Buddhist Geeks

In this episode of Our Beloved Teachers, dharma teacher Leigh Brasington reflects on his transformative experiences studying with Ven. Ayya Khema, one of his most influential teachers. Leigh shares how Ayya Khema's clarity, discipline, and groundbreaking teachings on meditation, including the jhānas, shaped his practice and teaching path. The conversation also delves into Ayya Khema's extraordinary life story and her pivot...

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined again by dharma teacher Trudy Goodman, founder of InsightLA, to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Kōbun Chino Otogawa. Kobun (February 1, 1938 – July 26, 2002), also known as Chino Otogawa Roshi, was a Japanese Zen priest who brought his unique and deeply compassionate teachings to America. Renowned for his unconventional approach, he emphasized practicing dharma within daily life, oft...

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks, Brian Newman discusses his journey into deep jhāna meditation practice. He explores his training in the rigorous Pa-auk tradition, the challenges and breakthroughs he experienced, and the balance between traditional and more modern approaches to jhāna, ultimately advocating for a playful, less rigid approach to accessing these deep states of concentration.

Episode Links:

👤 Brian...

In the episode on "Technological Metamodernism," Vince Fakhoury Horn and Stephen Reid discuss the intersection of technology, metamodernism, and the potential middle paths that navigate between techno-optimism or e/acc and eco-dystopianism or doomerism. They explore how emerging technologies can be aligned with deeper values, such as sovereignty, relationality, and wholeness, while also addressing the challenges of our cur...

In this episode of Buddhist Geeks, Vince Fakhoury Horn shares his experience of working with the meditation startup Jhourney, and raises concerns about their insufficient training and appropriation of Buddhist meditation practices, advocating for a more responsible and deeply informed approach to secularizing Jhāna meditation.

Episode Links:

📝 The Second Generation of Mindfulness by Vince F. Horn

🔗 The Meditation...

In this episode Ryan Oelke chats with Judith Blackstone, contemporary spiritual teacher, psychotherapist, and founder of The Realization Process, and author of her latest book, The Fullness of the Ground: A Guide to Embodied Awakening.  They discuss a variety of aspects of what it means to embody nonduality, including different views on nonduality, how to practice and live a path of embodied nondual awakening. 

Ep...

In this episode, recorded during a Buddhist Geeks Retreat, Vince Fakhoury Horn teachings on several ways to meditate, including Concentration, Mindfulness, Heartfulness, Inquiry, Awareness, Embodiment, and Imaginal forms of practice. Each approach to meditation leads to different results, even as the ultimate goal remains the same, which is to realize the essential nature of mind, and be able to embrace the ongoing journey...

In this Our Beloved Teachers episode Emily Horn speaks with Spring Washam about her relationship with Harriet Tubman, and the teachings she has received from her. Spring speaks about the importance of faith and courage in navigating challenging times and the connection to the unseen world, while emphasizing that Harriet Tubman is not just an ancestor for African Americans, but for everyone. She encourages people to tap int...

In her talk titled "Homemaking Dharma," Emily Horn discusses the process of creating a spiritual home, which involves working with heartbreak, grief, and our shadow aspects. She emphasizes the importance of understanding our spiritual story and incorporating elements of our ethnic and cultural backgrounds into our practice. This journey towards wholeness requires the practice of mindfulness and love, and although it can be...

This talk, titled "Contemplating the Anomalous" was given by Vince Fakhoury Horn on a Buddhist Geeks retreat in July, 2023. It explores the stages of a paradigm shift in understanding, going from ignoring the anomalous, to encountering anomalies and experiencing resistance, to exploration, and finally toward genuine transformation. Using examples from both Science and Meditation Vince attempts to illustrate the learning pr...

Meditatewith.ai is a web app prototype, aimed at demonstrating the possibility of learning Multiplayer Meditation–an out-loud, social, interactive, & trauma-informed protocol–with an AI partner first. The purpose of the company behind this prototype, Interbeing Inc, is to improve the mental health and well-being of all humans using interpersonal meditation practices. In this episode, recorded during an event inside the...

The Vimalakīrti Sūtra is a Mahayana Buddhist text from the 2nd century CE that explores the nature of enlightenment and the teachings of the Buddha. In this contemporary commentary on the Vimalakīrti Sūtra, Pragmatic Dharma teacher Kenneth Folk shares his personal understanding of what he refers to as “a magical spell.”

Episode Links:

• Watch the Video Version of this Talk on Youtube
• Kenneth Folk Dharma
• The Vimalakīrt...

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined by long-time teacher, Kenneth Folk, to share about his beloved teacher, Bill Hamilton, who American dharma teacher Shinzen Young referred to as "an unsung hero of Western Mindfulness." Bill was an enigmatic dharma teacher who practiced in the Insight-Theravada tradition. He was the founder of the Dharma Seed library, did more than 7 years of silent retreat practice, and wrote an excellent cont...

Vince Fakhoury Horn is joined by dharma teacher Trudy Goodman, founder of InsightLA, to share reflections on her beloved teacher, Seungsahn. Seungsahn Haengwon (Sungsan Haeng'weon Daeseonsa, August 1, 1927 – November 30, 2004), born Duk-In Lee, was a Korean Seon master of the Jogye Order and founder of the international Kwan Um School of Zen.

Episode Links:

👤 Trudy Goodman

👤 Seungsahn

📺 B...

In this episode, hosted by Vince Fakhoury Horn, we kick off a new series called Our Beloved Teachers. In this episode Vince explains how this a new kind of community podcast series, aimed at exploring the true nature of the teacher-student relationship, while preserving the oral history of BuddhaDharma, in the digital era.

We call it a "community podcast series" because anyone can submit a recording to the series–all you...

“‘To be’ is to inter-be.” – Thích Nhất Hạnh

In this episode–taken from a Dharma Talk at the Garrison Institute in 2022–Vince Fakhoury Horn teaches on the complexity of Interbeing, looking at "it" from 3 distinct perspectives:

1. Interbeing within Ourselves
2. Interbeing with Others
3. Interbeing inside Nature

Taken together, these three form a great network of Interbeing, one which opens us to the self-similar & fractal nat...

Emily West Horn teaches that we can learn to apply both mindfulness & heartfulness toward liberating ourselves from the "trance of unworthiness." What do you most want to realize? Relax, and you will know.

Episode Links:

👤 Emily West Horn

📖 The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology by Jack Kornfield

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In most modern contexts the topic of magic is taboo, because it isn’t Rational. Here, Vince Fakhoury Horn makes the claim that magic can also be understood and practiced in a Transrational way. He does this by unpacking several perspectives on magic, and then links those with the Buddhist teachings on the open heart: The Four Immeasurables.

This episode was recorded during a recent Buddhist Geeks Retreat on Heart ...

We're joined in this episode by Writer-Director-Actor-Comedian-Songwriter and run of the mill fucked up human, Stuart Davis, as he shares his deep experience of navigating what is generally referred to as "the phenomenon." Both in his work as the host of the Artists & Aliens Podcast and as the convener of The Experiencer Group–a virtual learning community for people who've had anomalous experiences–Stuart is help...