Contemplify

Raghu Markus is currently the Executive Director of the Love Serve Remember Foundation and has been an associate producer for on-line and television events for Ram Dass and Oprah Winfrey as well as Eckhart Tolle. Raghu is the host of Mindrolling, a podcast "about coming unstuck and the recent history of awoken awareness. It's about the intersection of culture, consciousness and realization." (adap...

"Marianne is one of the best teachers I've experienced and I've been a teacher for many years." - Brene Brown Marianne Elliot is a human rights advocate and a writer. She served in the United Nations mission in Afghanistan with a focus on human rights and gender issues, helped develop human rights strategies for the governments of New Zealand and Timor-Leste and worked as Policy Advisor for Oxfam....

"Jenny Phillips is a cultural anthropologist, filmmaker, writer and psychiatric nurse. She has a psychotherapy practice in Concord, MA, specializing in crisis intervention, family and marriage therapy, behavioral medicine, and mindfulness training. In 2002, working with the Alabama DOC, Jenny successfully brought a Vipassana meditation program inside a maximum-security prison in Alabama. In 2008,...

"Munindra was one of the most important teachers for Westerners in the establishment of Vipassana and mindfulness meditation."  - Jack Kornfield "Mirka Knaster is the author of Living This Life Fully: Stories and Teachings of Munindra , a book about the Bengali meditation master who was a grandfather of the vipassana/​mindfulness movement in the West and who taught many of today's most prominent W...

David Germano is a man who holds many posts at the University of Virginia. Germano's astute and focused work related to the integration of contemplation into all facets of life makes him an easy conversation partner on Contemplify. His deep attention to the contemplative sciences is astounding to witness and damn near impossible to keep pace with. Be sure to check out the U.Va.'s Contemplative Sci...

Lama Rod Owens ( @lamarod1 ) holds the space for vulnerable conversation to unfold. I was going to write a spot-on bio, but the one posted on his website mirrors my experience and understanding of him: "Considered one of the leaders of the next generation of Dharma teachers, Lama Rod Owens has a blend of formal Buddhist training and life experience that gives him a unique ability to understand, re...

T.D. Mischke (@TommyMischke) is a radioman that has fled the studio for the open road and the stories waiting to be told via his latest project, The Mischke Roadshow . My conversational history with Mischke dates back to 1996 when I first rang his radio program as a 16-year old. Ever a beacon of creativity, Mischke is an artist and storyteller who has always allowed his natural curiosity to carve...

Andrew Gingerich embraces a prophetic, contemplative lifestyle. Of course he would object to this description, because his pursuit is internally driven and extrinsic validation does not go far with him. At times he speaks like a modern-day Desert Father (in our conversation he unknowingly paraphrases one of the most famous lines by Abba Moses ),  with the winsome nature of Thoreau and the delivery...

Dar Williams (@DarWilliamsTour), "one of America's very best singer-songwriters." (The New Yorker), is thoughtful and charming as she tells stories about her local community, but don't let her laid back delivery fool you, she is passionate about community life and the revitalization of small towns everywhere. Known for her songwriting chops, Dar takes us down another avenue to talk about "positive...

"Each day is valuable...Do not compare it with a dragon's bright pearl. A dragon's pearl may be found. But this one day out of a hundred years cannot be retrieved once it is lost." - Zen Master Dogen This quote easily tripped off the lips of author, editor, illustrator and brush painter Toinette Lippe. An artist of many pursuits, Lippe had a distinguished publishing career at Simon and Schuster (u...

Morgan Atkinson has documented the life of Thomas Merton over two films. The poetic contemplative Thomas Merton lived an ever expanding and continual openness to God's love and Atkinson beautifully captures this on film. In this episode discover Thomas Merton as the rescuer of the contemplative tradition in Christianity, the middle-aged monk who fell ass over heels in love with a student nurse, an...

Eric O. Springsted spends some time with Contemplify to explore the life and attention of Simone Weil.  The French philosopher, mystic and activist dared to imagine an authentic life based on the attention and practice of love for all of humanity. Weil came into her own through a contemplative stance hard-won through affliction and openness.  Springsted has spent his entire career drawing from the...

Donald Worster ( @TheWorster1979 ) connects with Contemplify to traverse the life and passion of John Muir. The American icon who combined intelligence and curiosity with a grounded love for the wilderness. Muir held a natural contemplative bent that married an abiding sense of purpose.  The landscape of John Muir's life is pretty well documented, in my conversation with Donald we focus on the uni...

Amy Frykholm (@AmyFrykholm) joins Contemplify in conversation on visionary 13th century contemplative and mystic Julian of Norwich. Bring some mead to the table because we cover a lot of ground here; the near death experience of Julian that catapulted her writing (by the by, Julian was the first woman to write a book in English), Amy's life-altering encounter with Julian, a Noble prize winning con...

This episode introduces the premise and possibilities of the Contemplify podcast. Contemplify kindles the examined life for contemplatives in the world through musings and interviews with scholars, creatives, and practitioners. Visit us at Contemplify.com