The Wisdom Podcast

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast , we meet David Nichtern: Wisdom author of two books, founder of Dharma Moon , and a senior Buddhist teacher who has been practicing and teaching meditation for over 40 years. David tells us about how he encountered Buddhism through the iconic teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche during his first visit to the United States. He relates his experience studying with...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we meet Koshin Paley Ellison, innovative cofounder of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care and author of Wisdom’s recently published book, Wholehearted . Koshin tells us about how he was drawn both to Zen practice and caring for the dying early in life and how the AIDS epidemic, beat poets, and Zen teacher John Daido Loori had an impact on him. He s...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast we are honored to feature H. E. the 7th Ling Rinpoche. Rinpoche tells us about the history of the Ling Rinpoche lineage and about his relationship with H. H. the Dalai Lama, including the special qualities of the Dalai Lama. Rinpoche then tells us about what tulkus are, explaining their important role in Tibetan Buddhism. He tells us what it has been like to h...

This week on the Wisdom Podcast you’ll have the chance to learn about Theravada Buddhism from one of its finest scholar-monks, Bhikkhu Anālayo. Bhikkhu Anālayo discusses the role of mindfulness in early Buddhist texts, specifically the Satipatthana Sutta , and then explains some important etymological points regarding the word satipatthana . He talks about how Pali became one of the early la...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, meet Jay Garfield, one of the country’s most well-known scholars of Buddhism and a professor at Smith, Harvard, and other universities. We hear how Jay came to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, initially studying with Robert Thurman, and then spent time in India as he became more serious about his Buddhist studies. Jay explains the common misconceptions that...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken speaks with Dan Harris , the ABC News anchor who discovered the power of meditation after he experienced a panic attack on live national television back in 2004. Dan recalls how his time reporting in war zones and using drugs contributed to his panic disorder and explains the utility of meditation to counter mindlessness and the anxiety tha...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we hear an interview with Mingyur Rinpoche, a beloved teacher of Tibetan Buddhism. Rinpoche discusses his experiences with panic and how he deals with feelings of anxiety. He talks about how trying to avoid panic actually makes things harder and how meditation techniques have helped him. He tells us how he trained at Sherab Ling Monastery, and how his anxiety...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, author and Tibetan Buddhist scholar Guy Newland speaks profoundly on the experience of grief in the context of Buddhist teachings and practices. Guy published his book A Buddhist Grief Observed with Wisdom in the summer of 2016; contained within its pages is Guy’s reflection on his grieving process during the time when his wife, Valerie, was dying, and how he...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, recorded live as a part of the Wisdom Academy course Introduction to Dzogchen, we hear an interview, lecture, and Q&A with Lama Alan Wallace, renowned Tibetan Buddhist scholar and teacher. We hear how Lama Alan’s spiritual path began and what drew him to dzogchen practice in particular. He describes his life in college and how he dropped out to stud...

On this episode of the Wisdom podcast we speak with Sharon Salzberg, a renowned figure in the American Buddhist and mindfulness community. Sharon first encountered Buddhism in college, where the Buddha’s teaching of suffering spoke deeply to her and led her to begin her Buddhist path. About to leave for India to further explore Buddhism, she encountered Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and he gave h...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we meet Tibetan Buddhist teacher and translator Khenchen Konchog Gyaltshen Rinpoche, Great Abbot of the Drikung Kagyu lineage of Tibetan Buddhism. He tells us about the region where he was born in Tibet in 1946, what Tibet was like at that time, and his memories of fleeing from the country soon after the Dalai Lama left. We hear about the time he spent as a y...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken interviews Christina Feldman, co-founder of Gaia House in England and a guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. Christina has been teaching insight meditation retreats since 1976, and has recently been involved in the dialogue between cognitive therapies and Buddhist practice. This interview took place at...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we hear stories and teachings from Joseph Goldstein, one of the most well-known Buddhist teachers in the United States. Joseph Goldstein has been teaching meditation for 40 years and founded the Insight Meditation Society in 1976 with Sharon Salzberg and Jack Kornfield, a center that has since introduced thousands of people to meditation. He also has recently...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we meet Theravada Buddhist teacher Shaila Catherine, author of Wisdom Wide and Deep and Focused and Fearless . Shaila was introduced to transcendental meditation in high school, and then later entered the path of Theravada Buddhism. She shares the difficulties she encountered on her first meditation retreat as well as what she encountered on that retreat that...

