In this two part podcast Professor Thurman gives a teaching on the history of Buddhism and the Esoteric Vajrayana meditation practices preserved in Tibet and found within all Buddhist traditions and teachings.

Opening this week’s episode with humorous presentation on non-duality using the science fiction movies featuring Godzilla Robert A.F. Thurman explores the nature of anger, the subtle mind and selflessness.

Podcast includes a discussion of dharmakāya and mandala visualizations using The Four Noble Truths, The Heart Sutra and of the mis-titled Tibetan Book of the Dead as a popularization of the Buddhist science of the subtle and super subtle mind.

Second half of this podcast continues Professor Thurman’s exploration of anger with an explanation of “Buddha Pride” and how confidence in the primal knowledge of voidness can help anyone understand how misplaced pride or a pride of ordinariness leads to mis-knowing the blissful nature of reality and suffering.

Podcast concludes with a presentation of the work of Arnold J. Toynbee & Karl Jaspers on the Axial Age and a recommendation of “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” by Jared M. Diamond.

This week’s poetry segment Gary Gach reads the poetry of Korean poet, writer, and activist Ko Un

This week’s episode’s of the Bob Thurman Podcast was brought to you in part through the support of the Tibet House US Membership Community and Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa in Phoenicia, New York.

Godzilla Sutra : Understanding Anger & The Axial Age – Ep. 191 was recorded at the Force For Good Class on November, 2016 in New York City.

This on-going series was inspired by Daniel Goleman’s ‘A Force For Good: The Dalai Lama’s Vision for Our World‘.

Gary Gregory Gach is an author, translator, and editor living in San Francisco. A dynamic speaker and teacher in the tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village Community of Engaged Buddhism his works include the anthology “What Book!? Buddha Poems from Beat to Hiphop” and the forthcoming “Pause Breathe Smile – Awakening Mindfulness When Meditation is Not Enough”.

Korean poet, writer, and activist Ko Un was born in Gunsan-si, Jeollabuk-do. He was drawn to poetry after discovering the early work of Han Ha-Un, a nomadic Korean poet with leprosy. After witnessing the devastation of the Korean War, Ko entered a monastery and became a Buddhist monk. He left the Buddhist community in 1962. In the 1970s and early 1980s, Ko was detained, tortured, and imprisoned repeatedly for his opposition to the military regime.

Ko has twice won the South Korean Literature Prize and received the Griffin Trust for Excellence in Poetry’s Lifetim