Attention, Awareness, and the Great Adventure, with Culadasa

Culadasa talks with Michael W. Taft. After decades of Buddhist practice, Culadasa exploded on the scene a few years ago with his groundbreaking book The Mind Illuminated, an incredibly comprehensive guide to meditation. It’s an erudite mixture of neuroscience, traditional Buddhist practice, and Culadasa’s own ideas about how to gt the most out of practice. In this episode we talk about his definitions of attention and awareness, how his system compares to that of his friend teacher Shinzen Young, how the meditative brain works, dealing with aging and death, and much more.

Learn more about Culadasa and his teaching at culadasa.com

Show Notes

0:15 – Introduction and overview

2:30 – Culadasa’s system vs. Shinzen Young’s: stability of attention

7:55 – Sustained attention and effortlessness

10:20 – Culadasa’s system vs. Shinzen Young’s: sensory clarity and peripheral awareness

19:55 – Mindfulness as the optimal interaction between attention and awareness

22:55 – Conceptual overlays and the lower limits of conscious perception

32:50 – Attention selects objects from peripheral awareness

35:00 – The interactive role of attention and awareness in maintaining mindfulness in daily life

38:30 – How strong mindfulness affects emotions, wholesome and unwholesome behavior, and the practice of virtue

43:50 – The importance of the Eightfold Path post-awakening

47:20 – The Ten Fetter, Four Path Model: characteristics of paths and the dropping of fetters

59:49 – Spiritual development does not end at Fourth Path

1:01:57 – Old age, sickness and death are part of the Great Adventure

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