In this episode of The Eric Vaz Show, Eric turns to the opening chapter of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, a beginning that feels unexpectedly quiet in a culture obsessed with achievement.

Rather than starting with discipline, success, or self-mastery, Marcus begins with gratitude. He reflects on the people who shaped him, teachers, family members, mentors, and the virtues he learned from each. Patience, fairness, calm, humility, and restraint take precedence over intelligence or status.

Set against the pressures of higher education, grades, comparison, performance, and the anxiety of “becoming someone”, this episode explores what it means to approach learning not as a test of worth, but as a process of formation. Eric reflects on how university life often pushes students to perform confidently rather than practice growth, and how Stoic philosophy offers a stabilizing alternative.

Drawing on Marcus Aurelius’ emphasis on character over ego, the episode reframes higher education as a place to cultivate steadiness, teachability, and resilience, rather than constant self-validation. Gratitude here becomes a grounding force, reminding students that learning is relational, slow, and deeply human.

This is not an episode about working harder.It is about starting from the right place.

🎙️ Episode Highlights

• Why Meditations begins with gratitude, not ambition• Higher education as formation, not performance• Character as more durable than grades or rankings• Learning to receive feedback without collapse or defensiveness• Gratitude as a stabilizing practice under academic pressure

🧭 Takeaway

You are not in higher education to prove that you are complete.You are there to be shaped.

When ambition is grounded in gratitude,learning becomes steadier,comparison loses its grip,and growth unfolds with less fear.

Written, hosted, and narrated by Eric Vaz, Ph.D.Produced by The Eric Vaz Show

© 2026 Eric Vaz — All Rights Reserved

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In this episode of The Eric Vaz Show, Eric turns to a central verse of the Dhammapada that feels almost subversive in a world built on constant stimulation: the mind is everything. What you think, you become.

Set against the backdrop of a new year, this episode explores what happens when we stop trying to fix our lives through more goals, more apps, and more optimization, and instead begin by observing the one place where everything already starts, the mind itself.

Drawing on Buddhist thought, personal practice, and the quiet experiment of reducing smartphone use, Eric reflects on how modern life fragments attention and how suffering often arises not from events but from the mental noise layered on them. Minimalism here is not about owning less, but about thinking less unnecessarily, reacting less automatically, and creating space for awareness to return.

Meditation is presented not as escape, but as a radical act of clarity in a distracted age. A way of noticing thoughts without becoming them, and of beginning the year not by adding more, but by subtracting what no longer serves.

Can a small reduction in noise change the quality of an entire year?

🎙️ Episode Highlights

• A core Dhammapada verse on the mind as the source of becoming• Why modern attention is under constant siege• Reducing smartphone use as a contemplative practice• Minimalism as mental and spiritual clarity, not lifestyle aesthetics• How meditation reveals thoughts as events, not commands

🧘 Takeaway

You do not need a new version of yourself.You need a clearer relationship with your mind.

When noise recedes, awareness remains.And from awareness, everything else unfolds more gently.

Written, hosted, and narrated by Eric Vaz, Ph.D.Produced by The Eric Vaz ShowMusic sourced from the YouTube Audio LibraryUsed in accordance with YouTube’s Audio Library Terms of Service © YouTube© 2026 Eric Vaz — All Rights Reserved

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ericvazshow.substack.com

In this episode of The Eric Vaz Show, Eric turns to the very first verse of the Dhammapada, placing one of Buddhism’s oldest teachings inside the most modern of spaces: a student’s bedroom at midnight, lit by a laptop glow, pulsing with deadlines, comparison, and quiet panic. What unfolds is an intimate look at how the mind writes stories faster than life unfolds, and how suffering follows those stories as predictably as a wheel follows the foot of the animal that pulls the cart.

Through the lens of Buddhist thought, university life, and the lived reality of neurodivergent minds, Eric reflects on what actually happens when a single sentence in a group chat convinces us that we do not belong. The raw facts stay the same. It is the mind that bends them into identity. And once we see that, even briefly, the night becomes a gentler place.

Can an ancient verse help us meet modern anxiety with a different kind of awareness?

🎙️ Episode Highlights

• The first verse of the Dhammapada and its image of mind leading experience• Why university life amplifies stories of comparison and self-doubt• The distinction between fact, story, and the body’s immediate response• How neurodivergent pattern-seeking minds create catastrophes in seconds• Practical ways to interrupt the cycle before the wheel begins to roll

🧘 Takeaway

The assignment is not the storm.The story is.When we learn to see the difference, the wheel slows, and the night softens.Awareness begins where the mind stops insisting on its own narrative.

Written, hosted, and narrated by Eric Vaz, Ph.D.Produced by The Eric Vaz ShowMusic by licensed ambient composers (royalty-free)© 2025 Eric Vaz — All Rights Reserved

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ericvazshow.substack.com

In this episode of The Eric Vaz Show, Eric explores the ancient rhythm of biphasic sleep, tracing how Buddhism and Islam understood the night long before sleep science gave it a name. What unfolds is a quiet journey into the space between two sleeps, a place where neurodivergent minds often find clarity, creativity, and a strange sense of belonging.

From the Buddha’s midnight meditations to the Prophet’s silent Tahajjud prayer, the night becomes a continuum shared across traditions. Through the lens of neuroscience, religious history, and lived neurodivergent experience, Eric reflects on why the middle of the night feels so awake, and why so many of us think differently when the world is silent.

Can this ancient rhythm help us understand our own minds more deeply?

🎙️ Episode Highlights

• The Buddha’s segmented night practice• Islam’s Tahajjud prayer and the midday qailulah nap• Why humans evolved to sleep in phases, not blocks• The neurodivergent mind and nocturnal clarity• What ancient traditions reveal about rest, awareness, and identity

🧘 Takeaway

The night is not a void. It is a landscape.Between two sleeps, we discover a mind that has always been waiting for us.Awareness emerges when we learn to inhabit the quiet.

Written, hosted, and narrated by Eric Vaz, Ph.D.Produced by The Eric Vaz ShowMusic by licensed ambient composers (royalty-free)© 2025 Eric Vaz — All Rights Reserved

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ericvazshow.substack.com

In this episode of The Eric Vaz Show, Eric explores the Joker not as a comic-book villain, but as a mirror of the human consciousness.From the trickster archetypes of mythology to the shadow of modern psychology, the Joker embodies the chaos that lives within us all. Through the lens of philosophy, neuroscience, and Buddhist awareness, Eric reflects on what this laughter-haunted figure reveals about identity, order, and awakening.Can we look into the mirror of madness without becoming the reflection?

🎙️ Episode Highlights

* The Joker as a modern trickster archetype

* Carl Jung’s Shadow and the myth of duality

* Awareness versus chaos in Buddhist thought

* Why awakening without compassion becomes madness

* Guided meditation: Awareness in Chaos

🧘 Takeaway

Awareness is not control — it is the still point behind both laughter and suffering.When we see chaos clearly, we begin to wake up.Written, hosted, and narrated by Eric Vaz, Ph.D.Produced by The Eric Vaz ShowMusic by licensed ambient composers (royalty-free)© 2025 Eric Vaz — All Rights Reserved

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ericvazshow.substack.com

What keeps us from acting when the moment to act arrives? Eric Vaz examines T. S. Eliot’s "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and what it reveals about hesitation, time, and the small beginnings that propel us forward.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ericvazshow.substack.com