Buddhist Geeks

The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, one of the foremost teachers in the Nyingma and Kagyu schools of Tibetan Buddhism, joins us to discuss his efforts in creating a genuinely Western form of the traditional shedra tract of Buddhist learning. This traditional scholastic training system is being translated and slightly altered for Westerners so that they can learn the full system of monastic training. In...

Long-time American Zen practitioner Stuart Lachs has spent some 40 years practicing Zen. First with Suzuki Roshi at the Tassajara Monastery in California and then with Eido Shimano Roshi, Walter Nowick, and finally with Ch’an Master Sheng-yen. In all of these communities Stuart ran up against strange and unfortunate dynamics playing out between the Zen Master and their communities. After getting h...

"What the teacher really offers the student is literally living proof that all this talk and the seemingly impossible goals [of Zen] can be realized in this lifetime.” – Baker Roshi in the Introduction to Zen Mind, Begineer’s Mind Stuart Lachs, who for many decades has studied Zen from within and from without, challenges the legitimacy and authority of the Zen Master by deconstructing the structur...

Our conversation with Susan Piver continues this week as we wrap our discussion on the relationship between meditation and writing. We also also explore the role that intention plays in offering or marketing the dharma. Finally, we wrap up the conversation by touching in on personality theory and productivity. Find out which enneagram type the Buddha was, and why productivity systems can bring abo...

When Susan Piver’s book, The Hard Questions, hit the top of the NY Times Bestsellers list (and stayed there) she decided that she needed to deepen her practice immediately. Listen in this week as speak with Susan about her journey as a popular author and Buddhist practitioner. And if you have an interest in writing, or the creative process, you won’t want to miss out on her description of the “med...

The Round Table Geeks continue their exploration of Whitney Joiner’s article, “Dive-bar Dharma”. In a flurry of paradox, perspectives, humor, and exploration they tackle questions of integrating dharma into life, the Buddhist secular movements, contemplative practices in other traditions, and the historical and sociological dimensions of Dharma’s spread to the West. We hope you enjoy this dynamic...

Hokai Sobol and John Peacock continue their discussion about how the Buddha and Buddhism are described in the earliest Buddhist writings. By getting more accurate with translations of the earliest writings, Peacock believes modern Buddhism can free itself of the trappings of Religion, Humanism, and the need for consolation in the face of reality. They discuss the role and importance of critical in...

Buddhist scholar and Chaplain Danny Fisher, joins us to explore various stories, or narratives, that run through the Buddhist world. There are a variety of different kind of stories in the Buddhist tradition, including those that are more traditional and those which are more modern. Included in those narratives are Buddhist hagiographies (traditional teaching stories about important figures), hist...

We’re joined this week by Soto Zen teacher Zenkai Taiun Elliston. Along with the being the abbot of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, Taiun is also a long-time professional designer, having trained and taught modern design. We ask him to share his perspective on the interplay and parallels between the two fields, which brings about a very interesting conversation about the aesthetic of simplicity, the...

We’re joined this week by Rich Fernandez, who serves as the Head of Learning and Organization Development at eBay. Rich has a long history with meditation and eastern practices, and has been working to bring secular mindfulness practice into the workplace. He shares some striking early research into the experimental programs that he’s helping to implement at eBay and also explores a larger initiat...

This week we have an intimate conversation with two young Buddhist practitioners. The first vignette is with Sophie McLaren, who practices in the Shambhala community and runs an organization dedicated to bringing Buddhism and mindful living to youth populations. The second vignette is with Wes Rosacker a Zen practitioner in the White Plum sangha and a training psychotherapist. We discuss how each...

We’re joined this week by mother, author, and Zen teacher Karen Maezen Miller. Maezen speaks directly to the need to see through the dualisms that we create in our lives, and speaks specifically about the dualism of being a parent and a practitioner. She shares advice on how to not make one part of our life battle with other parts, and explores an empowering understanding of what monastic forms ha...

