dennis, who was quietly organizing a visit from some Tibetan lamas and the monks accompanying them. There may have been more Buddhists among those of us who had arrived to hear …

I’ve been part of several Buddhist communities in my area, but over time found them lacking in various ways. I was excited to discover that in Second Life (SL), a virtual universe of worlds and communities of all kinds, had a big Buddhist population. Not only that, there are communities for all the traditional schools …

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Bug Girl Panel discussion on coming out to one’s family and friends as an atheist. We talk with panelists PZ Myers, Bug Girl, Jennifer Ouellette, Lyra Lynx, Maria Walters, Jen Mana, Ted Meissner, Debbie Goddard, Carrie Iwan, and Dave Walbridge. Religious tolerance is a very different thing from acceptance. Sometimes we’re able to come out …

We’ve covered a lot of ground in these Weekly Practices, and now you should have a good idea of what mindfulness and concentration are and how meditation develops both. We’ve also looked closely at the impermanence of everything, including the five aggregates that we tend to mistake for a static self. Lastly, we took a good look at craving and attachment.

This week we’ll examine dukkha, often translated as suffering. Dukkha is also the third mark of existence and the subject of the noble truths.

For me, yes! Just as I would pick cherries from a tree, taking the ripe ones and the almost ripe, and leaving unripe on the tree and the rotten ones on the ground (or throw them away), I have cherry picked from Buddhism. Over the last ten years or so, I have studied Zen Buddhism, …

One of the many little things I have discovered while studying the Pali texts over the last several years is that the people of the Buddha’s time were obsessed with food. You may laugh, if you like, but this is actually important. I hear all the time that, in interpreting these texts, we need to …

In this talk, Noah explain the three characteristics of existence and how it relates to our every day lives.

Rodrigo Rodriguez Rodrigo Rodriguez speaks with us about shakuhachi music and his new album, Traditional and Modern Pieces Shakuhachi, in this bonus episode. Hi, everyone. This week, May 2012, the podcast has had over two hundred thousand downloads. I’d like to celebrate this milestone by doing a special bonus episode in addition to the regular …