Podcast appearances and mentions of leigh brasington

In this episode I am once again joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of “Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas”. This episode begins with a brief comment from Leigh about his appearance in “Ep329: Enlightened Politics” in which he explored the relationship between Buddhism and political ideology. After that we discuss Leigh's new book “On the Way to the Far Shore”, his commentary on the Pārāyanavagga, chapter five of Suttanipāta, one of the earliest sutta collections in the Pali canon. The text takes the form of a question and answer session with the Buddha himself and evidences nascent forms of the doctrines of the four noble truths and the path of gradual training. Leigh considers the pros and cons of formal study of the Pali language, explains the ways in which English translations can be misleading, and muses on why so few Buddhist converts read their own scriptures. Leigh also reveals how his Dzogchen practice helped him understand early Buddhist doctrine, gives advice about how to internalise intellectual ideas through meditation practice, and shares how a profound experience of the nature of mind changed his life forever. … Video version: www.guruviking.com Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 01:17 - Can there be an enlightened tyrant? 02:49 - Anyone can perform enlightened activity 04:20 - Why Leigh wrote On the Way to the Far Shore 08:13 - Wrestling with the Pali sutta 09:07 - Leigh's training the the Pali language 11:18 - Struggles to learn foreign languages 12:37 - Is training as a scholar worth it? 14:36 - 4 categories of Pali suttas 17:05 - Why Leigh won't pursue a PhD 19:17 - Why don't Buddhists read the Pali canon? 23:14 - Diving into the the Pārāyanavagga, book five of the Suttanipāta 27:50 - Vedanā and āsava - don't believe the English translations 29:44 - Literal vs meaning translations + implications of grammar 33:40 - Q&A with the Buddha 36:20 - Questions the Buddha refuses to answer 37:46 - Experiencing the world raw 42:27 - The most important insight 44:22 - How to really gain insight 45:24 - Leigh's Dzogchen practice 46:14 - Leigh's mind blowing experience of the nature of mind 51:28 - After effects of Leigh's epiphany 53:56 - Integrating vs losing an insight 55:04 - How to keep an insight fresh 56:31 - How to regard the world so you are not seen by the King of Death 59:17 - How to become “ever mindful” 01:01:30 - This is a different kind of book 01:02:41 - The roots of the Four Noble Truths and the gradual training 01:05:13 - Will Leigh start a Pali sutta discussion group? 01:07:14 - Man in the Light of History of Religion 01:10:02 - Scripture as literature or an instruction manual? 01:12:32 - Leigh's advice for approaching difficult books 01:13:46 - What do the suttas say about the brahmavihārās? … Previous episodes with Leigh Brasington: - https://www.guruviking.com/search?q=brasington To find our more about Leigh Brasington visit: - http://www.leighb.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

(Barre Center for Buddhist Studies)

Stephen Torrence joins Vince Fakhoury Horn to share his experience teaching generative AI in Bhutan and explore the audacious vision behind the Gelephu Mindfulness City — a million-person city being built by Bhutan's King to prove that mindfulness, technology, and economic development can coexist.

What if “liberation” isn't an escape from the world's pain, but the most grounded way to meet it?In Part 2, Ian Challis continues his exploration of the journey from samsara (the spinning wheel of greed, hatred, and delusion) toward nibbāna—not as a far-off trophy, but as an orientation we can practice right here.He frames refuge (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) as a real-time source of strength rather than a hiding place: community, ethics, and wise effort become the “places we gather power” when life feels dystopian or overwhelming. He leans on the bodhisattva spirit—awakening that's incomplete unless it includes others—and points out that freedom isn't withdrawal; it's relationship, mutuality, and shared responsibility. Ian also makes liberation practical and strangely familiar: most people already know its taste. He calls these moments “free samples”—brief flashes when the mind isn't clinging (maybe in nature, art, a quiet walk, or simply watching the breath). The practice is to study what's present and absent in those moments, and to lean into the “via negativa” of the Dharma—freedom revealed by letting go. Along the way, he offers a handful of memorable handles for the path:“Letting go” scales: let go a little → a little peace; a lot → a lot of peace; completely → complete freedom (Ajahn Chah).A Marie Kondo test for the mind: if a thought, habit, or story doesn't support the wholesome, can it be released? (Although it's easier with closets than with resentment.)Five grounding views for hard times: trust the path, trust one's capacity, remember support/lineage, hold that all beings deserve compassion (including oneself), and remember that actions matter.A deeper inquiry beneath “the heart wants what it wants”: through the five aggregates, Ian points to how the survival-driven “I-making” process can run the show—until practice begins to dissolve the hard sense of “me,” revealing a deeper heart that longs for connection and true freedom. He closes by treating nibbāna with humility and faith—something the Buddha described beyond ordinary categories—and reminds listeners that the work is gradual: many small acts of integrity, mindfulness, and wisdom that keep turning the wheel toward stillness.______________Ian Challis is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2025 marks his co-teaching of the 9th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker. He is also a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison.Find him at ianchallis.com ______________ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995 CREDITSAudio Production: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

What does it take to finally say, “I've had enough of being swept around by life,” and begin walking a path toward real freedom?Ian Challis invites us to first take a grounded look at samsara—the restless, exhausting cycle of craving, aversion, and wandering that shapes so much of human experience.Ian describes samsara not as a moral failing but as the natural turbulence of being human: the push and pull of desire, fear, habit, and cultural conditioning. Through vivid stories—including a moment of panic while snorkeling—he illustrates how easily we're carried by currents stronger than our intentions, and how transformative it can be to “put our feet down” and reclaim stability. Drawing on the Buddha's teachings, he explains samsara as the momentum of ignorance and craving, continually renewed by cultural messages of scarcity, competition, and “if only.” Ian emphasizes that these forces operate both internally and collectively, and that recognizing them is the beginning of wise view—the first step on the Noble Eightfold Path.So how do we respond once we do see samsara clearly? He describes saṁvega, the spiritual urgency that arises when the heart recognizes suffering and refuses to keep passing it along—whether through inherited family patterns, cultural conditioning, or our own unconscious habits. From this urgency comes a shift in view: a willingness to let go of unhelpful opinions, identities, and stories that keep the wheel spinning. Ian shares the five views he's chosen to center on this year—each beginning with “I trust…”—as a way of simplifying and clarifying his path:I trust the dharma.I trust myself enough to walk this path.I trust that I don't walk it alone.I trust that every human being is worthy of kindness and safety.I trust that my actions matter.He closes by reminding us that samsara isn't just a cosmic cycle—it's the moment‑to‑moment drift into fear, craving, outrage, or despair. Each time we notice and return to center, the wheel loses momentum. Each time we “put our feet down,” we move a little closer to freedom.______________Ian Challis is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2025 marks his co-teaching of the 9th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker. He is also a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison.Find him at ianchallis.com ______________ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy over 900 recorded talks dating back to 1995 CREDITSAudio Production: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

Leigh Brasington explains how the mind progresses through the four jhānas—from initial access concentration and the energetic, pleasure-filled first jhāna to the progressively quieter states of happiness, contentment, and equanimity—emphasizing their practical characteristics, traditional similes, and their role in supporting insight practice.

