As we move into a new year, how do we deepen our understanding: of ourselves, our relationships, and our spiritual practice? In this episode, we explore the three essential steps of learning in the Buddhist tradition: hearing, contemplating, and meditating.

Highlights:

• Why the first step, hearing, is more than listening: it’s opening to what’s being offered without judgment or projection.
• How contemplating allows teachings to be tested, weighed, and integrated through experience rather than accepted blindly.
• What it means to meditate in the deepest sense: living a teaching, letting it shape your being.
• A story from a meditation student learning to let go of constant vigilance and just breathe.
• Reflections on Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness and integrating wisdom into daily life.

If you want to learn something deeply—whether meditation, spiritual practice, or life itself—these three steps are your path.

Podcast After Party – Song Feature:

We celebrate music as a form of transmission and joy with a performance by the legendary Egyptian singer Umm Kulthum (also spelled Oum Kalsoum, Om Kalsoum, Umm Kalsoum, Om Kulthoum, Oum Kulthoum, and Umm Kolthoum). Her song Lelat Hob (Night of Love) showcases the power of live music, devotion, and cultural adoration. 

For the full version of this song, you can listen here.

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If you’d like to watch the podcast, the video version is here.

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Learn to Teach Meditation

The Open Heart Project Meditation Teacher Training returns this January.
We begin January 17th, 2026. 
I teach every session. It’s intimate, rigorous, supportive—and it’s for anyone who wants to help others work with their own minds and hearts.

Click here to learn more & sign up.

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Produced by Citizens of Sound

Music by: Derek O'Brien

©Open Heart Project