Archive for November 2015
Episode 235 :: Gerry Stribling :: Buddhism for Dudes: A Jarhead's Field Guide to Mindfulness
Gerry Stribling Gerry Stribling joins us to speak about his book, Buddhism for Dudes: A Jarhead’s Field Guide to Mindfulness. We’ve heard a lot lately from the McCritics of mindfulness, fear mongering with a willful ignorance about teaching mindfulness in the military. These transparently agenda laden accusations about mindful snipers are conspicuously absent of evidence,…
Read MoreBatchelor's Ten Theses of Secular Dharma
All of the discussion on this website can be said to revolve around a single question: What is Secular Buddhism? How is it secular, and how is it Buddhist? What can we take from the traditional texts and practices, and what ought we leave behind? How does the dharma fit in with our knowledge from…
Read MoreAt Cātumā: the Fallibility of Human Perfection
What is the aim of practice? Following right effort, it is to emphasize the skillful and deemphasize the unskillful in thought and action. So we aim in meditation to become more directly aware of the real character of our minds, and particularly our motivations. In so doing we begin to see how the pain that…
Read MorePractice Circle: Relax
I think every contemplative technique I’m aware of involves at least some degree of relaxation. The practices I was taught in MBSR all begin with bringing awareness to areas of tightness and holding in the body and inviting them to relax; the Body Scan, which is the first technique one learns in MBSR, consists of…
Read MoreEpisode 234 :: Leigh Brasington :: Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas
Leigh Brasington Leigh Brasington returns to speak with us about Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. With all the publicity and interest around mindfulness these days, it seems one slice of the samatha pie is getting the lion’s share of attention. And that may be so in practice, too, as the four foundations…
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