In this episode I am once again joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas'. In this episode we had planned to discuss Leigh's latest book, entitled “On The Way To The Far Shore”. Instead Leigh spontaneously began to explore the theme of Buddhism and politics and so we decided to go deeper into his ideas. Leigh shares his take on the world situation and reveals the impact of his childhood upbringing and college education on the development of his own political views. Leigh discusses whether or not Buddhist spiritual development necessarily leads to left wing politics, reflects on the role of compassion and interdependence in the left-right divide, and considers whether or not past Buddhist masters who held different political views to his own lacked enlightenment. Leigh also warns about the dangers of clinging to fixed views, gives advice for how meditators should relate to politics, and explains why he believes political engagement is a natural result of the spiritual path. This episode is a spontaneous exploration of Leigh's ideas about Buddhism and politics in the spirit of open discourse and is not intended to represent my own views or the stance of this podcast. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep326-enlightened-politics-leigh-brasington Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 01:18 - Complexity and inequality 02:52 - Global warming 03:28 - Visiting mission fields in Mexico 05:13 - Overpopulation 06:02 - What motivates Leigh's political engagement? 08:24 - Practice and politics 11:03 - Should Buddhists be politically engaged? 16:49 - Dependent origination leads to politics 22:21 - Diverse politics of past Buddhist masters 24:31 - Evolution of Leigh's political views 28:40 - How Leigh relates to those who hold different political views 32:19 - Why did past Buddhist masters hold different views to Leigh's? 35:21 - Spiritual insight leads to left wing positions 40:54 - How does Leigh explain past Buddhist masters who have held conservative views? 47:58 - Does it give Leigh pause to claim his political views are the most enlightened? 54:11 - Leigh comments on the awakening of past masters who held different political views to his own 56:34 - Leigh refines his position 57:44 - What if Leigh is wrong? 59:16 - Advice for how to relate to politics as a spiritual practitioner 01:02:27 - New sutta index 01:06:09 - Why discuss controversial topics? 01:08:43 - Concluding remarks … Previous episodes with Leigh Brasington: - https://www.guruviking.com/search?q=brasington To find our more about Leigh Brasington visit: - http://www.leighb.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Vince Fakhoury Horn: The Flavors of Jhāna—I can't remember where I first heard this term. I think it was from you or from Kenneth [Folk].Brian Newman: Maybe we should start there. You came to me and said, “What should we call the retreat?” And I said, “Hey, you're the one who wanted to do it in Portugal—what should we call it?” You threw it back at me, and I said, “Can we call it the name of my half-written book?”So folks, this all comes from a story that's part of a lineage. This is a Kenneth Folk story, and it's his way of demonstrating Jhāna on the spectrum.Kenneth says: imagine you've got a bunch of strawberries. You crush them into a strawberry smoothie, and you drink it. What does it taste like? A hundred percent strawberries.Now imagine a glass of clear water. You take a strong strawberry extract in concentrated form, drop in a single drop. What does it taste like? Strawberry—but just one tiny drop.And Kenneth's punchline is, “It all tastes like strawberry, motherfucker.” His point is that it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum of Jhāna. On one end, you've got the Pa'auk tradition—completely absorbed, so much so that a gun could go off next to your head and you wouldn't notice. On the lighter end, you've got Leigh Brasington, teaching Jhānic factors in a very Sutta-based way, or even lighter approaches. But Kenneth's point is: it all tastes like Jhāna. Different flavor, same essence.Even the tiniest drop in the ocean still tastes like strawberry. That's how I understood the story when Kenneth told it.Much of this dialogue centers around an upcoming 10-day meditation retreat on the same topic, The Flavors of Jhāna, that will be co-taught by Brian Newman & Vince Horn.Vince: The Flavors of Jhāna—I can't remember where I first heard this term. I think it was from you, or from Kenneth [Folk].Brian: Maybe we should start with that, yeah. So, Vince, you came to me and you said—no, I said to you, “What should we call the retreat?” And you were like, “Hey man, you're the one that wanted to do it in Portugal, what should we call it?” And you put it back to me. And I said, “Can we call it the name of the book—my half-written book?”And so this is, folks, this is all coming from a story that's part of a lineage. And I promised we'd tell some of those today. So this is a Kenneth Folk story, and it's his way of demonstrating Jhāna on the spectrum.So Kenneth says this: imagine that you had—glass—imagine a few different scenarios. You've got a bunch of strawberries, and you crush 'em into a strawberry smoothie. And you just have a pure strawberry smoothie, and you drink that smoothie. What would that taste like? And the answer is, that would a hundred percent taste like strawberries, because that's all that's gone into the making of the strawberry.Now, what if you just had a glass of clear water and a pretty strong strawberry extract in a really concentrated form, and you dropped one drop of that into a glass of water? What would that taste like? And then the answer is, that would taste like strawberry—with just one tiny concentrated drop.And Kenneth's punchline on this is: “It all tastes like strawberry, motherfucker.” I believe that's the punchline. And his point is, it doesn't really matter where you are on the spectrum of Jhāna. And we could say, when we say the Jhānic spectrum, we're talking about on one end we have the Pa'auk tradition, which would have you completely absorbed, so much so that a gun could go off by your head.On the lighter end, we would have Leigh Brasington, who teaches Jhānic factors, a very Sutta-based approach—or maybe some even less rigorous, less absorbed type of Jhāna. And Kenneth's point is: it all tastes like Jhāna. What are you talking about? It's just a different flavor. And how much of that actual flavor do you need to be able to recognize it?His point is, the tiniest little millionth part in a glass in the ocean would still taste like strawberries, so to speak. Let me know if you have a different interpretation of that story. That's how I interacted with it when Kenneth told me.Vince: Yeah, no, I have a similar interpretation of what he was teaching there. He was kind of pointing to this depth dimension of Jhāna, and using the strawberry analogy to point out that, yeah, these states are patterns of mind. And even if you experience them at a great depth of absorption or focus, it's still the same pattern. You can still recognize that pattern. And that's what we're calling Jhāna, essentially.Brian: Yeah. So that's the “flavors” part. And then maybe we could ask—let me raise a question to you then, Vince. So, what is Jhāna? We've got this interesting word with this weird hyphen over the A, and even how I think about it over the years has changed. How do you view what Jhāna is these days, Vince?Vince: Yeah, for me too, it's changed. And I guess maybe that change is interesting. 'Cause I imagine this is the case for you as well, Brian. Maybe for everyone who takes up a Jhāna practice. At first you experience Jhāna in the very specific way that you're practicing with it—so you've got whatever tradition you're working in, you've got the meditation object that you've been working with, you've got the instructions, and you've got a bunch of ideas about what is supposed to be happening, and what constitutes Jhāna. And you're using all of that to try to get into the states that are being described in that practice system.So for me, like when I first started doing Jhāna practice, it was with Leigh Brasington. He was the first Jhāna teacher I worked with 20 years ago. I went on retreat. Sadly, I left my sick wife at home in the apartment—because I didn't want to. This is how self-absorbed I was at the time—I didn't want to get sick, at the beginning of a Jhāna retreat. So I just left her there suffering by herself, to go off and get—Brian: So you could go get concentrated.Vince: Yeah. So that should explain the emphasis on wishing all beings to be concentrated. That's what I needed a little more of. But yeah, for me it was working within Leigh's system. And like you said, the emphasis there is on—well, it's on the breath, but also on the Jhānic factors. And I started to notice when they get strong enough, you can turn toward those factors and just get absorbed in them, which is like getting absorbed in the strawberry.So, long story short though, as I expanded to other practices, and I was doing more vipassanā noting style—which I now call Vipassanā Jhāna—and I was doing other techniques in more depth, I started to notice there's a deep pattern or structure, which is the same regardless of the practice I'm doing, which object I'm working with, or even what definitions about the states that should be arising.There's still something that's the same that happens. And for me now, I consider Jhāna to be just meditation—the most—which is the literal translation of the term Jhāna. It comes from dhyāna in Sanskrit, which is also translated as Zen.Brian: So it goes dhyāna to Chan to Zen in China, then over to Chan. Yeah. Jhāna, Chan, Zen. And the Zen guys diss Jhāna all day long—but the name of Zen actually means Jhāna, which is hilarious.Vince: They just don't talk about it because they're being it, I think. So yeah, that's how I understand Jhāna now. It's just—yeah, this is what we're doing. It's meditation. And whatever you meditate on does change the contours of the state and the experience. And whatever ideals you have certainly change your relationship to what's arising.Sometimes a state could seem totally inadequate, or like a warmup to something deeper. Whereas for other people, that could be the thing that you're aiming for. Just, “Oh, I'm in it now, I'm just going to rest or abide.” So I think for me, the world of Jhāna has opened up and expanded a lot over time.Brian: You said there's some similar quality. Could you say anything more about what that similar quality is?Vince: Yeah. Okay, so, let's explore that together. Seems it consistent? It gets a little tricky. Yeah, it gets a little tricky because I learned it first through the noting maps, and so I'll tend to notice—I'll go there to describe things, even though that doesn't describe the universal quality. But the stuff you did with the eye posture, like pointing to that, there's something there where it seems like regardless of which state I'm in, the eyes are moving through this sort of progression.Brian: Yeah.Vince: That seems to be universal.Brian: Yeah. Yeah.Vince: The aperture of attention and how broad or open attention is, and how much it includes the field of experience—that also seems to be a chief characteristic, regardless of the state, or the object I'm working with. What else?Brian: Totally concur with you. Yeah. The aperture. I often call it maybe the—Ingram also says the width of the Jhāna, which is a really weird thing, like what width, how am I going to measure the width? But it's the width of the visual field essentially, is what's being pointed to—what's happening in that space when the eyes are closed. Yeah.Vince: Yeah.Brian: What else is similar there?Vince: I was going to say something about the body, but the body's something that seems like it changes. Like, the experience of the body changes a lot depending on where one is and the depth dimension. