Tibetan Buddhism seems mysterious, intriguing, and sometimes scary. In this episode I talk with Frank Howard of the White Lotus Buddhist Center in Rochester, New York—continuing my series of "Talking with My Teachers"—who explains that it's not as mysterious as it seems and it's certainly not scary!

As Frank explains, there is only ONE Dharma and Tibetan Buddhism is a sort of a misnomer. It is Buddhism, containing all Buddhist forms, but also the Vajrayana or Mantrayana path. Like the Mahayana path, motivation is the most important part. The motivation of kindness and compassion through the Bodhisattva path of benefiting all beings.

Listen as we talk about motivation, faith as confidence, our weaknesses and their antidotes, and how "Buddhism is completely practical and makes your life better."

In this first of a special series of episodes dedicated to honoring my teachers, I have a conversation with the spiritual head of The Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism, Rev. Koyo Kubose. It is with Bright Dawn and my Sensei, I learned how bring Buddhism into the everyday.

Listen as we discuss what the Bright Dawn Center of Oneness Buddhism and its Lay Ministry program is all about, from Rev. Koyo's perspective ... its historical influences, its mission, vision, and special niche as a program bringing the Dharma to everyone in an ordinary, everyday way.

We'll talk about the balance of gratitude, humility, ambiguity, uncertainty, perfect studentship, and — most importantly — naturalness, in Bright Dawn and it's lay ministers, as they bring the Dharma to the people.

Join me for a special episode in honor of Bodhi Day, celebrating Shakyamuni Buddha's enlightenment. The long nights of December are marked by numerous celebrations using light as a symbol.

Bodhi Day can be adopted as a holiday for your own personal or family "culture." Light symbolizes a rekindling of the spiritual impulse and a turning toward awakening, toward enlightenment.

Bodhi Day is a time to celebrate our own awakening to the spirit of our Buddha Nature that is lighting our path with wisdom and embracing us with compassion. Happy Bodhi Day!

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?