Be Here Now Network

Jack returns to explore the nature of Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all.

"The Dharma is universal, it's immediate, it's open-handed, it's to be experienced by each person for themselves directly, it's timeless. The truth of life is here to be discovered for any individual with eyes open to see." – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack mindfully navigates:

- Sufis introducing the Dance of Universal Peace to Jack's retreat of Buddhists

- Dharma as universal, immediate, timeless, beneficial, protective, and available to all

- The various meanings of 'Dharma': the teachings, the physical/emotional elements of the world, personal destiny/path, and Universal Laws/Truth

- How Joseph Goldstein accidentally found his teacher Munindraji while on the way to take LSD under the Bodhi Tree

- Karma, impermanence, duality, selflessness, attachment, metta (loving kindness), and the preciousness of life

- The Vipassana paradox of Tibetan Dream Yoga

"The Dharma protects those who follow it like a great umbrella in the rainy season." – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 12/05/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Grab an All-Access Plan for Jack's growing library of online courses at jackkornfield.com/all-access-pass

David Nichtern explores how mindfulness meditation is the primary tool on our journey of joining Heaven and Earth, which are our highest aspirations and our day-to-day practicalities.

This episode is taken from one of David’s Dharma Moon Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training sessions. The Intro to Mindfulness and the Path of Meditation program, which serves as the foundation for the next Mindfulness Meditation Teacher Training, begins on October 13th.

To learn more, register now for a free online talk, Teaching Mindfulness Meditation and the Role of the Teacher, with David Nichtern and Robert Thurman on Tuesday, August 22nd.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, David explores:

The classic paradigm of Heaven and Earth, our highest aspirations and our day-to-day practicalities, as a way to frame our journeys

The role that humanity plays in this paradigm and what the path of the warrior truly means

How mindfulness meditation is the primary tool we can use for joining Heaven and Earth and finding balance in our lives

“Earth is nothing but obstacles, actually, from the point of view of Heaven. It’s just a clump of obstacles. But from the point of view of joining Heaven and Earth, it’s a clump of obstacles that actually can be manifested as opportunities for joining Heaven and Earth.” – David Nichtern

About David Nichtern:

David Nichtern, founder of Dharma Moon, is a senior Buddhist teacher who has been practicing and teaching meditation for over 40 years. He was one of the initial American students of renowned meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and studied closely with him soon after his arrival in the United States in 1970. He is also a business consultant with companies creating a variety of offerings integrating meditation in a larger health and well-being context. David is also a multiple Grammy-nominated and Emmy award-winning musician.

This week on the Mindrolling Podcast, contemplative scientist Cortland Dahl and Raghu Markus discuss the Tibetan Buddhist perspective of a healthy mind and how to transition from rumination to exploration.

This week on Mindrolling, Cortland Dahl and Raghu chat about:

Cortland Dahl’s journey to mindfulness practice

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and loving the world

Being Human, meditation, and coping with anxiety

Embracing and Exploring the nature of our minds

Language Immersion and translating Tibetan texts

The story of Asanga and the Buddha Nature

Transformation through compassionate action

Wise-selfishness and looking at our motivations

Turning the narrative mind into a new direction

Gamma Oscillations and the ‘aha’ moment

The practice of non-referential compassion

Intersections between science and mindfulness

Links & Recommendations From this Episode:

Raghu and Cortland talk about the book: In Love with the World: A Monk’s Journey Through the Bardos of Living and Dying by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche

Learn more about Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche on Tergar.org

Check out The Center for Healthy Minds and discover the fusion of science and mindfulness

Download the Healthy Minds app for a guide to well-being

Why We Meditate by Daniel Goleman and Tsoknyi Rinpoche

About Cortland Dahl:

Cortland is interested in exploring the interface between the body, mind and brain, and especially in the question of how various forms of meditation may help us cultivate positive qualities like mindfulness, compassion and resilience. His current work focuses on studying the psychological and neural mechanisms of different families of meditation practice. He is also the creator of the Healthy Minds program, a well-being training program that integrates insights from scientific research with a comprehensive path of contemplative training.

