Is enlightenment really possible for people like you and me? Do we lose ourselves when we become enlightened? Are there people on earth who are enlightened right now? Buddhist scholar Dr. Jan Willis answers these questions and more as we explore what enlightenment (or awakening) really means.

Episode 90: What is Enlightenment with Dr. Jan Willis

Dr. Jan Willis has a distinguished career as a scholar and teacher of Buddhism that spans fifty years. She first met Tibetan Buddhists in India and Nepal at age nineteen and went on to earn degrees in Philosophy and Indic and Buddhist Studies from Cornell and Columbia Universities.

Dr. Willis has taught Buddhist Studies and Philosophy at UC Santa Cruz, the University of Virginia and Wesleyan University. Now in retirement, she teaches part-time at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia and leads workshops exploring Race and Racism through a Buddhist Lens.

In her academic and popular books and essays, Dr. Willis writes with moving precision on Tibetan Buddhism, Buddhist saints’ lives, Women and Buddhism, and Buddhism and Race. Her latest book is the compelling essay collection Dharma Matters: Women, Race, and Tantra. And her unique personal story is captured in her memoir Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist, and Buddhist—One Woman’s Spiritual Journey.

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

A 10-minute mindful awareness meditation led by NYT bestselling author and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver. Encompassing mindfulness of breath, body, and mind, this meditation helps us relax into a peaceful present moment awareness.

Episode 89: 10-Minute Mindful Awareness Meditation with Susan Piver

Listen to our previous interview with Susan - Episode 88: Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver. In this interview, shares her Four Noble Truths of Love, a framework for anybody to have deeper, more fulfilling, and more loving intimate relationships.

Buy Susan's latest book, The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships (available in hard copy or audiobook). 

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

NYT bestselling author and Buddhist meditation teacher Susan Piver shares her Four Noble Truths of Love, a framework anybody can use for deeper, more fulfilling, and more connected intimate relationships.

Susan Piver is the New York Times bestselling author of nine books, including The Hard Questions: 100 Essential Questions to Ask Before You Say "I Do", the award-winning How Not to Be Afraid of Your Own Life, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and Start Here Now: An Open-Hearted Guide to the Path and Practice of Meditation. Her new book is The Four Noble Truths of Love: Buddhist Wisdom for Modern Relationships, which we talk about in our interview. She is a founder of Lionheart Press and a renowned meditation teacher who leads the Open Heart Project, the world's largest online only meditation center. Learn more about her at susanpiver.com.

Episode 88: Four Noble Truths of Love with Susan Piver

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

Elaine Jackson guides a heart-warming Buddhist loving-kindness meditation (metta meditation). This meditation uses visualization to bring about our natural state of loving awareness for ourselves and all beings.

In addition to today's meditation, Elaine joined us for an interview last week to talk about how to integrate the wisdom of Buddhism into our relationships.

Ep. 86 - Buddhist Relationship Advice with Elaine Jackson.
Ep. 87 - Buddhist Loving-Kindness Meditation with Elaine Jackson

Elaine Jackson is the co-founder of the Vajrapani Institute, teaches at Buddhist meditation centers throughout the world, and completed a 3-year meditation retreat in 2014. She has studied with many masters and has been a student of Lama Yeshe and Lama Zopa Rinpoche since 1977. Read more about Elaine and the Vajrapani Institute here.

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How do we integrate the wisdom of Buddhism into our intimate relationships? Elaine Jackson shares Buddhist relationship advice for navigating arguments selflessly, knowing when a relationship is over, dealing with divorce, how to meditate while parenting, and relating to a partner who's on a different spiritual path. 

Episode 86: Buddhist Relationship Advice with Elaine Jackson

If you’d like to practice with others and bring these ideas into your life, join our weekly meditation community with Scott.

How can we use pleasure in our meditation practice? Buddhism offers specific techniques for meditating on pleasure as a way to deepen our qualities of concentration, fearlessness, loving-kindness, and even our understanding of the ultimate nature of reality.

Episode 85: Guided Meditation on Pleasure
Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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Pleasure is often viewed as a hindrance to the spiritual path, a hotbed of craving and attachment, but what if we told you that pleasure can actually be a positive part of the spiritual path, a portal to love and happiness?

Episode 84: Pleasure and Buddhism: Food, Sex and Netflix on the Path to Enlightenment

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A daily meditation on the four levels of happiness in Buddhism. Investigate the varying depths of happiness you get from sensory pleasures, positive states of mind, meditation, and the very nature of reality.

Episode 73: Guided Meditation: Four Levels of Happiness in Buddhism
Episode 72: Four Kinds of Happiness with Sangye Khadro

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Explore the four kinds of happiness in Buddhism with Ven. Sangye Khadro (Kathleen McDonald). This episode offers an opportunity to reflect on where we derive our happiness from and how we can live happier lives by understanding how each kind of happiness relates to desire, attachment, compassion, and our own meditation practice.

Episode 82: Four Kinds of Happiness with Sangye Khadro

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A biologist and a Buddhist monk have a conversation on how science can make sense of rebirth, emptiness, and karma, the origins of consciousness and creativity, and how modern science's understanding of the nature of reality benefits from the wisdom of contemplative traditions.

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics in Hyderabad, India. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project for research on unexplained human and animal abilities, funded by Trinity College, Cambridge.

Geshe Tenzin Namdak is a Buddhist monk, scholar and teacher whose education and life experience bridges both East and West. Born in the Netherlands, he graduated with a degree in hydrology and initially worked as an environmental researcher. He encountered Buddhism at Maitreya Institute in 1993 and took ordination from HH Dalai Lama before engaging in his formal studies in Buddhist philosophy and psychology at Sera Jey Monastic university, South India. In May 2017 he was awarded the Geshe degree (equivalent to Ph.D), the first Westerner to complete the entire twenty-year Geshe programme.

Episode 81: A Biologist and a Buddhist Monk on the Nature of Reality with Geshe Namdak and Dr. Rupert Sheldrake

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