Archive for February 2015
Self and Social Status
When we introduce ourselves to someone new, they will ask us who we are. It’s a hard question to answer. In a nutshell it’s a question about self identity. There are various culturally formed habits we fall into when answering. I have family in Spain, where asking your name is is not entirely innocent. There they…
Read MoreEpisode 219 :: Alexander Wynne :: Creative Engagement with Tradition
Alexander Wynne Alexander Wynne joins us to speak about how we may creatively engage with tradition. Just today the latest issue of Buddhadharma arrived in my mailbox, with a cover story about the mindfulness movement. The piece was introduced by my friend Jenny Wilks, who like many of us lives in the two overlapping but…
Read MoreEarly Roots of the Four Noble Truths?
The triad of gratification, danger, and escape is one of the Buddha’s most incisive contemplations for investigating everyday experience. In his book on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, Anālayo says that “each of these insights can be considered a particular aspect of [the Buddha’s] comprehensive realization” of the dhamma. (p. 106n57). The Buddha applies the formula quite literally…
Read MorePractice Circle: Energy and Information
In his book Mindsight, Dr. Dan Siegel tells the story of when he began trying to understand the mind in a serious way. As he approached experts in various disciplines, he soon encountered a fundamental problem: there was no agreed-upon definition of what the mind is. As Siegel convened an interdepartmental working group at UCLA,…
Read MoreBāhiya's Training on Mental Obsession
The Buddha’s succinct, cryptic teaching of the dhamma to the bark-cloth wearing ascetic Bāhiya is one of the most famous in the early Canon. Bāhiya, you should train yourself thus: In reference to the seen, there will be only the seen. In reference to the heard, only the heard. In reference to the sensed, only…
Read MoreEpisode 218 :: David McRaney :: You Are Not So Smart
David McRaney David McRaney joins us to speak about delusion from his blog and book, You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You’re Deluding Yourself. How do we know, what we know? Think about it. How many times have…
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