30 minutes | May 15th 2020

Episode 4 – Limits to enlightenment

A fun chat that started with a regular call. We were meant to be talking about updating this website, but after ā€œHow are you doing? How’s your practice?ā€ 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 ā€˜noting’ practice
  • 3:00 On high-speed ā€˜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 ā€˜awakening’ – Can it save you from being a ā€˜total arsehole’?
  • 15:00 Can metta ā€˜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 Tangā€˜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, ā€˜coming together’) are infinite.
  • 20:00 Bill & Jasmineā€˜s current focus in meditation
  • 21:00 Friends of the Western Buddhist Order (now the Triratna Buddhist Community) and ā€˜Pure Land’ Buddhist approaches to enlightenment.
  • 22:00 Jasmineā€˜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 ā€˜smell’ from the list of sense šŸ˜„]
  • 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! 😃
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