Meaningness Podcast

Transcript Introduction [00:00] ​Most of this podcast is a recording from a retreat Charlie Awbery and I led a month ago. I’m adding a short introduction here now, to provide background context, so you can understand more of what we presented then. So first, tantra is the branch of Buddhism concerned with energy , and therefore with action . Energy is the potential for action . You can’t have eith...

John Vervaeke’s Meaning Crisis and my Meaningness address similar issues in similar frameworks. Yet there seem significant differences! Andrew Conner pinpointed some in his insightful essay “ Is the ‘meaning crisis’ a real loss? ” Coincidentally, he was visiting Charlie Awbery and me at the time, so we were able to discuss it in person, and recorded a video of our conversation. In addition to that...

Transcript ​You can bless things. It’s easy! You can do this! You just go around blessing things . You don’t need a clerical collar, you don’t need a fancy hat (although the hat might help). This is a non-denominational practice. It’s not particularly religious ; you can be of any religion, or no religion. There’s no prerequisites. It’s easy! You just do it. This is a practice of perception, of ap...

Transcript (ish) Dzogchen is the branch of Buddhism that I’m most influenced by; that I love most. It’s extraordinarily compelling and exciting and beautiful. It’s in some sense the basis of pretty nearly everything that I write. It has several serious problems, though. One is that you can’t sell it. And this problem is nearly fatal . Every religion has to have some economic basis. This is somethi...

Many people in the West pursue meditation in order to experience altered states. Meditation is sometimes considered a safer alternative to taking psychoactive drugs, with roughly similar effects. The jhanas are altered states of consciousness, for example. Buddhist tantra also produces diverse altered states, using various methods. In Western Buddhism, the usual idea is that enlightenment itself i...

A facilitated discussion of how the participants find sacredness in the actual world —and in community. This Vajrayana Q&A session is an Evolving Ground online discussion I co-hosted with Jared Janes . You can get some sense of the eG style here. We don’t go in for “dharma talks,” much less lectures. All our meetings, both in person and online, are highly interactive, mainly created in the moment...

“Dzogchen Street Preacher” is the overall title for a series of performance pieces I planned in 2009. This extremely brief one, “Kadag,” was meant to introduce the whole thing. I was on the verge of recording them when there was a mundane emergency that took all my time for a year. When I had the opportunity to work again, the Meaningness book seemed more important. But less fun! There’s a bit of...

Before controversy and fame, Jordan Peterson was a psychologist theorizing myth and meaning. Jake Orthwein points out striking similarities in Peterson’s work and David’s. Along with them, fundamental disagreements : partly due to Peterson bringing a Christian perspective, and Chapman a Vajrayana Buddhist one. Nihilistic catastrophes ※ Chaos and order ※ Reconciling myth and rationality ※ Interacti...

Rationality is stereotypically masculine. What about meta -rationality? Transcript: Charlie: What’s the connection between gender and meta-rationality ? David: I had never thought to ask that! The systematic mode of being, or the rational mode of being, is male-coded, or masculine-coded. Meta-rationality involves an openness that surrounds systematicity, or rationality; or may just completely tran...

The common civilizational pattern of a separate priesthood and aristocracy casts light on current political dysfunction. This video follows “ Nobility and virtue are distinct sorts of goodness .” You might want to watch that one first, if you haven’t already. These are the first two in a series on nobility . There will be several more. Subscribe, to watch them all! Transcript Many successful civil...

Nobility is the wise and just use of power. Nobility is not moral virtue. They are not in conflict; they may correlate, but they don't always coincide. Nobility is the proper matter of politics. Transcript Sermonette Nobility is the dark matter of society. The pull of dark matter holds galaxies together. Without it, stars would spin off into intergalactic space. Nobility holds societies together....

A visual, kinesthetic, embodied experience 𐡸 A fish-eye lens and a magnifying glass 𐡸 The little clicker wheel 𐡸 Nurturing a plot of woodland 𐡸 Becoming the space, unstuck in time 𐡸 Freed up to play Like most of my posts, this one is free. I do paywall some as a reminder that I deeply appreciate paying subscribers—some new each week—for your encouragement and support. Transcript What is the right...