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that, having experienced those sort of really deep exclusive states, where the body is described as having dropped off or dissolved.Brian: Yeah, so similar to—so, let's say I've been doing Jhāna for 15 years, probably Vince a little bit less than you, and we've come to a similar conclusion, I think. Which is: I think we're just talking about meditation here, and Jhāna's maybe a placeholder for what sounds like a certain technique, but really it's more than that.And like you, Vince, I've come to really feel that Jhāna just means meditation. And from that perspective, when we call a retreat The Flavors of Jhāna, it's The Flavors of Meditation. And our meditation community is called The Meditation Community. It's not—Jhāna just meaning meditation. I think that's totally appropriate.And so the more that I teach, the more what I come to see is we have eight discrete Jhānic states that are sort of pitched in an order of progression. It's linear. So you start with one and you go to eighth. It makes sense.The practitioner might find something really different though, which is on any given day, in any given emotional state, a different state might be more accessible to me. For those of us that wake up in the middle of a lot of suffering and dukkha ñāṇa, we might find that a blissful third Jhāna is really accessible—maybe for some reasons we can talk about later. So as we start to explore that, then it's like, you don't actually have to start at the first to get to the third, do you? You can drop in there some days.There's many practitioners that will tell you how they can just do a cold start right into the fifth Jhāna. And so if you start following that to its logical conclusion, I think what we start to say is: is it possible that whole meditation traditions have been built out around a single Jhānic state? And my answer to that is absolutely yes.So, Vince, and I think you and I were speaking the other day about what would happen if we said that the best Jhānic state was the sixth Jhāna, and that if we reified that to be the maximum, only, best thing. Many meditation teachers are only teaching the best thing, so let's be one of those teachers who's only teaching the best thing. What would that look like? And I think you and I agreed—that would look a lot like Ramana Maharshi, wouldn't it? That would look a lot like Advaita.“I am the world creator. I'm the world destroyer. I am just pure, infinite, boundless consciousness.”And so my current thinking around this is: Jhānic states could all be reified, so much so that an entire tradition could be built around the fifth Jhāna, or the seventh, or the eighth. And in fact, I think they have been built around that. And if you really love the sixth Jhāna—yeah, go do Advaita. It's probably your perfect cup of tea. I think we'd say a very similar thing around the fifth or the seventh or the eighth as well.Vince: Yeah. That's really interesting. So you're describing how perhaps entire practice traditions might be centered around specific states as the starting point, and then exploring those states or the domain around those states.Brian: Yeah.Brian: And then, so we're going to—we'll teach eye postures, folks. And I think some of—but to talk about that real briefly, it's about the aperture. So, a really tight aperture is a first Jhānic eye posture. Then it gets a little bit bigger with second, a little bit bigger with third, and then real big with this more expansive fourth Jhānic eye posture.So the really interesting question for the formless realm practitioner—ooh, in general I think this makes you become interested in eyes. And then you start to look at other practice. Maybe some of you have a Six Yogas practice, or Dzogchen, you've done Mahāmudrā. And if you start to think about that a little bit: where do my eyes go? Or where do one's eyes go when they do Dzogchen? You start to play with that a little bit and you realize there's a very distinct eye posture for Dzogchen.If you look at monks, they'll often practice Dzogchen with their eyes open. Their eyes are flittering all around. They're doing the eye thing. What would that correlate to, a state in our Jhānic arc? Maybe there's not really a Dzogchen-like Jhānic arc, I'm not quite sure around that. But each practice seems to have a discrete eye posture—most of which, I think, can be correlated to one of the Jhānic states.That's a lot of how I think about non-Jhānic practice these days: what is the closest thing that makes me feel like this in the Jhānic practice, and I'm using the eye postures to triangulate around that.As I said all that, it sounded esoteric. Did that sound really esoteric?Vince: Yeah, but for me I was thinking of something very practical—like in the Dzogchen tradition, when I worked with Lama Lena. Her basic instructions are to take a, like, a pebble or rock first.Brian: Yeah.Vince: Yeah. And as you practice what's called shiné, which is like calm abiding, you focus on the rock, or the pebble. And then there's another phase of practice in which you just remove the pebble, and then you continue to focus. And so that to me gets at the eye posture of Dzogchen, where previously you had something you were focused on, and then now you're asked to continue focus without that thing.So that's like a very practical instantiation of that, where the eye posture is clearly one that's meant to be open and spacious, but somehow stable and focused as well.Brian: And I love that. So what would that be called? That's samādhi without object.Vince: Yeah, shamatha without a sign.Brian: And we don't really talk about that in the Theravāda lineage—which you and I have done probably most of our practice in, Vince. There's no samādhi without a sign. It's always a sign. So that's just so fascinating. That's really deeply aligned with the yogic tradition, where they have objectless samādhi. And it's a totally different feeling to do that.And yes—look at something, then take the thing away, and keep looking at it. What is that, other than an eye posture?My story on eye posture is from a lineage—like a very deep practitioner. I'd love to share it with you. I've shared it before, but it's worthwhile to share again.So one of my main teachers, Sayalay Susīlā, who was the chief attendant for Pa Auk Sayadaw for a couple decades while he was traveling around Asia—she would spend time with him in Sri Lanka, several years there cooking his food and being his chief attendant. So very close to Pa Auk Sayadaw, really deeply absorbing his teachings.And one day—I learned eye postures from Kenneth Folk, and I didn't really need to talk about that with my Pa Auk teacher because she was very traditional. I didn't want to bring too much stuff in that might make her feel uncomfortable. But one day I accidentally said—I mentioned that I was using eye postures, and I said something about looking toward something.And she said to me in great shock, she goes, “You're looking with your eyes?” Eyes closed, but still looking. I said, “Yeah.” She goes, “You're looking with your eyes, like your actual eyes? Not some internal drifty—?” And I said, “Yeah, I'm looking with my actual eyes. I'm like taking a gaze.”And she goes, “If you're doing it already, just keep doing it.” I thought she was going to chastise me and say, “Never do that again.” But she essentially blessed the practice. So there was something there that was quite profound, I thought. Even from the Pa Auk tradition, they seemed to—I got a little wink, nod, nod on that one.Vince: Nice. I had a similar experience, although it turned out a little differently, with Daniel Ingram. I think I've shared this with you, Brian, where I was wanting to explore the kasina object, using the circular orb as a visual focus point. And Daniel Ingram had written the Fire Kasina book, and had been talking a lot about fire kasina in the years leading up to that.But I wasn't really that into the flame. I was wanting to do it, like, on my computer or whatever. And his instructions were very much to take the kasina object, close your eyes, and then see the afterimage, the eidetic image, and focus on that. And that by using that subtle— which I guess in your tradition would be like the nimitta—by focusing on that sort of internal nimitta, you eventually get absorbed. Well, you go through a process with that, but eventually it's a kind of a complete absorption in the nimitta.And I understood that, but for some reason I wanted to keep my eyes open doing the practice. It was just like a sort of intuition or an instinct. And maybe it was like a rebellious thing—“I'm going to rebel against what one of my teachers is telling me to do and see if he's right.”And I found, actually—this was so interesting—that moving through the third Jhāna, which he calls the murk, which for me I experienced as the kasina breaking apart and moving around and dissolving and being difficult to focus on—eventually my eyes actually settled so much that they were just barely open. It was almost like just a tiny slit of my eyes were open.And at some point it shifted into the fourth Jhāna, where all I saw was the color. It was like where I was looking and how my eyes were—and it wasn't like I was trying to engineer this, I was actually just moving through the state—and I found suddenly that my eyes were closed at just the right amount and looking at just the right place, that all I saw was the color from the kasina and I was completely absorbed.Brian: This is what was supposed to happen.Vince: Yeah, exactly.Brian: That's a full absorption. How beautiful. With eyes open. So amazing.Vince: And I was like, “Oh, my teacher's wrong. You can't just do this—or you don't only have to do this—with your eyes closed, taking the internal image. You can work with the external image the entire time, through the whole process.”Brian: Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe that's a great transition.Vince: Sorry, Daniel.Brian: No, and we