Ep. 147 - Don’t Stop Believing - Faith and Awareness in The Six Bardos of Collapse and Rebirth
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
How we work with our minds in the spaces between collapse and rebirth (those uncomfortable gaps in life as well as the huge “gap” after death) hold the key to creating futures that do not replicate the stuckness and suffering of our past. This is true both personally and collectively. As always, with recent world events in mind, we discuss the six bardos of classic Tibetan Buddhism, as well as the three qualities we need to effectively navigate the space between the death of what was and the birth of what will be. Please support the podcast via and subscribe for free or with small monthly...
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Ep. 146 - The Dissonance of 2025
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
Ethan visits a recurrent conversation he’s been having with his students, his friends, and within his own mind: the dissonance between feeling like your personal life and close community are in basically good places, while simultaneously raising your gaze to see the immense suffering and chaos of the world. How can we hold those two and find our compassion and skillful means? Framing thoughts around the massive ICE raids that are tearing families apart, followed by the subsequent mass protests in Los Angeles and across the country, Ethan examines how we can remain grounded in our own beings...
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Ep. 145 - Always Meditate on Whatever Provokes Resentment
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
What is resentment? Why is it so corrosive? How can we work with our resentments? How can we overcome a victim mentality while still protecting ourselves, protecting others, and protecting truth? In this solo episode, uses a classic Tantric Buddhist contemplative slogan from the Lojong mind training tradition that translates as either “Always meditate on whatever provokes resentment” or “stay close to your resentment.” Enjoy the listen! Ethan’s most recent book, was just awarded a gold medal in the 2025 Nautilus Book Awards. You can to order a signed copy....
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Ep. 144 - Microdosing Grief and The Practice of Saying Goodbye
The Road Home with Ethan Nichtern
In a spontaneous episode, Ethan discusses grief and loss while processing multiple events. At a recent compassion meditation retreat, colleague and friend René Fay gave a presentation where she discussed the need to “Microdose Grief,” to take it in little by little so that we can honor the small moments of loss to develop familiarity with the experience when the big waves come. Through remembering the life and the recent death of a dharma friend, Ethan explores a famous buddhist quote about impermanence (“The Cup Is Already Broken”) and explores how grief can be used as a tool for...
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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...
info_outlineEthan shares thoughts in the aftermath of the shocking (to him, at least) results of the US presidential election.
Check out all the cool offerings at our sponsor Dharma Moon, including the Yearlong Buddhist Studies program and Mindful Meditation Teacher Training. Check out the free talk on Grief and Heartbreak, "The Gift of a Broken Heart" with Brian Welch on November 14th and the free talk on What is Karma? with Ethan and Sah D'Simone on December 11th.
Get on Ethan's monthly email list here. Order his new book Confidence here.