Listen Now

A fun chat that started with a regular call. We were meant to be talking about updating this website, but after “How are you doing? How’s your practice?” we got into an interesting discussion so began recording! We hope that you too, dear listener, will enjoy this.

Audio version Topics

• 0:00 Intro and Mahasi Sayadaw style ‘noting’ practice
• 3:00 On high-speed ‘noting’ meditation
• 5:30 Do all types of meditation lead to the same place? Comparisons with yoga and other, Buddhist types of meditation.
• 7:00 Altered Traits book – studies of long-term, advanced meditators. Similarities and differences between veterans of different meditation traditions.
• 9:00 Zen Masters in the early 20th Century – part of the II World war effort.
• 12:00 Bill Hamilton – Saints & Psychopaths book. Can meditation touch or change extreme psychological conditions?
• 14:00 Daniel Ingram & Kenneth Folk on the limits of ‘awakening’ – Can it save you from being a ‘total arsehole’?
• 15:00 Can metta ‘loving kindness’ meditation make you a better person? Jasmine on her current practice and how empathy practices have shaped her personality.
• 17:00 Emotional intelligence at work and on the career ladder. Chade-Meng Tang‘s Search Inside Yourself book on habit building
• 18:40 Enlightenment doesn’t solve all your problems. While panna (wisdom) has an achievable goal, the trainings of sila (morality, virtue) and samadhi (concentration, ‘coming together’) are infinite.
• 20:00 Bill & Jasmine‘s current focus in meditation
• 21:00 Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (now the Triratna Buddhist Community) and ‘Pure Land’ Buddhist approaches to enlightenment.
• 22:00 Jasmine‘s family’s take on enlightenment
• 24:00 Bahia of the bark cloth! Buddha’s best ever student who reached full enlightenment in about 5 minutes after being given the instruction. Bill [I missed ‘smell’ from the list of sense 😄]
• 27:00 Going meta on the podcast itself – thoughts on colours, the meditation podcast market, and the feedback we’ve received so far. Thanks for that, by the way! 😃

References

Books

• Daniel Ingram – Mastering the Core Teachings of the Buddha
• Bill Hamilton – Saints & Psychopaths
• Daniel Goleman and Richard J Davidson – Altered Traits
• Chade-Meng Tang – Search Inside Yourself

Other

• Bahia of the Bark Cloth Story! – Good article here: Take a Good Hard Look

We’re on Youtube too 😄