Ep. 58 – The Book of Form and Emptiness with Ruth Ozeki
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
Release Date: 09/22/2021
Ep. 143 - Meditations for Mortals with Oliver Burkeman
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
How can we embrace the limitations of time and the certainty of death and create real fulfillment that thrives on an honest assessment of our human predicament? These are the questions at the heart of this episode. welcomes back bestselling author and journalist for a discussion of finitude, death, limitations, productivity, and dueling concepts of the meaning of meditation. Oliver Burkeman is the author of , and the bestselling , is now available. Oliver wrote a long-running weekly column on psychology for The Guardian, "This Column Will Change Your Life," and his work has...
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Ep. 142 - The White Lotus, The God Realm and Pop-Culture Dharma
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
In this episode, Ethan does what at least 40 people have asked him to do (special shout-out to Michele S. in Iowa who convinced him to devote a whole podcast episode to it!) - share his thoughts, as a Buddhist, on Season 3 of the Max streaming series The White Lotus. To do so, he explains three different ways to look at the concept of “Dharma Art,” along with a discussion of the three realms. He also ponders why pop culture seems to so rarely depict the act of meditation itself with any experiential accuracy. Note: a few moderate spoilers (though not major ones) are in the podcast, but the...
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Ep. 141 - Strong Back, Soft Front: The Posture of Meditation is The Posture of Courage
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
In this episode, Ethan links a crucial set of instructions from mindfulness meditation teachers of the past regarding how we carry our posture to what it means to show up in this world at a time of chaos. He discusses the instructions on mindfulness meditation from the “warrior” tradition of enlightened society, as well as decoding the qualities of the instruction to maintain a “strong back, and a soft front.” Please support the podcast via and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, and more!...
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Ep. 140 - Equanimity Feels Different on a Roller Coaster
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
After tariffs were broadly imposed by the current American regime (including, apparently on uninhabited islands populated mostly by penguins) causing a nearly unprecedented crash of the stock market, and after attending the lovely and unexpectedly massive protest marches that took place on April 5, ponders how to deal with extreme states of mind with a world on a roller coaster marked by fear and greed. The key, he says, is to be able to differentiate between arising mental emotions and the awareness that contains and welcomes them, and then to continuously generate compassion for all human...
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Ep. 139 - A Buddhist View of A.I. (It Ain't Great...)
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
In light of revelations about the theft of countless authors' work by one A.I. company (guess ), finally talks about a topic he's been requested to cover for a while: Buddhist views on artificial intelligence. He begins by positioning the conversation within the frame of View and Intention, asking the question of what "technology" is and why and how we even want it to progress, along with proposing the sacredness of human labor, wisdom and creativity as a basic Buddhist principle, as well as a principle of right livelihood. He also includes a Buddhist understanding of the meaning of...
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Ep. 138 - Torched Teslas, Fart Noises, And Right Action Against The Oligarchy
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
delves further into right action during a time of protest and chaos, using the recent examples of Tesla cars and cybertrucks being set on fire as a launching point. In episode, he looked into the five precepts as guidelines for empowered and skillful action. In this episode, he looks into actions of mind as our guide: whether our actions are furthering our fixation on the three poisons of greed, hatred and delusion, or whether they are helping us liberate from those confused mentalities. Can we set samsara on fire instead? Ethan also makes a bad dad joke about using Tesla technology to...
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Ep. 137 - People-Pleasing: A Buddhist View
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
delves into the Bodhisattva teachings on happiness, benefitting beings, and “,” or what happens when compassion becomes an ego construction. How do we tell the difference between helping others in a nourishing way, on the one hand, and doing things for others that we really don’t want to do that leave us burnt out and resentful? And what do you do if no one thanks you for the amazing charcuterie plate you made for them? Please support the podcast via and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, and...
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Ep. 136 - The Heart Sutra, Groundlessness, Joy, and Crumbling Patriarchy with Susan Piver
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
welcomes bestselling author and Dharma teacher Susan Piver for a discussion of the groundlessness of our current world framed through her new book . If you'd like to read a translation of this classic Buddhist text, you can find that on . is the New York Times bestselling author of many books, including and . Her most recent book is . Susan has been a student of Buddhism since 1993, graduated from a Buddhist seminary in 2004 and began to teach meditation in 2005. In 2014, she founded The Open Heart Project, an online dharma center with nearly 20000 members. Please support...
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Ep. 135 - The Three Lords of Materialism
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
Ethan discusses the classic origins of the worldview of "Materialism," as well a framework developed by the Tibetan teacher Chogyam Trungpa called "The Three Lords of Materialism" for looking at how we can notice our tendency to chase peak experiences in the arenas of the physical world, intellectual experience, and of course, our spiritual paths. Please support the podcast via Substack and subscribe for free or with small monthly contributions. Paid subscribers will receive occasional extras like guided meditations, extra podcast episodes and more. Check out all the cool offerings at our...
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Ep. 134 - The Power of Choice: The Five Precepts as a Recipe for Transformation
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
Ethan discusses a classic Buddhist concept, sīla (or shila), through the lens of knowing where to place our attention and action, knowing "what to cultivate and what to reject." Choices shift energy and energy can build power, and that power can be the difference between awakening and confusion. Ethan also argues, using the five precepts (or five mindfulness trainings) as a guide, that this might be the key to building new powerful systems in the world. He also examines a rule for social change involving only 3.5% of us making different, more awakened choices. Imagine if only a few percent of...
info_outlineEthan Nichtern and Ruth Ozeki discuss her new novel, The Book of Form and Emptiness, the similarities between writing and meditation, and how to perceive the voices of the object world.
Ruth Ozeki is a novelist, filmmaker, and Zen Buddhist priest. She is the award-winning author of four novels, The Book of Form and Emptiness, My Year of Meats, All Over Creation, and A Tale for the Time Being, which was a finalist for the 2013 Booker Prize. Her nonfiction work includes a memoir, The Face: A Time Code, and the documentary film, Halving the Bones, which was screened at Sundance and on public television. Ruth is affiliated with the Brooklyn Zen Center and the Everyday Zen Foundation. She teaches creative writing at Smith College, where she is the Grace Jarcho Ross 1933 Professor of Humanities. Learn more about her at ruthozeki.com.
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