We conclude our discussion with spiritual teacher Sally Kempton—who has her spiritual roots in the Hindu tantra tradition of Kashmir Shaivism—this time speaking about some of the crucial secrets that she has discovered about deepening in meditation. She begins by sharing how she overcame a period where she had been stopping short in her meditation. She shares how she used her spiritual heart and a...

This week we speak with spiritual teacher Sally Kempton. Sally was a student of the influential Hindu guru Swami Muktananda and taught in his lineage for many years. She shares with us her journey of first being introduced to Swami Muktananda, how she became a teacher, and why she shifted from being a swami to teaching in a more secular capacity later on. During the 2nd half of the discussion Sall...

We’re joined this week Krista Tippett, host of the award-winning radio show “Being.” Krista begins the discussion by sharing how she went from being the chief aide to the US Ambassador in Germany, during the cold war era, to asking deep spiritual and ethical questions. This questioning led her to study theology at Yale, and then sometime after start her current show, which started off with the tit...

Leading game designer Jane McGonigal joins guest host Rohan Gunatillake to explore the relationship between games and well-being, and see what clues they might hold for the future of Buddhist practice. Jane starts with a surprising disclose: she is a meditation practitioner and has been studying Buddhism for the last 5 years, since she was a grad student in Berkley. She explains how her work with...

Senior Shambhala teacher David Nichtern joins us to geek out about some of the potential consequences of our rapidly developing technologies on the Vajrayana tradition. We speak extensively about the ramifications of greater degrees of virtual reality, how our sense experiences (what in Buddhism are referred to as the ayatanas) are already virtual, and how visualization practice, in particular, co...

This week guest host Rohan Gunatillake of 21awake.com interviews spiritual entrepreneur Nick Jankel. They explore the notion of “enlightened entrepreneurship,” discussing why it is that spirituality and business often seem at such odds. Nick shares some of his own background and aim in business and speaks about the secular path of an entrepreneur as bodhisattva. The conversation winds down with a...

For this 200th anniversary edition, the microphone is turned around on the regular host, Vincent Horn. Our guest host for this week’s episode is the UK-based blogger of 21awake.com , Rohan Gunatillake. Rohan asks Vincent about his personal practice history leading up to Buddhist Geeks, and also how the project affected his practice since then. They also explore some of the exciting trends in the d...

We’re joined this week by Insight Meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg, to talk about her latest book, “Real Happiness” and also about meditation as an emerging part of secular culture. This interview was recorded during a conference at Emory University in which Dalai Lama spoke about secular ethics as the most relevant approach to humanity’s issues. He pointed out that much of the world isn’t inter...

Many Buddhist figures have things to say about wise engagement with technology, but many of these same figures are not technologists themselves, and so have a limited view, or understanding, of the full range of what technology is, and perhaps of what it means. This week, to explore these very questions, we speak again with leading technologist Kevin Kelly. He shares his unique view on how technol...

We’re joined this week by celebrated technologist and co-founder of Wired Magazine, Kevin Kelly. Kevin shares how he went from a back-to-the-lander hippie in his early youth, to becoming one of the most important technological thinkers alive today. We then explore one of the central ideas of Kelly’s technological philosophy, what he calls the technium. He shares how the technium can be dated all t...

Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche—a dynamic and engaging Gen X Tibetan Lama who has spent half of his life living in the West—joins us to explore several key points related to the development of a more contemporary Buddhism. We explore some ideas from his newest book, Rebel Buddha, including the idea that there is an essential aspect to Dharma that goes beyond culture, the ways that teachings on emptiness...

We’re joined this week by Buddhist teacher Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel to explore some of the topics from her most recent book, The Power of an Open Question . Elizabeth speaks about the nature of questioning, and why questioning is one of the best ways to come in accordance with the way things are. She also explores the qualities of faith & doubt, how questioning fits in with both, and how skept...

We’re joined this week by author, teacher, and Tibetologist Glenn Mullin. During our conversation with Glenn we focus primarily on a system of teachings in the Tantric tradition called The Six Yogas of Naropa. He speaks about each aspect of the practice—including such practices as sexual yoga, dream yoga, and bardo yoga—and also explains why he thinks the 6 yogas are a perfect compliment for the m...