Grant Steves

Grant is a retired educator who taught debate, communications, language arts, and more for forty years. At an early age, he started reading books on philosophy and religion that had belonged to his grandfather. It was his introduction to Buddhism. In college he pursued Asian studies, and that was the time in which Allen Watts was popularizing Zen. After graduate school at the University of Illinois at Champaign/Urbana, he became interested in yoga and meditation.

Grant completed a Dr. in Theology with an emphasis on cult religions. In the last three years, he has been an active member of MN Atheists. He has interviewed and been interviewed on their cable program and radio program, and has lectured on cults, fundamentalism, and atheism. His most recent project is on the concept of worldviews.

In today’s podcast we cover topics ranging from spirituality, atheism, conventional reality, chocolate, single malt scotch, and sweet sweet luvin! Let’s join Grant at Borders Books in St. Paul…

“… If you do have a sense of kindness for yourself, if you do want yourself to be well, it would be well to forgive… Otherwise, guess who’s making you uncomfortable? You! So, forgiveness is letting go of your own self-imposed discomfort over the various shenanigans of other beings… People are up to shenanigans all the time. And they’ve got their own shenaniganned idea why.” — Ajahn Sona

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:: Discuss this episode ::

Books

Videos

Web Links

• Brahma Viharas
• Center for Inquiry
• Godiva Chocolatier
• Guylian Belgian Chocolates
• Laphroaig Single Malt Scotch
• Lindt Master Swiss Chocolatier
• Metta Meditation
• The Paper Chase
• Secularizing Buddhism — Making it Accessible or Stripping the Roots?
• Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP) in cardiac bypass patients: A multicenter randomized trial of uncertainty and certainty of receiving intercessory prayer
• Alan Watts

Music for This Episode

Chikuzen Shakuhachi Series

The music heard in the middle of the podcast is from the Chikuzen Shakuhachi Series, Volume 1, courtesy of Tai Hei Shakuhachi. The tracks used in this episode are:

• Track 6 :: Esashi Oiwake