Teaching Meditation

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Henrik Norberg is a celibate, non-monastic teacher of meditation retreats, often in caves in Southeast Arizona.  Hear him and Upali talk about the difference between Eastern and Western conceptualizations of stream entry, Henrik's view that Western Buddhism hyperfocuses on meditation, and what Henrik's own path looks like, which he said it primarily morality practice.

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Australian teacher Kynan Tan, PhD only recently began teaching meditation and was quickly able to leave his regular job and become a fulltime teacher.  In this interview, you'll hear how he prepared himself to teach, how he gets continuing education and supervision as a new teacher, and what steps he thinks allowed him to attract so many students in a short time.  You can learn more about Kynan and contact him at https://kynanmeditation.net/

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Vidyamala Burch is the founder of Breathworks, has a teacher training program with over 600 alumni, has been teaching mindfulness for pain for many decades, and has been voted one of the most influential disabled people in the United Kingdom.  Hear Vidyamala's story of growing up in New Zealand, moving full-time into a retreat center, and starting and steering Breathworks.  She'll discuss how to keep the "heart" in an organization as it grows and how to receive feedback on teachers and colleagues.

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Mukti is a teacher in a nondual lineage.  She received her authorization to teach from Adyashanti, her husband.  You can learn more about Mukti over here.

Mukti’s teachings invite attunement to the act of being and to the heart of awareness. Such attunement can awaken Spirit to reveal Itself as your essential self and as the essence of all of life. This revelation is known as Self-realization, and is the birth of conscious Spirit made manifest, known as embodiment.Her teaching methods for nurturing realization and embodiment are founded in meditation, self-inquiry, and body awareness, and encourage connecting with one’s self as an expression of all of life.

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Upali talks about teaching intro courses vs advanced students, coping with the unfairness of the world, working with students' emotional wellbeing, and how to escape Garfunkel syndrome.

Upasaka Upali is a Dharma teacher who aims to demystify meditation, provide tangible instruction, and create a rewarding experience for practitioners. Upali received transmission in a lineage that can be traced back to the Buddha through Namgyal Rinpoche (Ananda Bodhi), and he took his Upasaka vows in 2015. He has a degree from St. Olaf College and has studied Dharma and meditation with Tucker Peck, Ph.D. and Upasaka Culadasa. He was a founding member of the Open Dharma Foundation and also served as its founding Executive Director. He is the co-host of this podcast, as you assured know since you're listening to it.   You can learn more or contact him at upalimeditation.com.

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Don and Patty, both dharma teachers, run the Wellbeing Retreat Center in Tazewell, Tennessee.   This special episode focuses, rather than on the usual topic of teaching meditation, on how to start and manage a meditation retreat center.

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Shaila Catherine is the founder of Insight Meditation South Bay, a meditation group in Silicon Valley, and also Bodhi Courses, an online Buddhist classroom. She has been practicing meditation since 1980, with more than nine years of accumulated silent retreat experience. She has taught since 1996 in the USA, and internationally.   She completed a one-year intensive meditation retreat with the focus on concentration and jhana, and authored Focused and Fearless: A Meditator’s Guide to States of Deep Joy, Calm, and Clarity. Shaila practiced under the guidance of Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw from 2006-2015, and authored Wisdom Wide and Deep: A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana to help make this traditional approach to meditative training accessible to western practitioners.

In this episode, Shaila talks about the relationship betwen jhana and insight, and achieving full liberation through practice.

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Boaz Feldman talks with Upali from a multi-year meditation retreat and shares his personal journey of becoming a monk, returning to lay life, and becoming a psychologist.  Boaz and Upali talk about the challenges and benefits of integrating ancient tradition in a modern world, and Boaz presents a framework that formulates that possibilty.  To learn more about Boaz, please check out his website: http://boazfeldman.com/, and  you can also learn more about Neurosystemics at  neurosystemics.org .

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Dr. Andrew Holecek covers a lot of ground, from describing finding his niche in sleep and dream meditation, to doing a three-year retreat, and his thoughts on the frequent scandals among dharma teachers.  Learn more about Andrew at www.andrewholecek.com.

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This episode touches on Christian practice, Adyashanti's lineage of Zen, and how to teach meditation from more of a non-doing, already-there perspective, rather than a technique-based one.

Dorothy Hunt is the founder of the San Francisco Center for Meditation and Psychotherapy, and serves as Spiritual Director and President of Moon Mountain Sangha, Inc., a California non-profit religious corporation. Dorothy currently offers meditation and satsang gatherings, awakening groups, weekend retreat days, and longer residential retreats.  Following a series of ever-deepening realizations, Dorothy was invited by her spiritual teacher, Adyashanti, to teach within his lineage. While Adyashanti was trained in the Zen tradition, Dorothy’s spiritual path led from Mother Teresa of Calcutta to the Advaita teachers, Ramana Maharshi and Ramesh Balsekar, and eventually to Adyashanti. Each one of her teachers appeared to her totally unexpectedly, yet profoundly.

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