all love Daniel, and great respect for everything he's done. It's nice to have people trying different things out and telling us what actually works.Vince: Yeah.Brian: Maybe we could talk a little about the fact that there are a lot of concentration objects and what we will be offering in the retreat as far as what people might like to do around that.Vince: Yeah, that's cool.Brian: So folks, actually I don't have my list on me and I wouldn't be able to remember this because it's just too many, but there are traditionally 40 concentration objects. And the breath is one of those. The brahmavihāras, like loving-kindness, would be included. Things like contemplating the foulness of the body—contemplating pus, or contemplating urine or feces—would be considered part of that as well. And then you have all the kasinas, which are really traditional, and also contemplating the dharmas would be a concentration object as well.And so there's this premise that there are only 40, but every single sutta, or everything in Buddhism, there's always a sutta that says the opposite. And so what it turns out, there's a beautiful story where the Buddha meets a person, and the Buddha had the ability to see into people's past lives.And when he met this person, he could see this person had been a jeweler in a previous life. And so when the person came to him to request his object of concentration—which is how it was done in the old days, you go to your teacher and they give you the most suitable object, which is how it happened for me too in Malaysia, she will tell me what to do, I don't get to pick, she's going to pick based on her supreme knowledge, right?—and the Buddha to the jeweler, he says, “Clearly you were a jeweler in a previous life. I'm going to have you concentrate on this big, beautiful red ruby,” because he knew this guy was just going to be fully, really love the jewel, the ruby.So that—so apparently we could say the ruby is the 41st concentration object. But what I think we can actually take away from that story is: you can choose anything as a concentration object. Vince, maybe you want to talk later about your story—about Vince taking the number 1 as a concentration object on a full retreat, which is, whoa. How—where would that go? What's the sign of the number one, the nimitta? That's really fascinating.So there are all these different concentration objects. The breath is a wonderful object. I really promote the breath simply because I always have it with me. I don't need to take a bench with me. I don't have to have a cushion. I don't have to have a fancy colored thing. I don't have to have my computer. I can do it anywhere I am. It's always with me—the breath.And the breath produces this nimitta, this visual sign that allows us to get fully absorbed as well. Some of the other concentration objects wouldn't take one to that level of nimitta.And so for our retreat that's going to be happening on January 2nd, Vince and I's idea is we would like—we're very non-dogmatic teachers and we really like a spirit of openness and exploration—and we're going to invite all the participants to choose their object of concentration.I think probably, Vince, both of us will be teaching from one object. I'll be teaching from the breath for sure, because that's my preferred object. But you're welcome to choose a kasina. You could choose flame if you want. I think we could find a way to have you do a fire kasina somewhere if you wanted, et cetera, et cetera. Water, whatever you might like to work with. Vince, anything you want to add to that? Just how we're hoping to really keep it open for people on the retreat?Vince: Yeah, this is—it's an interesting experiment, because most concentration retreats, and I think in both of our experience, the whole group is being taught one object and is usually, though not always, doing one object focus together.And here, the idea is—what, yeah, we're all going to be focusing on one thing, but that one thing could be different depending on who you are and what you're resonating with, and where you want to go deep during that retreat. So it's a kind of interesting balance of the diversity of possible objects that one could be working with, and the universal experience of deepening with your meditation object.So we're going to be focusing on the universal patterns here, and the universal challenges that arise when trying to focus on anything—whether it be a jewel or a number, or the breath. And so yeah, I'm hopeful that we can weave those two worlds together. And my hope is that the deepening that happens often on retreat, that can be felt, that extra support—that we don't lose that just because there's a diversity of objects being worked with. But rather, that it creates something like a more complex field of concentration.Like the complexity of a wine when you drink—Brian: Yeah, complex harmonics.Vince: Yeah, exactly. There's a complexity there because of the way differences come together. And I guess I felt that in the Jhāna community, with your Śamatha Jhāna and the Vipassanā Jhāna and the Metta Jhāna. There's something I've seen with people that are going to multiple of these groups, where they're getting more of the flavor of the practice and what it could be like, by dipping into these different subjects.Brian: That's fascinating. And that metaphor of complex wine is really lovely. And complex harmonics tend to make interesting music. So that's great. Anything—should we talk about the breadth and the depth? So something that you and I often—so for those who are listening to this, Vince and I will often come across—so Vince and I are fairly non-dogmatic in the sense that we're really open to all doorways. And certain teachers that have been brought up in strong traditions, they have a really strong idea about what Jhāna is and what it isn't. Which I completely respect. And I really want to honor those classical traditions as well. I love that stuff and I'm completely drawn toward that as well. But Vince and I think we have a—we know we have a bit of a different approach. What should we say about the breadth and the depth that we're hoping to cover there?Vince: Yeah. Personally I can say I've struggled with this a lot over the years of practice.Brian: Totally.Vince: Having come up as a layperson, I decided not to go the monastic route because of my girlfriend—now wife. I didn't want to lose that relationship. It felt important. So I was always doing the thing—and I think you had the same experience for a while—going in and out of retreat.Brian: Totally.Vince: And going in and out of daily practice, doing an hour or two a day formal practice, going in and out of a month or so on retreat, coming back. And I experienced the oscillation between daily life and retreat life to be very fruitful on the one hand—where it felt like I kept plunging the depths and then coming back—but then also very challenging and confusing on the other end. Like, how do I bridge these two realities together? It almost could feel schizophrenic at times, coming in and out of that space.And part of what I learned really working with Kenneth—social noting exercises initially and teaching—was, oh, I need to be able to connect these states across my relationships now. That I need to be able to be present in relationship, not just by myself in silence on retreat. I need to find a way to bring this to bear on everything.And also be more okay not being in really concentrated states, since there are times where it's just going to be hard to do that. I know we've talked about your experience—I've laughed a number of times thinking about your experience going from super hardcore Pa Auk-style retreat practice to being in Tokyo with your wife, trying to maintain some of that depth while in an environment that just doesn't seem designed to do that.Maybe you could talk a little bit about your experience trying to maintain the depth.Brian: Just a general comment. This is less about Vince and I being meditation teachers and just trying to be skillful human beings in the world. If your partner's getting mad at you because of how you meditate, you're probably not doing it right. There's something going on that's probably out of sync.And so what that looked like for me was—I'm going to be the—clearly I needed to be the best Jhāna master ever to live who was a Westerner, I think. Second only or something like that. And what did that mean practically? Trying to live a life where I'm meditating four to five hours a day, while maintaining a full-time job and a marriage. And you know, that's sustainable for a certain amount of time.But what it actually means you need to do is you need to be dropping into the ānāpāna spot when your wife goes to the bathroom at dinner. And if you're thinking about that, you're probably actually thinking about it while you're eating dinner. And you might even take a moment to touch it while you're eating dinner. And then the wife will actually notice, and she'll say, “Stop meditating,” because she's sensitive to all your moods. Because she's been living with you. She knows when you're meditating, even if you think you're hiding it.And so this is actually failure mode. I don't think this is a good move. And so it's exactly what Vince is saying. There's something super beautiful about learning to get fully absorbed in a Jhānic experience, which tends to take some time for most people. There's a time-on-the-cushion element to that just because of the relative time it takes to build up the concentrated facility.But we also have lives to live. And there are certain things going on that make it impractical some of the time. So what's the happy medium? I think what's actually practical for us as laypeople.Now, one of my dear teachers is Tina Rasmussen. She's my first Jhāna teacher. And therefore I feel a really strong connection to Tina, who was one of my first Pa Auk teachers. But Tina won't think that what Vince and I are teaching is Jhāna. Because it—and some of the things that we're being taught in the Jhānic community—she wouldn't call Jhāna, because it's a little bit too far out of the rails of the Pa Auk tradition. And I totally understand that, and I respect that.And maybe Leigh would have his own opinions on that. And all these teachers have all these opinions. I think what Vince and I would like to offer you all is: we're going to hold all of that. We're big enough to hold all of that, accept all of that, agree with all of that, and be open to disagreeing with all of that. But we're going to say, that's all going to fit somewhere on the spectrum.We're happy. And in fact, I think within the community we hope we have teachers who could orient you to any part of the spectrum. Because at certain times of your life, some parts will be more interesting than others. If you're on a month-long at the Forest Refuge, go for full absorption with the nimitta. Why not? What a beautiful thing to have done in your life.If you're living