Podcasts

Kanshi Sosan's work, The Mind of Absolute Trust, offers us some great guidance in relation to meeting our lives fully. Michael leads the sangha in a reading and brief interactive analysis of the text, pointing out how we might best integrate the meaning of the text...

Consciously meeting the grace brought on by deep meditative work allows for us to develop a steadiness in our day-to-day lives. This doesn't mean that we won't experience discomfort and pain. In fact, when we let both our physical and emotional discomfort inform our...

What happens when we realize that we can no longer live the way we have always lived? What happens when we stop our attempts at escape and instead face our lives fully, totally and completely? The answers to these questions are the foundations to a path that takes us...

In this talk, Michael explores the inherent limitations that fear puts on each of us. At the beginning of the talk he asks how we might live if we knew we couldn't fail. How might this alter our approach to life? Without the constant threat of failure, he argues, we...

The Buddhist tradition offers a system to be used as a path toward liberation from suffering. Of course it takes work and isn't necessarily easy. But in this talk, Michael McAlister discusses how we can use the Eightfold Path, and even some derivations, to get us more...

This talk was originally aired in December of 2005. ___ What about love? In this talk Michael suggests that Big Love has nothing to do with our understanding and craving of that rush that small love brings. In fact, he uses the words of Rumi to point out how what is...

Do we have the courage to be truly ordinary? It's a great question that helps us uncover whatever egoic attachments we might have about who we think we are and who we think we should be. Those individuals that can let go of these deep stories have an opportunity to...

We usually think of Karma in terms of "good" and "bad." And yet these cliches don't do much to serve up a deeper understanding of Karma's spiritual implications. In this talk, Michael touches on several topics that center around the human tendency to act and behave...

The ego maintains a state of inertia that tends to cloud our experience. So often we don't even recognize that we give ourselves over to an inherently incomplete story rooted in separation and alienation. Michael points out that we are made up of Emptiness and what...

This podcast features one of Michael's students, Gina Rocca, who offers an introductory talk prior to a previous sitting. Gina's beautiful talk is then followed up by one of Michael's talks as well as Q & A. ___ Michael addresses the enlightened message of several...