Report from Wisdom 2.0: Living with Awareness, Wisdom, and Compassion

Ted and I had the opportunity last week to attend the Wisdom 2.0: Living with Awareness, Wisdom, and Compassion conference in Redwood City, California. We listened to speakers who are well known in the Buddhist and Yoga communities, as well as some who are prominent in the technology industry. It was fascinating to hear how mindfulness, compassion, awareness, and empathy are being brought into the workplace through classes, yoga sessions, talks, etc, as well as how digital media are bringing people throughout the globe together to share and discuss these topics.

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Episode 98 :: John Peacock :: Buddha the Radical to Creeping Brahmanism

Scholar and Associate Director of The Oxford Mindfulness Centre John Peacock joins us to speak about secular views of early Buddhism.

It’s strange, thinking from our current vantage point, that the religious edifice we call Buddhism might not have been intended by the Buddha to become such an edifice. But, unless we take a closer look, unless we allow ourselves to think outside what the traditions are telling us, we might miss that potential fact of this pragmatic and beneficial practice.

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Meditation Only?

“Therefore, Ananda, you should live with one’s self as an island, one’s self as a refuge . . . . And how does a monk live like this? Here Ananda, a monk abides contemplating the body as body, earnestly, clearly aware, mindful . . . and likewise with regard to feelings, mind and dhamma.  And…

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The Buddha’s Teaching on Loving-Kindness: A Mature Path to Awakening

In much contemporary Buddhist teachings, the paths of the heart are often relegated to second place behind the primacy of Wisdom on the path to awakening. In the earliest texts, however, the Buddha appears to consider the cultivation of kindness and compassion as a fully viable and equal path to awakening, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.…

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Episode 92 :: Tony Bernhard :: Culture Independent Buddhist Retreats

Tony Bernhard Tony Bernhard speaks with us about facilitating a-cultural Buddhist teaching and retreats. Hi, everyone. As we’ve seen in the growth and popularization of Buddhism in the West, the teaching and practice takes on forms that may not fit with the cultural background from which they’ve come. Our commitment to Buddhism does not, as…

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Episode 91 :: Noah Levine :: The Heart of the Revolution

Dharma Punx founder Noah Levine speaks with us about his new book, The Heart of the Revolution.

Many of us who come to a Buddhist practice in contemporary Western society, come to it from many directions. We’re interested in the culture of Japan. We have a martial arts practice. We have some suffering in our life, and whatever we’ve been doing just isn’t working. Often this suffering manifests in unhealthy ways, increasing our pain rather than helping us find release.

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Episode 87 :: David Loy :: Why Buddhism Needs the West

David Loy David Loy joins us to talk about why Buddhism needs the West, studies in lack, and the selective evolutionary pressures on traditional practices. What happens when Buddhism, or any other traditional practice, encounters a new culture? It changes, grows, and finds new forms that suit the new environment in which it finds itself.…

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