In this episode I'll talk about my uneasy relationship with the 5 Precepts. Do they produce more questions—and more confusion—than answers? Do they cause more suffering than they prevent? I'll explore how, if looked at as rules and "thou shall not's", they set up barriers between Right View and the Dharma I believe the Buddha taught. And they can also separate people from each other and themselves, if they feel like failures.

When we work with the precepts, we do so with the understanding that "self" and "other" are delusions. There is nothing external to us acting as an authority. Clearing up ignorance is what alleviates suffering. This requires working with ourselves on a very deep and intimate level—honestly evaluating our own motivations and thinking deeply about how our actions will affect others.

Don't look "out there" for permission or an authority who will reward or punish us for breaking the "rules." This concept of ethics in the 5 Precepts is not one based on a transactional experience, but is firmly anchored in the non-dual perspective central to Buddhist philosophy.

Join me in a conversation with Phakchok Rinpoche and Erric Solomon, authors of the just-released book, Radically Happy: A User's Guide to the Mind. In the book and in our conversation, ancient wisdom meets modern methods as we explore the universal search for well-being, for happiness.

As Rinpoche and Erric discuss with me, the root of happiness has somehow slipped through our fingers, as we gallop through are always-on, always distracted modern world. And they discuss how their new book will help us:

Get to know our own mind .... Stop the looking-for-happiness conundrum ... Relax the comparing and judging ... Be more present, attentive, and aware ... And access a subtle sense of well-being, even when things are not so great.

When we think of Buddhism, we think of meditation. In this episode I will take you on a tour of the many ways to meditate. But at the core of the episode is the simple awareness that all meditation rests on ... and that everyday happiness rests on.

Join me as I talk about what simple awareness is. Awareness is simply that and our minds are aware by their very nature, yet that nature is obscured by thoughts and emotions. Simple, clear awareness exists between our thoughts and underneath our emotions.

In this episode I'll share some of my experiences with joyous spontaneous awareness and a little of my own awareness meditation practice ... in hopes of inspiring you to look for and relax into the awareness that is at the heart of meditation and your being.

Join me as I explore the very earthly foundations of Buddhism itself, as we turn the light of Dharma towards ecology. Siddhartha Gautama asked the Earth to confirm his enlightenment, his Buddhahood. He did not ask for help from heavenly beings. He asked the Earth.

In an episode celebrating "Earth Care Week", we'll reflect on climate change and think about our own personal relationship with the earth, as spiritual practice. In giving up grasping at heaven "out there", our home, Mother Earth, offers us the heaven right under our feet.

Thinking about the Earth and how to reconnect can be a central practice for centering your mind ... slowing it down ... and syncing your body and mind to the Earth's rhythm.

In the first "Ask Me Anything" Episode, I respond to a listener's question about Buddhist insight into protesting. I circle around this question by sharing thoughts I had from my own life and two Dharma talks I gave in January and July of 2017.

Instead of focusing what we're protesting and why, I talk more about what was in my mind and how it made my feel. This is where I think the focus needs to be: "What's in your mind?" Does your urge for speech or action come from an intention of anger or intention of peace?

Can I help create peace, equality, and justice through a motivation of anxiety, anger, and divisiveness?  If we come to the proposed solution as broken selves, can we help? Can we bring our own peace to unrest? Come and sit with me in the questions.

In this podcast, we'll look at the sixth part of The Eightfold Path and the first step into the area of meditation: Right Effort. Is your energy, your efforts, positive contributors to making you more content ... and making the people around you more content? If not, maybe you need to bring attention to and tweak your habits a little bit.

We'll look at the hindrances to right effort and the obstacles to concentration or destructive trains of thought. It's all about noticing and removing or replacing a little habit, followed by another, and another.

And guess what? It all hinges on paying attention; about noticing. That is the hard part. Adjusting your habits isn't as hard. Listen to find ways to help in creating "joyous effort" through "The Five Daily Guidelines" offered by The Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism: http://www.brightdawn.org/Five%20Daily%20Life%20Guidelines.pdf

In this podcast, we'll look more closely at koans, poetry, koan practice in general ... and we'll see how to work with one koan, specifically ... to start your practice.

We'll look at the koan, "Manjushri Enters the Gate." I will provide an interpretation from Rev. Gyomay Kubose, as well as how I worked with this koan. But each person must bring his own wisdom to a koan.

Koan practice IS for everyday life! It is for taking up your everyday — the kitchen or the office — as a koan. How can you use a koan in everyday life? How can you use a koan to break free from thinking ruts, hardened concepts, judgments?

Up for a fun challenge? In this podcast, I talk about my love of Zen Koans, as one of the rarest practices for 'messing with' your conceptual mind and shaking your false trust in the stability of what we think is 'knowledge.'

A koan is, in essence, a problem that can't be solved by the intellect. In trying to understand it, you run up against the limitations of thought and, hopefully, tap into a direct and non-verbal awareness of reality. Most people think of koans as riddles or puzzles to solve. It's not about that. The deal with koans is that they are about "I don't know."

Koans expose us to the fact that we are so stuffed with concepts and snared by thinking that we can't see what's right in front of us ... in the kitchen ... in the garden ... the desk ... out our window ... on a familiar walk. These are the places where koans leap from. Through koans we get a glimpse into how to let the world come to us in whatever shape it takes.

In this podcast, we'll look at how we can move from thinking about work as what we are ... or as something we're 'stuck with' ... or as something we are 'becoming' on our progression up the ladder ... to how and who we are being with our work. Are we authentic? Are we mindful?

Work is THE golden opportunity to walk the walk, not just talk the talk. We spend most of our waking hours at work. This is where we are presented with all the tough choices about right view, right intention, right speech, and right action.

Practicing "Right Livelihood" means practicing Right Mindfulness. The way you answer the phone ... the way you talk to a co-worker or client ... the way you file a file ... the way you act in a meeting. Do we honestly try to take care of our co-workers and customers? Or are we just doing our job?

When you consciously try to build mindfulness into your day, what you notice is that sometimes NOT speaking and NOT acting is the best possible action … the RIGHT Action.

Our culture, we are hard-wired to respond to everything that happens to us, or around us, with either activity or speech. It is nearly impossible to deprogram ourselves from that. Even in situations where there is absolutely nothing we can do, we still impulsively try to do or say something. But sometimes non-action is the smartest action. Certainly mindfulness is.

As my social media promotion for this podcast expressed for Lao Tzu: "Do you have the patience to wait...till your mud settles and the water is clear?"

We don’t have to act immediately, just because we have an internal reaction. We can pause, not act, breathe. We can watch this urge to act irrationally arise, then let it go away. Sometimes that takes a few seconds, other times it means we should remove ourselves politely from the situation and let ourselves cool down before we respond.