a layperson's life and you meditate for about 20 minutes in the morning, maybe just get a little bit of nice pīti going, per Leigh Brasington's instructions. Because that's totally accessible in 15 minutes.What's going to make you feel good? Jhāna ultimately is really being offered as an episodic intervention to suffering. That's how the Buddha taught it. It's how he practiced it. And you can read that in the suttas. He entered Jhāna at the end of his life because he was sick. This is exactly how it was taught, and how he still can do it today.Vince: Brian, you mentioned the spectrum, and I know we've talked explicitly about the depth dimension as a spectrum. And here I'm like visually imagining this as like a vertical spectrum, where as you go down you get deeper. But I also have been thinking in the Jhāna community about another axis, which is the breadth axis.So if I were to map these together—like depth going vertically and breadth going horizontally—that would give like a bit more like a grid. And I think the breadth dimension—we were talking about this here, and it's good to make it explicit—which is, you can, and the way I understand the Pa Auk tradition really, is that it's focused on a very exclusive kind of breadth. Very hyper-focused on the object, and super deep. So it'd be like in the lower-left quadrant of this: super exclusive and super deep.Brian: Yeah.Vince: And what I've been realizing I've been trying to do in the last decade or so is live on the other side of the spectrum. Which is the more inclusive dimension of Jhāna, which I find you can actually take very deep. And maybe the Zen tradition is the best place where that's emphasized, where it's like your practice and your life are all integrated in one. And there's really an emphasis not on preferencing being in a particular posture or doing a particular thing—it's just like, your whole life is the meditation.And if that to me is—okay, that's a more inclusive kind of meditation experience, or Jhānic experience, where everything that arises is part of the practice. And like, thinking of The Karate Kid, it's like, at the beginning of The Karate Kid, what are they learning? Wax on, wax off. You're learning every basic movement can be kung fu. And so if you turn everything you do into the meditation, then you can have a kind of inclusive attention or awareness that doesn't get knocked off by the changingness of the content of experience.Brian: Say more about inclusive, exclusive. And I think you were doing one or the other when you did our guided sit today—you were talking a lot about “may concentration arise for all.” Were you even doing a little bit of a visualization? Visualization—what would the world look like, should we all be so concentrated? Can you point to what you were doing there—whether that was inclusive or exclusive, and how you see those two?Vince: Yeah, that's a good example, Brian. That was the move toward more inclusiveness. Including the imaginal capacity, which you'd already brought online really with the rails, feeling in the breath. So just working off of that. But also including in awareness more of a sense of others.And I think what I learned from Ken Wilber, of the Integral philosophers, is like we really can include these core perspectives. We can include our first-person experience—which to me, that's already included, even in the most exclusive, deep Jhāna states. You're including your own experience, you have to, because that's where it's happening.But then you can also include others' experience. You can open to and include in your awareness other people. And the early Buddhist tradition has good examples of that, like in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. As they're describing the kind of mindfulness you want to establish, they said establish this mindfulness internally and externally.And so there's already there some clear instructions for how you can have a more inclusive kind of focus that includes not just your own experience, but also others. And then the third thing you could include, from an Integral perspective, is the third-person perspective, which is like the external world. Nature, the world of nature.And I—lately I've been sitting for 24 minutes a day outside on my back porch. That's been my practice—just sitting. And it's a very inclusive practice, because the eyes are open, ears are open, body open, and you're just sitting and being with whatever is. In my case, it's with Emily, and with the sounds of what's happening in the neighborhood.Brian: What a beautiful practice.Vince: That to me is like more inclusive. If you open from your first person to include others and then include the world—if you include all those things—you're sitting in a very inclusive way. Or walking, or standing, or whatever posture you might be in.Brian: And folks, you know that—what's the proximate cause for concentration? That's concentration. We've all heard that before. It's a kind of a funny joke. I think we talk about like Shakti and passing our concentration to others, which I hear a lot—people say when they're with me they feel more concentrated. I think that's because I'm including them. I'm trying to include them in that space. I want them to be part of that. And I'm inviting them into mine, and they're giving me some back, and we're all kind of building it together.The—a little bit more on the spectrum. So my natural resting place on the spectrum and Vince's natural resting place on the spectrum are actually at totally opposite ends of the spectrum. I want you guys to know that because I think that's really great—that you have a teacher who sits on each side, and therefore we can cover all the middle.So I'm a hundred percent exclusive. That's how I was taught to practice. And so one of the primary things I do when I'm correcting students who come to me to learn Pa Auk Jhāna is: people have been highly influenced by events, or they've been highly influenced by The Mind Illuminated—Culadasa. And they'll come in and then I'll learn, like on session four, like I hadn't realized it because they haven't told me yet, “Oh yeah, I'm always leaving 10% of my awareness in the room to note things before they arise.”And I'm like, “No. You don't leave any awareness in the room. You put a hundred percent here. We're never doing anything but that.” And that turns out to be revelatory. People are like, “Oh, I don't leave any in the room?” And I'm like, “No, this is an exclusive practice. A hundred percent.”And some of us will really be drawn to that. It's a very—you guys can feel the renunciate vibe of that Theravāda. It tends to be a renunciate practice. That churning is renunciate practice. And those of us who are incredibly drawn to absorption tend to have a little bit of that renunciate vibe. I absolutely have that in myself.Vince, on the other side, has taken—all great teachers will have students who will take something they've taught and run with it and reify and make it great. And Vince took social meditation from Kenneth. And I took eye postures. Kenneth talked about eye postures a little bit, but I went and made it the whole thing. Kenneth is even surprised by how big it's got at this point. And I think he'd say the same about Vince in social meditation.So just a little bit there about how we—our natural resting places I think make us really great teaching partners, in the sense that we love to cover the whole end of the spectrum, from our respective ends, which are the exact opposite ends. I think, Vince, that we sit at the opposite ends on that, naturally.Vince: Yeah. But we can meet in the middle, which I think is important. We both have that experience of being on the other side.So yeah—to your point, we'll do some social meditation on this retreat as well, regularly. And the intention there is to play with extending attention to include more.I was thinking about, what is the core difference between the sort of exclusive and inclusive ends of that spectrum? And it more or less reduces down to whether you're saying “no” to experience outside of the object you're working with, or whether you're saying “yes.” Or whether the object you're working with includes everything else.And in that sense, I would say all practice is working with that spectrum. Because there are times—even probably in the Pa Auk tradition, I imagine—where something could be arising that actually keeps you from being able to a hundred percent focus on here. And you actually at some point have to maybe turn toward it and deal with it, or address it, so that you can come back to a hundred percent focus here. Is that accurate?Brian: Yeah, so the most radical Pa Auk teacher will say you don't even do that. And they're not going to even acknowledge that there's a hindrance taking you away, because that would almost be like an admission of defeat.Vince: Like you're feeding it or something?Brian: Yeah, like feeding there something. So it's just: focus here. That being said, in the more modern Pa Auk teachers, they talk a lot about transformation versus transcendence. And the frame on this is—with Jhāna, we're aiming for transcendence. We are going to intensely ecstatic states that one would never experience without doing the practice. And these are supernormal human states, way beyond the pale of normal human experience.But sometimes that doesn't work, because we're super hungry or we hate our boss, and we're being pulled away by hindrances, we could say. And then when that happens, we simply can't concentrate. Focus here is not an option. And the more modern teachers are a little bit more flexible around that, and they say that's when we shift from transcendence into transformation. And what I mean by that is personality transformation.And they will propose that you do some work around working with the hindrances, so that you can free up that energy to go back to the ānāpāna spot. Any hindrance is just taking something away from energy that could be put always right here. Focus here always and forever, even when you don't feel like it, is the message of that tradition.Vince: So this is cool. I think that—I'm thinking the way this will probably play out on this retreat is we'll be offering different perspectives from either side of that. And the exploration is going to be around figuring out how to work with that more inclusive versus more exclusive focus, and finding the sweet spot for you in that spectrum.Brian: I think that's what we're offering. I've never, folks—I've never done a Jhāna retreat that wasn't full noble silence. So it's actually quite novel for me to go into a very strong concentration practice, but also have the space to be more inclusive. And that's what I want to do this time. I think that's a great approach. I think it'll bear great fruit for us.Join us in The Jhāna Community–an online community of practice focused on all the flavors of meditation. Get full access to Buddhist Geeks at www.buddhistgeeks.org/subscribe

