Dharma If You Dare

We hope you enjoy this soundbite from Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan on the three forms of meditative absorption: kamma samadhi, upacara samadhi & appana samadhi. 

If you are looking to incorporate more activities into your life to support contemplation and introspection, I recommend our weekly reflection series called ‘52 Reflections’. Sign up for free and once a week you’ll receive a short passage and follow-up prompt that you can use to frame your day, your week or a meditation session. You can learn more and sign up for free by visiting planetdharma.com/52reflections.

In today’s talk, Doug Qapel Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei go over 4 secrets that make up a core part of how we orient ourselves in the world. Drawing on material from their bestselling book, Wasteland to Pureland, Sensei and Qapel explain each secret, how they operate in our lives and what possibilities open up when we integrate them into our conscious awareness.

Today’s episode covers ideas that Qapel and Sensei explore in detail in their bestselling book, Wasteland to Pureland. If you’d like to explore these ideas further, you can visit the Planet Dharma website to receive a free copy of the chapter entitled ‘Protecting Against Hurt Is What Hurts’. Podcast listeners can download this free chapter of the book by visiting planetdharma.com/purelandchapter.

We hope you enjoy this soundbite from Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan on how to support loved ones through the dying process.

For an extended look at death, dying and rebirth, check out Episode 7 from this season, about 5 recordings back in the podcast feed. You can also watch that talk as a video on your YouTube channel at youtu.be/rzgLkJ1Yxxk.

If you are finding the teachings of Planet Dharma resonate and are wondering how to explore them further, we recommend the free online course called Wake Up: 4 Paths to Spiritual Awakening. This self-study course gives an introduction to the main approaches that Doug and Catherine employ with students to help them find their speediest path to spiritual awakening. You can learn more and register for free by visiting planetdharma.com/wakeup.

In today’s talk, Catherine Pawasarat Sensei explores the topic of Women in Buddhism. She talks about her early years as a feminist, becoming an attendant for her male teacher, shifting views in the buddhist world around female rebirth & elevating female tantric deities, among other subjects.

Wisdom Publications has just published an interview with Catherine Sensei and Qapel on their Wisdom Podcast. It’s a wide-ranging interview, the first half of which lays out a detailed account of the life of Namgyal Rinpoche. It’s a great synopsis of the legacy that this generation of the lineage is currently carrying forward. The second half of the interview explores the ways that Qapel and Sensei are honoring the Namgyal tradition of bringing the teachings to new frontiers. You can find the interview - Episode #128 of The Wisdom Podcast - on your favourite podcast app and at wisdomexperience.org/wisdom-podcast/128-duncan-pawasarat.

We hope you enjoy this soundbite from Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei on the difference between states and stages - models from Integral Spirituality - and the roles meditation work and ego work play in developing the stages of development that we have access to.

Have you checked out our Patreon page yet? By becoming a micropatron you can help us upgrade our equipment, expand our production bandwidth and grow our listening audience. This also gives us a chance to connect with our most enthusiastic listeners with monthly updates and extended cuts of recordings. You can learn more and participate at patreon.com/planetdharma.

In today’s talk, Catherine Pawasarat Sensei and Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan explore the topic of Buddhanature. They look at the various terms that are used to describe it and highlight the challenge of talking about Buddhanature in a way that doesn’t fall into a conceptual trap that actually separates us from it. Qapel and Sensei also discuss switched off and switched on potential, how Buddhanature gets obscured and how an effective spiritual practice helps remove these obscurations. 

We hope you enjoy this soundbite from Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei on how Buddhism worked with the shadow before modern psychology existed to name this aspect of our psyche. 

And a note of clarification: In the talk, you’ll hear Qapel and Sensei reference Passionate Enlightenment, which is a book by Miranda Shaw on the history of women in Tantric Buddhism.

Today’s bonus recording covers ideas that Qapel and Sensei explore in detail in their bestselling book, Wasteland to Pureland: Reflections on the Path to Awakening. The third section of the book is entitled 'Crazy Wisdom' and covers a wide variety of topics, including The Shadow, Tantra, and Money, Sex & Power. Podcast listeners can download a free chapter from this section of the book by visiting planetdharma.com/crazywisdom.

Today’s recording is a talk that Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan gave recently on the topic of death, dying and the bardos. In the talk, he explores how we really experience a death in every moment, and describes in detail the steps in the death process and how consciousness finds its way to its next rebirth.

If you are looking to incorporate more activities into your life to support contemplation and introspection, we recommend our weekly reflection series called ‘52 Reflections’. Sign up for free and once a week you’ll receive a short passage and follow-up prompt that you can use to frame your day, your week or a meditation session. You can learn more and sign up for free by visiting planetdharma.com/52reflections.

We hope you enjoy this soundbite from Doug ‘Qapel’ Duncan and Catherine Pawasarat Sensei on how to access higher states of consciousness through clearing the lower 3 chakras.

Today’s bonus recording covers ideas that Qapel and Sensei explore in detail in their bestselling book, Wasteland to Pureland. The third section of the book is entitled 'Crazy Wisdom' and covers a wide variety of topics, including The Shadow, Tantra, and Money, Sex & Power. Podcast listeners can download a free chapter from this section of the book by visiting planetdharma.com/crazywisdom.

In this interview, Catherine Pawasarat Sensei talks about the impact our views of connection with - or disconnection from - our natural environment have on the quality of our lives moment to moment. She highlights the centrality of natural laws in the very essence of the meaning of ‘dharma’. She also talks about her own journey of fully connecting with her ecosystem and reflects on what we can do as practitioners to help us do the same.

If these teachings resonate with you, we recommend you check out Planet Dharma’s library of articles on the website. There are over 100 blog posts offering dharmic perspectives on all sorts of issues of interest to awakening beings. You can check them out at planetdharma.com/articles.