Cortland has an eclectic background and has spent years studying and practicing meditation in Asia, including eight years living in Tibetan refugee settlements in India and Nepal. He has published numerous collections of translations of classic works on meditation and Buddhist philosophy from the Tibetan tradition. In addition to his work with the Center, Cortland is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Tergar International, a global network of meditation groups and centers.

Learn more at hminnovations.org

“Instead of ruminating about our stressful day, we’re exploring the dynamics of our inner experience; and we just start to discover things the were always there, but we just hadn’t seen. The narrative and the conditioning just hadn’t been directed in that way.” – Cortland Dahl

Getting vulnerable about the hungers which afflict our lives, Jack helps us into the nirvana beyond the illusion of incompleteness.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/heartwisdom

“In Sanskrit or Pali the word is ‘Trishna,’ which means thirst, desire, wanting. It’s exaggeration, or the realm that it manifests in in the greatest way, is called ‘The Realm of the Hungry Ghosts.’ Hungry Ghosts are pictured as these beings who have huge stomaches and tiny little mouths, so that it’s never possible to get enough in there to ease that hunger.” – Jack Kornfield

In this episode, Jack vulnerably navigates:

- Hunger, abundance, deprivation, indulgence, addiction, and the illusion of incompleteness

- Feeling idiotic, depressed, needy, judgmental, sad, lonely, hungry, etc

- Trishna—thirst, desire, wanting—and the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts

- Samsara and the propulsion of endless wanderings of seperation/seeking

- Ajahn Chah and being with what is, rather than struggling against it

- Relating wisely and tenderly to Buddha’s First Noble Truth of suffering

- Nirvana as the end of cyclical grasping and the illusion that we are incomplete

“Nirvana is the end of cyclic existence, which is to say, the end of grasping and going around in circles looking for something that you are, but haven’t yet touched—the end of the illusion that we are incomplete.” – Jack Kornfield

This Dharma Talk from 02/01/1987 was originally published on DharmaSeed.

Joseph Goldstein leans on his decades of study and practice of the Dharma to answer a diverse range of spiritual and existential questions from his students and online retreat attendees.

This dharma talk from May 14, 2023, was recorded at the Insight Meditation Society and originally published on Dharma Seed.

In this Q&A style talk, Joseph answers an assortment of questions concerning:

The stages of enlightenment

Being mindful of positive and wholesome mind states

Realizing selflessness

Concepts, the nature of consciousness, and reality

Practicing mindfulness in modernity

Karma and reincarnation

"We think our lives are so complicated and so confused in the modern world, in the ancient world and - at any point in time, there are only these six things happening. It's a sight, its a sound, it's a taste, it's a sensation, it's something going on in our minds. So, I like to think of all life, and the unfolding of our lives, as a six piece chamber orchestra. It's just playing the music." - Joseph Goldstein

David is joined by Emmy Award-winning composer, author, multi-Platinum record producer and songwriter Richard Wolf for a conversation about music, mindfulness, and success.

“It’s not about your ego when you’re making music. It’s not about you. It’s about the music.

If you’re trying to perform, you want to just have the best performance possible. If you’re writing music, you just want to take the song where the song wants to go. You want to help it go. It’s not about your self-referential agenda; it’s about the music.

It’s not about you, and so you’re transcending yourself.” – Richard Wolf

In this episode, Richard joins David to discuss:

- The Twelve Bridges between music & meditation

- Zen & Silent Illumination

- Practice and success

About Richard Wolf:

Richard “Wolfie” Wolf is an Emmy Award ™ winning composer, multi-Platinum RIAA awarded record producer and songwriter, teacher and noted author.

Wolf is on the faculty of The University of Southern California’s Thornton School of Music where he teaches a class on “Music & Mindfulness” which was the first course at a university level to explore the special relationship between the two practices.

His book “In Tune: Music As The Bridge To Mindfulness” is acclaimed as an innovative guide to contemplative practices for musical people and was the inspiration for his podcast “Wolf In Tune”. The book was written up in The New Yorker, Parade Magazine, Mindful Magazine, Mashable, Spirituality & Health and others.