(Gaia House)

(Gaia House)

(Gaia House)

How might we meet the realities of cruelty and injustice with a grounded and compassionate Buddhist perspective?Ian Challis suggests that we first acknowledge that witnessing or experiencing cruelty can generate intense emotional responses—anger, grief, fear—and that these reactions are natural.However, Ian encourages us to avoid being overwhelmed or reactive. Instead, he suggests grounding ourselves in awareness and intention, recognizing that our own suffering in the face of cruelty is an opportunity for deeper practice and connection. He emphasizes that avoiding cruelty doesn't mean turning away from pain—it means engaging with clarity and care.Ian shares several guiding principles and reflections to help us in this effort:Recognize shared suffering: Understand that even those who act cruelly are often driven by their own confusion and suffering.Choose wise response over reactivity: Awareness helps interrupt cycles of violence and retaliation.Practice compassion with boundaries: Being compassionate doesn't mean accepting harm—it includes protecting oneself and others wisely.Stay connected to values: Respond from a place of love, justice, and mindfulness, even when action is necessary.He also briefly touches on how Buddhist ethics (sīla) and the cultivation of wisdom (paññā) support us in transforming our response to injustice into a path of liberation.______________Ian Challis is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2025 marks his co-teaching of the 9th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker. He is also a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison.Find him at ianchallis.com ______________ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit https://gaybuddhist.org/There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy many hundreds of these recorded talks dating back to 1996 CREDITSAudio Engineer: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

