Everyday Buddhism 105 - Illumination with Rebecca Li
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
Release Date: 02/14/2024
Everyday Buddhism 120 - I Lost My Why: A Podcast Journey
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
Another solo podcast! This time it's about my Everyday Buddhism podcast journey and how I lost my "why." If you want to hear more about how important understanding what your why is, I talked about that in my second podcast episode, “Everyday Buddhism 2 - What is Your WHY?” The podcast has been such a meaningful space for me: A way to explore, connect, and grow with all my listeners. But more recently, I’ve noticed that the creative spark that once fueled these episodes has started to dim. I feel myself evolving and being drawn toward a wider, more spacious range of ideas and...
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Everyday Buddhism 119 - Spreading Joy
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
It's been a long time since I've done a solo episode of this podcast and I've been getting requests for a bit more of those to include along with the guest episodes. And this episode is one of those. In this episode I reflect on the Fifth Realization from the sutra, The Eight Realizations of Great Beings. The Fifth Realization, as translated by Thich Nhat Hanh says: Ignorance is the cause of the endless rounds of birth and death. Bodhisattvas always listen to and learn from others so their understanding and skillful means can develop and so they can teach living beings and bring them great...
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Everyday Buddhism 118 - The End of Suffering with Ani Lodro Palmo
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
It's a pleasure to share a conversation with Ani Lodro Palmo, an ordained Tibetan Buddhist nun and Director of the Vajra Vidya Monastery in Crestone, Colorado; and a spiritual teacher and author with more than three decades of monastic experience. Ani has devoted her life to spiritual practice and shares her understanding of the Dharma as an author of the books, All That Appears & Exists: The Buddha's Teachings to Awaken the Heart and Turn Suffering Into Joy and her most recent, The End of Suffering: Finding Love, Self-Compassion, and Awakening in a Chaotic World. As a recognized...
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Everyday Buddhism 117 - The Way with Henry Shukman
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
I am excited to share this conversation with Henry Shukman, a Zen master in the Sanbo Zen lineage and spiritual director emeritus at Mountain Cloud Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Henry is the co-founder of The Way meditation app and founder of the Original Love meditation program. He is the author of the books, Original Love: The Four Inns on the Path of Awakening and One Blade of Grass: A Zen Memoir, among other award-winning and bestselling books of poetry and fiction. He has taught meditation at Google and Harvard Business School and taught poetry at the Institute of American...
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Everyday Buddhism 116 - Revisiting Koans: Releasing the Grip on "Reality"
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
As some of you have noticed and commented on, I haven't been as active in releasing podcast episodes. A few listeners were worried about me and, for your concern, I am grateful. I plan to get back to more timely podcast releases, with quite a few on my schedule, but in the meantime, I will re-run some podcast episodes so my podcast listeners will know I haven’t disappeared … and to that end I will be releasing 2 early episodes: Episode 11 and Episode 12 on koans. I decided to re-release these two episodes on koans as a double episode for Episode 116, because I've been practicing with...
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Everyday Buddhism 115 - Unlocking the Heart with James Crews
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
I am delighted to have another conversation with James Crews, a return guest who is joining me for a conversation about his book, Unlocking the Heart: Writing for Mindfulness, Courage, and Self-Compassion. James is the author of the essay collection, Kindness Will Save the World, and editor of several bestselling poetry anthologies, including The Wonder of Small Things (winner of the New England Book Award), Healing the Divide, The Path to Kindness (winner of the Nautilus Books for a Better Life Award), and How to Love the World, which has over 140,000 copies in print. He has been...
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Everyday Buddhism 114 - Release of My 2nd Book - Living Life As It Is
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
This is a special episode announcing the release of my new book, as a Substack serial book: Living Life As It Is: An Honest Narrative of My Challenges Practicing Right View I started writing my second book in 2020. But along came the Covid-19 pandemic and so much after that. So here I am still writing what was to be my second book, focused on Right View. The stumbling block in getting it done was things in life kept changing faster and faster, and I had no idea whether I had any sense of Right View anymore or if I was helplessly lost in delusion. But I recently had an idea that would help me...
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Everyday Buddhism 113 - "Open" with Nate Klemp
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
In this episode I talk with Nate Klemp, PhD. Nate is a bestselling author and formally trained philosopher. He is the author of the new book OPEN: Living With an Expansive Mind in a Distracted World. Nate is also the coauthor of the New York Times Editors’ Choice, The 80/80 Marriage: A New Model for a Happier, Stronger Marriage, and the New York Times Bestseller, Start Here: Master the Lifelong Habit of Wellbeing. He has been featured in The LA Times, The New York Times, The Times London, and has appeared on Good Morning America and "Talks" at Google. Nate co-founded the mindfulness...
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Everyday Buddhism 112 - Buddhist Response to Election Angst with Scott Snibbe
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
In this episode I invited Scott Snibbe to join me for a conversation about Buddhist responses to the anxiety, apprehension, insecurity, fear, dread, anger … and on and on … that some people are feeling now. Scott Snibbe is a twenty-five-year student of Tibetan Buddhism whose teachers include Lama Zopa Rinpoche and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. He is the author and host of the How to Train a Happy Mind book and podcast. Scott leads meditation classes and retreats worldwide in a style that will become evident in our upcoming conversation. His light-hearted approach is infused with...
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Everyday Buddhism 111 - Buddhist Psychology with Natalie Baker
Everyday Buddhism: Making Everyday Better
In this episode I talk with Natalie Baker. Natalie is a psychotherapist and Buddhist teacher, with more than 30 years of personal practice and 2+ decades of teaching experience. She is the founder of Neurofeedback Training Co. and a practicing psychotherapist in New York City, Natalie blends the wisdom of Buddhist psychology with modern therapeutic techniques, empowering individuals to navigate life's challenges with mindfulness, compassion, and resilience. Natalie teaches from the strength of her own Buddhist practice, sharing the transformative power of mindfulness and meditation with...
info_outlineIn this episode, I welcome back Rebecca Li to talk about her new book, Illumination: A Guide to the Buddhist Method of No Method. Rebecca and I had a conversation in May of 2021, about her previous book, Allow Joy into Our Hearts: Chan Practice in Uncertain Times.
Rebecca is a meditation and Dharma teacher in the lineage of Chan Master Sheng Yen and founder and guiding teacher of Chan Dharma Community, a Chan Buddhist practice and study community made up of individuals committed to cultivating wisdom and compassion for the benefit of all beings.
Rebecca has two decades of Dharma and meditation teaching experience, leading retreats or teaching at Buddhist centers in North America, Europe, and Asia. She has been featured in several Buddhist publications, including Tricycle, Lion's Roar, and Buddhadharma.
She is also one of the founding board members of The GenX Buddhist Teachers Sangha where she continues to serve as a board member. Rebecca is a sociology professor and lives with her husband in New Jersey.
In Allow Joy into Our Hearts, Rebecca wrote about Chan Practice and she continues to teach the path of Chan Buddhism in the book we will discuss today, Illumination. In Illumination, she dives deeper into the Chan meditation of Silent Illumination and deeper still into what causes our suffering and how Silent Illumination can help us identify and help decrease the causes of our suffering.
In her book, Rebecca takes us on a fascinating, deep-dive into the method of no method in silent illumination and guides us in the mechanics of this type of practice. In our conversation we talked about, among other things:
- How, in our meditation, we turn thoughts into enemies, rather than allowing thoughts and feelings to be fully experienced and felt …
- About how tend to try to "achieve" as meditators, as if a sport …
- And about the modes of operation: craving, aversion, trance, problem-solving, intellectualizing, quietism, and forgetting-emptiness …
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