Podcasts

What happens when we are in the midst of disagreement?  This can apply to a marriage, a friendship, a community or (perhaps especially) a legislative debate or an election. The Buddha had some thoughts on this as noted in the famed Quarrel of Kosambi, where he offers...

Michael asks the audience in this week's talk, what it is they think that enlightenment will bring them. He then goes forward to suggest that enlightenment will bring nothing to our experience that we don't already have. But its realization can fundamentally alter the...

While several of Michael's students have gone through the trials and tribulations of going through the shuso ceremony, where students offer up (among other things) their first Dharma talk, David Fitzgerald was the first to have his inaugural talk to the community...

So what is it that gets in the way of Awakening? If we are already Awake, why don't we feel it? According to Michael, wisdom traditions seem to offer up some suggestions. Among the most important pointer is stillness itself. Without stillness there can be no authentic...

If we're willing to follow our fear and our negativity with our whole being, according to Michael, we are offered an opportunity to awaken. The loosening of our individual consciousness into a universal awareness is the byproduct of an authentic meditation practice...

In this talk, Michael walks meditators through the rough stages of spiritual ascendancy. With practice, he shows, the egoic structures as their practice deepens. He goes on to suggest that the felt-sense of what's real is what we call, "love." Also, he talks about the...

The more we can forgive, the deeper our practice becomes.

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The Zen saying "Drinking this cup of green tea, I stop the war" offers us a chance to explore our own relationship with war. While it may sound passive and irresponsible on the surface, how we meet even the most basic activities internally, supports how we meet...

"This deep, spiritual work," according to Michael, "is ultimately, is about resolve." In Stephen Batchelor's, Buddhism Without Beliefs, this idea of committed, fearlessness is supported where he suggests that we continually take accurate stock of our lives and then...

Michael points out, in this talk, how we  must be willing to let go of our old habits in order to develop new ones. As Joseph Campbell says, "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us. The old skin has to be...