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 pivotal contribution toward reviving the Theravāda fully ordained nun's Sangha.Episode Links:

(Cambridge Insight Meditation Center)

(Cambridge Insight Meditation Center)

In this episode I am once again joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas'. Leigh discusses his latest book, ‘Gradual Training: The Buddha's Step-by-Step Guide for Awakening', in which Leigh lays a 13 step training which culminates in enlightenment. Leigh explains the scriptural origins of this formulation, why it is so crucial for meditation success, and speculates as to why it is so rarely taught by Buddhist teachers in America. Leigh also emphasises the importance of moral precepts, wrestles with contradictions in the Buddhist scriptures, considers how the scriptures have been altered over the centuries, and reveals his opinion of Buddhist claims to psychic powers. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep253-the-buddhist-path-leigh-brasington Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 00:53 - Leigh's latest book 02:09 - A life changing meditation encounter 03:00 - The gradual training 05:05 - Training in insight practice under Ayya Khema 05:49 - Leigh's insight journey 07:31 - Why isn't gradual training taught in Western Buddhism? 07:55 - Buddhist teacher schtick 09:00 - People don't teach the suttas 09:47 - 13 steps to awakening 12:23 - Origin and evolution of the 13-step Gradual Training 13:23 - The Buddhist scriptures have been tampered with 15:23 - Evolution of the doctrine of 12 links of dependent origination 16:34 - Philological implications 17:51 - Did the Buddha have supernatural powers? 21:59 - Contradictions in Buddhist scripture 24:11 - Early vs late suttas 26:20 - When were the suttas composed? 29:39 - When was the gradual training devised? 31:11 - Gradual training vs Lamrim 32:35 - Fruits of the spiritual life 36:38 - Keeping the precepts 40:08 - Guarding the senses 42:41 - Mindfulness and clear comprehension 44:47 - Contentment with little 47:04 - Overcoming hinderances 49:12 - Are psychic powers real? 50:14 - Meditation or morality? 54:13 - Consequences of skipping ethics 58:05 - Do the precepts spoil the fun of life? 01:01:19 - What makes practice life changing? 01:02:36 - Enjoyment without attachment 01:04:17 - The power of motivation to change habits 01:06:19 - How Leigh gave up pot and sweets 01:08:19 - How to do insight practice 01:09:08 - Future writing projects 01:13:30 - Why Leigh publishes his books for free … Previous episodes with Leigh Brasington: - https://www.guruviking.com/search?q=brasington To find our more about Leigh Brasington visit: - http://www.leighb.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Host Michael Taft speaks with entrepreneur and meditator Stephen Zerfas on using technology to potentially enhance the learning of the jhanas, Zerfas' background in meditation and jhana practice, and the vision of scaling adoption of the jhanas on a global scale. Stephen Zerfas a cofounder of Jhourney, a startup that is currently creatings meditation retreats using novel methods to teach novices to reach jhana. Stephen stumbled into the first three jhanas on his own, and has dedicated his career to scaling them after learning of their rich history. He's trained with several jhana teachers, including Leigh Brasington and Delson Armstrong.jhourney.ioYou can support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Can generosity lead to joy in a wounded world? Ian Challis believes so, and helps us explore both our generous impulses and the actions they give rise to if we allow it. Generosity is the first of the 10 Paramis or beautiful qualities that lead to Buddhahood:GenerosityVirtueRenunciationWisdomEnergyPatienceTruthfulnessResolveLoving KindnessEquanimityThere are two words in the Pali language associated with generosity:Chaga - the intention or impulse to be generous;Dana - the outward expression of generosity.Both intention and action are equally important. In many Eastern cultures, the practice of giving is a core value, an essential way of being taught from a young age, and familiar to all. Perhaps this is why the Buddha would teach this virtue first when entering a new village. Ian shares many insights on generosity, including:How to recognize and foster our generous impulses; Letting go of transactional thinking when giving;Giving in-person;Our intention is what determines the value;Giving is about connection, not sacrifice;Seeing and celebrating our generosity; Bringing presence and mindfulness to the whole process of giving.He concludes by reminding us of the four gifts we can give:Material SupportProtectionThe teaching of the DharmaNon-fear, through our commitment to harmlessness______________ Ian Challis is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2023 marks his co-teaching of the 7th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker.Ian teaches regular drop-in classes as well as retreats. He is a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison. Find him at ianchallis.com/ Support the show______________ To participate live and be notified of upcoming speakers in advance, please Like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/gaybuddhistfellowship) or visit https://gaybuddhist.org/calendar/ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit www.GayBuddhist.org.There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy many hundreds of these recorded talks dating back to 1996 CREDITSAudio Engineer: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

Claralynn Nunamaker grew up in Chicago. She first encountered Chinese philosophy when at university and particularly resonated with the Dao De Jing. She studied Chinese and spent some time in China before moving to moving to Ukiah, California, home of the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas Chan Buddhist monastery. It's there that she became a practising Buddhist. Soon she became involved in the Theravada Forest sangha in northern California and her interest moved her to learn the Pali language in order to read the early Buddhist sutras in their original language. Over the years she has extensively studied and taught Marshall Rosenberg's system of non-violent communication, which she sees as the embodied practice of right speech. Today she aligns with early Buddhist teachings and is deeply influenced by Ayya Khema and her main teacher, Leigh Brasington. Claralynn serves as Director for the Scottish charity Friends of Early Buddhist Teachings and chair of Sakyadhita UK. Her website is crnunamaker.com.In this interview, Claralynn insightfully explains the practice of non-violent communication (NVC) and its foundation in the universal attitudes of kindness, compassion, and empathy. Her view is that NVC gives us the tools to transform the aspiration of right speech into reality through clear learnable techniques and principles. Something we all need I'd say! The concept of a troublesome buddha finds its equivalent in the ‘enemy image' in NVC. Through various personal examples, she explores the power of avoiding falling into the trap of simply describing the enemy image (ahh wasn't that a big scary dog?) - thus giving it power - to identifying and describing our feelings and needs (I can see you're scared and want to feel safe). This shift into connecting to the need that's not being met, she says, allows us to draw alongside the difficult people we meet and see their Buddha nature.Support the showThis podcast is sponsored by Zen Minded – an online lifestyle store offering you the very best of Japanese craft, incense & other Zen-inspired home-goods. Check it out at www.zenminded.ukWe're also sponsored by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers convenient and affordable therapy online, helping match you with the right therapist from their network. They've extended an offer of 10% off your first month of therapy if you sign up via https://betterhelp.com/zenatthesharpendIf you liked this podcast, consider: Sharing it via social media Signing up to my email list www.markwestmoquette.co.uk

(Gaia House) Dependent Origination Contemplation.