In this episode we meet Steve Armstrong , a teacher in the vipassana tradition who has studied the dhamma and practiced insight meditation since 1975. Steve is a co-founding teacher of the Vipassana Metta Foundation’s dharma sanctuary on Maui , and guided the creation of the new book Manual of Insight , the classic collection of teachings by the renowned Mahāsi Sayadaw . Steve begins by telling th...

This episode of the Wisdom Podcast features our second interview with renowned Buddhist scholar-monk Bhikkhu Bodhi. Ven. Bodhi tells us about the process of creating his book The Buddha’s Teachings on Social and Communal Harmony and how it arose from a real need in various Buddhist communities. Bhikkhu Bodhi shares what “right view” means in the context of social harmony, explain...

This week on the Wisdom Podcast we meet Gerry Stribling, the author of Buddhism for Dudes. Gerry shares how he got into Buddhism when he was volunteering Sri Lanka. He first worked at a nonprofit that protected elephants and soon came across insight meditation. He reflects on how Buddhism helps people become tough and shares what about Buddhism appealed to him, a “tough-guy” ex-militar...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, we meet Pascal Auclair, a teacher in the Theravada Buddhist tradition. Pascal starts by telling us how he came to Buddhism when he was traveling in Asia with his partner and ended up at Buddhadasa Bhikkhu’s monastery in Thailand. He was touched by this experience of intimacy with reality. He was struck by the realization that reality is not completely e...

This episode of the Wisdom Podcast features Buddhist thinkers C.W. “Sandy” Huntington and Francisca Cho. Sandy is the author of Maya ,  a novel published by Wisdom. Francisca is an associate professor of Buddhist Studies at Georgetown University and the author/translator of the Wisdom book Everything Yearned For: Manhae’s Poems of Love and Longing. Sandy begins by reflecting on how the...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, host Daniel Aitken interviews Robert Thurman, renowned scholar of Buddhism and friend of His Holiness the Dalai Lama. In this rich conversation, we first find out why Robert originally dropped out of Harvard as a senior and went to India, and how Geshe Wangyal brought him to the Dalai Lama, who took on Thurman as a student. Robert was ordained by the Dalai La...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast we hear a story of Buddhism and American politics: how Presidents George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush met the Dalai Lama, as told by President Bush Sr.’s cousin Elsie Walker. Elsie begins with the story of how she got involved with Tibet House and then reached out to her cousin, President George H. W. Bush, to tell him how she wanted to support the Tibe...

This Wisdom Podcast episode features Stephen Batchelor, renowned Buddhist author, teacher, and proponent of secular Buddhism. Batchelor tells us of his coming of age in the 1960s counterculture—listening to bands like Pink Floyd, reading Herman Hesse and Alan Watts, and being inspired to visit India, traveling there overland from France in 1972. He then shares how he began studying Buddhism at the...

In this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, our host Daniel Aitken interviews mindfulness author Deborah Schoeberlein David. They begin by discussing how her book Living Mindfully came to be, and go on to the importance of understanding mindfulness deeply as it becomes increasingly popular. Deborah reflects on the difference between mindfulness and meditation in modern terms, how to have a more meaning...

Jeffrey Hopkins was translator for His Holiness the Dalai Lama from 1979 to 1989 and Professor of Tibetan Studies at University of Virginia, and has published more than forty books. Jeffrey started meditating while at Harvard and then, inspired by Thoreau and W. Somerset Maugham, spent time in a cabin in the woods in Vermont. He describes this and other adventures as a young man where he discovere...

On this episode of the Wisdom Podcast, hear host Daniel Aitken’s conversation with Venerable Thubten Chodron , the abbess of Sravasti Abbey in Newport, Washington. Venerable Chodron recounts her first exposure to Buddhism back in the 1970s on a trip to Nepal and India in her twenties. After returning to the United States and showing up to a meditation class, she describes becoming rapidly certain...