Learn more about Richard at richardwolf.net.

In this interview from the 2023 Mystics Summit, Omid Safi joins Taya Ma for a conversation about Rumi, his main teachings, and how he’s situated on the wider Path of Radical Love.

This interview is part of the 2023 Mystics Summit a free online event. For more information, please visit mysticssummit.com. This recording is a copyright of The Shift Network. All rights reserved.

“Approach the teachings of the Path of Love, or of Islam, or of Sufism, or whatever tradition it is that draws you closer to God, in an interactive model. Don’t look at it purely and simply as receiving the teaching, but also keep a journal of your responses to the teachings, to the stories. And when something touches your heart, write that down. And write down what it was and what it made you think because sometimes those momentary realizations are like a lightning bolt in a dark sky, and for one minute everything is clear. You see your own self clearly, and then it may be gone.” – Omid Safi

In this episode, Omid Safi and Taya Mâ talk about:

- Rumi’s background and why his real legacy is more than just his poetry, it’s his being

- How the Path of Radical Love keeps us rooted and grounded, and how we can cultivate those roots

- Practices that can guide us towards oneness

- How we can interpret Rumi’s work both on its own accord and through the context of the time in which it was written

About Taya Mâ

Taya Mâ Shere plays passionately in realms of transformative ritual, embodied vocalization, and ancestral healing. She is a professor of organic multireligious ritual at Starr King School for the Ministry, founder of the emergent online mystery school From the Deep, and co-founder of the Kohenet Hebrew Priestess Institute. Learn more about her at taya.ma

About Omid Safi:

Dr. Omid Safi is director of Duke University’s Islamic Studies Center. He specializes in the study of Islamic mysticism and contemporary Islam and frequently writes on liberationist traditions of Dr. King, Malcolm X, and is committed to traditions that link together love and justice. He leads spiritual tours every year to Turkey, Morocco, or other countries, to study the rich multiple religious traditions there. The trips are open to everyone, from every country. More information is available at Illuminated Tours.

In this episode of Healing at the Edge, RamDev dives into cultivating qualities to respond to the artificial intelligence disruption.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

Reflecting on the increase in collective fear that comes with moving into uncertain times, RamDev explores:

- The qualities we can cultivate in response to the disruption caused by artificial intelligence

- Our interconnected nature and how doing the inner work benefits all beings

- The potential benefits and dangers of AI

- The balance of wisdom and compassion

- Discerning uncertainty from anxiety and working with those emotions

- Dharma talks scripted by Chat GPT

“By you working with your uncertainty, you’re realizing that so many people are feeling the same poisonous emotion. By you having compassion for that, you’re helping other beings because of our interconnected nature. You’re doing this for all beings.” - RamDev (Dale Borglum)

In this episode of the Insight Hour podcast, Joseph Goldstein delves into the nature of thought and provides valuable insights on cultivating mindfulness.

This dharma talk from May 13, 2023, was recorded at the Insight Meditation Society and originally published on Dharma Seed.

“When we’re unaware of thoughts, unmindful, they have so much power in our lives, they;re really directing our lives. And yet when we are mindful of them, as I say, it is a little more than nothing.”

In this talk, Joseph:

- Encourages us to notice when we become aware of our own thinking

- Highlights the importance of recognizing the themes of our thoughts

- Emphasizes that the past and the future are conceptual models

- Examines the very nature of thought itself

This time on the Being in the Way Podcast, Alan Watts delves into questions of identity, purpose and buying into the ‘Myth of Myself’.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/alan

In this episode, Alan Watts explores:

The question of our own identity and our place in the world

Myths of the self handed down through history

Viewing ourselves and the world with a “floodlight consciousness” – rather than the narrow “spotlight consciousness” we are taught to see the world through

How we are not born into this world, but grow out of it – “In the same way an apple tree apples, the Earth peoples.”

“The most fascinating problem in the world is who am I? What do you feel when you say the word I? I myself?

This problem has fascinated me for many years. Most Western people locate their ego inside their heads. This is the ordinary average conception of what is oneself.” – Alan Watts