In this episode I am joined by John Yates, PhD, aka Culadasa.

Culadasa is a meditation master with more than four decades of experience in the Tibetan and Theravadin Buddhist traditions. A former professor, he taught physiology and neuroscience for many years, and later worked in the field of complementary and alternative medicine.

His book ‘The Mind Illuminated’ has been described as ‘a rare and valuable treasure’ and has been enormously popular among dedicated meditators for it’s incredible clarity and usability even to very advanced stages of practice.

In this interview we talk about how Culdasa’s traumatic upbringing led to him to being homeless on the streets at 15 years old and why even years in Catholic seminary didn’t provide the answers he was looking for. We discuss his initially frustrated attempts at meditation practice, the colourful cast of characters of his teachers, and the one key discovery changed everything.

- Culadasa’s traumatic upbringing

- Running away from home at 15 and the search for truth

- Entering Catholic seminary in search of the truth

- Experiments with psychedelics in the 60s

- Early attempts at meditation and learning Transcendental Meditation

- Discovering Buddhism

- What was lacking in the seminary

- Doctrinal disagreements with Catholicism

- Virtuoso Buddhism vs village Buddhism

- Living on the streets and recovering from a traumatic childhood

- Achieving a PhD with no high school education

- Glimpses of emptiness

- Meeting Upasaka Kema Ananda in Winnipeg, Manitoba

- Encountering Namgyal Rinpoche (aka George Dawson)

- Blending Kagyu and Theravadan practice

- Struggles with the Mahasi meditation technique

- Introduction to shamata (calm-abiding) practice

- Common misunderstandings about shamata

- Key distinctions about attention and awareness

- Revisiting Mahasi-style meditation

- Stages of samadhi

- Culadasa’s personal journey of insight

- How Culadasa attained stream entry

- Falling away from meditation and taking up shamanism

- Further path attainments

- Second path practice and meditation on mind states

- Craving and dissatisfaction

- Mara I have seen you!

- The mechanics of path attainments

- The two edged sword of the human mind

- Developing compassion

- Waking up, cleaning up, and growing up

- Implications of facing death

For the video version of this interview visit: https://youtu.be/roTWZ9GcBMY

To find our more about Culadasa, visit: https://dharmatreasure.org/

For more interviews, videos, and more visit: www.guruviking.com

Music 'Deva Dasi' by Steve James