A nine-minute radio sermonette. I think I may be doing a bunch of these. Subscribe to get all of them! Possibly I’ll create one every day or two ! And maybe you don’t want that many emails? So I could post these as Substack Notes , and collect them into emailed posts, sent once a week maximum? What do you think? Transcript In the 1970s, researchers in cognitive developmental psychology discovered...

Emptiness, form, and the Big Bang 𐡸 How understanding creates students 𐡸 Buddhism outside institutions This short video explains two stanzas from the Evolving Ground invocation liturgy. The first is an origin myth, and the second explains the prerequisites for successful Buddhist teaching. Each reworks traditional themes and scriptural motifs in a contemporary worldview. The video is extracted fro...

A seven-minute radio sermonette. Transcript This is it! We’re actually here . I’m here in this room you can see behind me maybe, if you’re watching, not listening. You can hear my voice. I’m in a place. I’m in this world. You’re in a place. You’re in a room, you’re out walking, you’re driving in a car, and you can see what place you’re in. We are in the actual world . There are people of a religio...

Rigpa is Dzogchen’s word roughly equivalent to “enlightenment.” But what is rigpa, actually? And what does it imply for ethics? A conversation with Varun Godbole . This is a clip from the monthly Q&A I host for Evolving Ground , a community for contemporary Vajrayana practice. Participation in the Q&A sessions is free for Evolving Ground members, and membership in Evolving Ground is also free. Our...

What is learning math good for? — Robert Kegan and “meaning-making” — Existentialism’s error — Narcissism and tyranny — How can we avoid radical relativism? — My experience of teaching This is the video from my January 2025 monthly AMA (“Ask Me Anything”). As a cine auteur , for previous AMA recordings, I have insisted on the director’s cut , editing both the video and text transcript carefully, o...

The felt experience of mathematics — witchcraft and black magic — “Shut up, kid!” — what is a real number? — shocked and embarrassed — clouds all the way down — a choir of angels singing — painting Cthulhu’s third eye on the walls of our mathematics and science departments Video from a monthly live Ask-Me-Anything! The transcript is below. The web page adds fun illustrations, and a wonderful comic...

How thoughts work — goddesses at the origin of philosophy — inspiration in adult development — how myths transform society and culture — Spock and Jimi Hendrix — entrepreneurship, purpose, and value Video from a monthly live Ask-Me-Anything! How to participate next time , and more info: https://meaningness.substack.com/p/myth-adult-development-entrepreneurship Unexpected connections Everything is...

Following our earlier conversation about Ultraspeaking and Vajrayana , we add adult developmental stage theory to the mix: three transformational frameworks in synergy. We recorded this when Charlie was in Berlin on a Chinese martial arts retreat. Charlie had had been away from home for more than a month, after teaching several Vajrayana retreats in New York. The video signal was not good, so this...

“What do you think you’re  doing ? And, um, why ?” This is a recording of a Substack live video AMA (“ask me anything”) session I hosted two days ago. Around fifty people attended! I enjoyed it, and hope everyone else did too. We had a preliminary discussion in the subscriber chat , which was very helpful for collecting questions and getting the conversation started. I’ll do these monthly , for as...

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit meaningness.substack.com This video is for paying subscribers only. There’s a brief “teaser” for free subscribers that ends in in a cliff-hanger. This comes in the “too much fun!” category of paid posts. Military use of Buddhist Tantra helps explain why it is so weird I extracted this seven-minute video from my September 2024 Vajrayana...

Ultraspeaking trains you in confident, effective speaking; and is also a path for spontaneous personal transformation. Vajrayana trains you in confident, effective action; and is also a path for spontaneous personal transformation. We find them startlingly similar, although one offers courses in a consequential everyday competence, and the other is an ancient Indian religion. This thirty-nine-minu...

The point of Vajrayana is to change your way of being. It has effective methods for that, but they are weird and complicated and difficult, and there are a vast number of them. It can be overwhelming . It's difficult to know where to start, and traditional approaches and curricula may not suit you. Understanding Vajrayana theory—how and why it works, and for which goals—helps you navigate the comp...

There’s a wrong idea about the end of suffering.  Probably  wrong. I mean, maybe some people don’t suffer. I don’t know anybody like that. Spiritual suffering is unnecessary, though. I have the recipe for eliminating it, and it works. An audio recording of my long answer to a question, in a live Q&A session organized by Jessica B. three years ago. (Thanks Jess!) Monthly Q&As I’m doing Q&As like th...