Episode 92: The Paramitas: Challenging the False Promise of Security

10/15/24 • 7 min

[This episode originally aired on October 25, 2022] The six paramitas challenge the mistaken view that we can make ourselves secure by grasping more and more tightly • to practice the paramita of generosity, we need to make a point of letting go, of giving away • the paramita of discipline challenges our attachment to sloppiness and comfort, to cruising through life in a superficial way • the paramita of patience works with our attachment to speed and aggression as a way to sustain or protect ourselves • the paramita of exertion addresses our attachment to laziness, inertia, and the avoidance of effort and hard work • the paramita of meditation deals with our attachment to our thoughts as solid and real, challenging their power and their influence • the prajna paramita is an assault on our deep-rooted tendencies of denial and ignorance • each paramita gives us ways to chip away at the deep-rooted habit of trying to secure ourselves through our grasping.

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Episode 179: Religiosity

It can be easy to fall into religiosity as we pursue a spiritual path • contemplative traditions designed to cut through pretense and nurture humility can do just the opposite • we grow up with all sorts of ideas of what a spiritual person is, and we may try to model ourselves into some kind of preset image, trying to be and act “spiritual,” trying to do everything spiritually • this can create a feeling or the sense that we're being super religious, super good • this quality of religiosity often carries the atmosphere of everything being serious and solemn • we may benefit from a certain level of earnestness and religiosity, but at some point it is so important to lighten up • I have found that those that are most deeply committed, the most reverent, are those that are at ease expressing the most irreverent ideas • there is something truly powerful in the combination of the profound and the humorous, seeing the profundity within the lightness, and the lightness in even the most profound and challenging teachings • on a simple, ordinary level, we can explore our own concepts of what it means to be a spiritual person, and how that might differ from being religious • we can look into the difference between a kind of positive irreverence and frivolousness • we can explore whether it's possible to have true reverence without falling into self-conscious religiosity, without losing the light touch of irreverence.

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Episode 93: Contemplating Impermanence

[This episode originally aired on November 1, 2022] Of all the contemplative practices of Buddhism, it is said that the contemplation of impermanence is the most useful • dealing with change isn’t easy: we’d like to put things together and have them stay together • we tend to see change as disruption rather than as the way things are • but in reality, change is not a disruption, it is fundamental • change just is; it is the nature of everything • trying to hold onto the non-reality that one can prevent change creates a burden that depletes our strength and energy • traditionally, four different ways are presented to contemplate the truth of impermanence: every birth leads to a death | every meeting leads to a parting | everything created eventually is destroyed | every gathering eventually disperses • each of these contemplations brings us back to immediate experience, to a deeper understanding of what impermanence is really all about • we begin to not only accept change at a deeper level, but to actually appreciate and even celebrate the the vivid, life-filled reality of constant change that marks our existence.