This talk was given by Leigh Brasington and Diana Clark on 2024.01.25 at the Sati Center in Redwood City, CA. ******* Video of this talk is available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1Iv4VdY-Sw. ******* For more talks like this, visit AudioDharma.org ******* If you have enjoyed this talk, please consider supporting AudioDharma with a donation at https://www.audiodharma.org/donate/. ******* This talk is licensed by a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License

In this episode I am once again joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas'. Leigh reveals his upcoming solo retreat plans and personal meditation goals and considers why it is that he continues to meditate after so many decades of practice. Leigh recalls his career as a computer programmer and draws analogies from the computer world to the workings of human beings on the Dharma path. Leigh expresses his views on AI, in particular whether or not AI will replace meditation teachers, and goes on to explore what makes a great meditation teacher and what makes a bad one, as well as the importance of heart connection when leading retreats, and answers the question ‘how enlightened should someone be before they can teach meditation?. Leigh also shares an exchange he had with an AI in which he asks questions about jhana meditation and evaluates the AI's answers. Leigh goes on to offer his take on Shinzen Young's ultrasound neuromodulation research and questions the possibility of its efficacy to bring about meaningful spiritual progress. … Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify. … 01:20 - Why does Leigh still go on solo meditation retreats? 06:15 - How has meditation changed Leigh's life? 06:42 - Leigh's meditation goals 08:30 - Why do intermediate and advanced practitioners stop practicing? 11:42 - The early days of computer programming 14:40 - Working as a computer programmer 18:09 - Writing a Tibetan-Tibetan dictionary for Tsoknyi Rinpoche 21:33 - Building his own DOS box 23:41 - Overlaps between computer programming and meditation 26:47 - Pros of cons of computer metaphors for describing humans and the Dharma 28:53 - KISS and other computer metaphors for meditation 32:02 - Buddhist fundamentalism and the doctrine of rebirth 34:41 - Did the Buddha really believe in rebirth? 38:21 - The lies of the Buddha 42:32 - Is Buddhist fundamentalism compatible with enlightenment? 45:46 - Does belief in rebirth prevent enlightenment? 49:02 - The immortality project 49:26 - Did Buddhism degrade or evolve? 53:34 - Mahayana writers who Leigh enjoys 54:07 - Why Leigh loves Shantideva's chapter on dedication 55:55 - Computers and Buddhism 58:33 - Will AI replace human programmers? 01:05:15 - Will AI teach meditation better than human teachers? 01:06:54 - What makes a really good meditation teacher 01:10:22 - Leigh asks AI dharma questions: what is the cause of dukkha? 01:13:41 - How do I know if I'm practicing jhana correctly? 01:15:05 - Why are the jhanas important? 01:16:23 - How can I tell whether I'm in 3rd of 4th jhana? 01:17:15 - How does one go from 4th to 5th jhana? 01:17:49 - Trouble entering the 1st jhana 01:19:12 - The human connection in meditation interviews 01:19:54 - How to establish a heart connection with your meditation students 01:23:11 - Is AI better than a mediocre meditation teacher? 01:26:30 - What makes a bad meditation teacher? 01:30:13 - How to spot a teacher with an agenda 01:32:56 - Why Leigh dislikes the Mahasi noting practice 01:34:53 - How enlightened should a meditation be? 01:40:12 - How Leigh tests Westerners who claim full enlightenment 01:42:17 - Buddhist faith claims vs other religions 01:48:28 - Buddhist vs Christian faiths 01:51:09 - Leigh challenges Shinzen's attempts to use ultrasound to induce nirodha 01:52:05 - How stream entry really works 01:54:13 - Using ultrasound to induce jhana states 01:56:23 - Does Leigh see any use in Shinzen's research? 01:57:42 - Could ultrasound jumpstart mediocre and fearful meditators? 02:01:20 - The spiritual path is about letting go … Previous episodes with Leigh Brasington: - https://www.guruviking.com/search?q=brasington To find our more about Leigh Brasington visit: - http://www.leighb.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - https://www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

How do we make space for natural human emotions, including those we avoid such as shame? Can we not be afraid of them, and hold our experience with more acceptance and compassion? Shame has a very visceral component that hijacks our emotions, much like encountering a dangerous animal. In this rich talk, Ian explores the various aspects of shame that cross our minds and how we can examine these despite the pain they invoke. We are conditioned to feel shame based on societal norms, even if we don't share them, which is why it is particularly prevalent among non-conforming individuals such as LGBTQ persons. He discusses how we can avoid internalizing these feelings and not feel isolated as a result. He makes the distinction between remorse or ethical responsibility, which connect us to the world, and shame which isolates us. Shame withdraws us into our own emotional pain, whereas remorse centers on the pain we have caused others and opens us to reconciliation.  ______________ Ian Challis is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2023 marks his co-teaching of the 7th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker.Ian teaches regular drop-in classes as well as retreats. He is a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison. Support the show______________ To participate live and be notified of upcoming speakers in advance, please Like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/gaybuddhistfellowship) or visit https://gaybuddhist.org/calendar/ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit www.GayBuddhist.org.There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy many hundreds of these recorded talks dating back to 1996 CREDITSAudio Engineer: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

Roshi Joan Halifax, Upaya Zen Center founder and head teacher, offers two prayers for the New Year–or any time of the year. Then, the editor of a posthumous release from the trailblazing modern Buddhist nun and teacher, Ayya Khema, talks about the “force of nature” that she was–her adventurous life, her teachings on metta (loving-kindness) and her practices. Editor Leigh Brasington, who practiced and trained with her, also leads a practice in the Ayya Khema style.

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Join hosts Ankur Shah Delight and Nathan Ramos as we unpack what we can all learn from Leigh Brasington's approach to meditation.   Show Links: Survey: https://bit.ly/10kh_survey Voicemail:  https://www.speakpipe.com/10khshow Email: info@10kh.show Twitter: @10khshow   Guest References Leigh Brasington's website: http://leighb.com Leigh's (free) book on Dependent Origination and Emptiness: http://sodapi.leighb.com/download.htm   Thank you everyone for listening!

Welcome everyone to interview #00030 of The 10,000 Heroes Show.   I'm Ankur Shah Delight and today's guest is Leigh Brasington. Leigh is a well-known meditation teacher and expert on the “Jhanas” who I've known about for a while. I was reading one of his books earlier this year, and I had a number of “aha moments” while reading it, and a lot of questions. So I reached out to him and he was so good about answering my questions, I thought, this guy would be great for the show. And he was.   One thing that is coming up for me a lot these days is the incredible power we each have, as human beings, when we are aligned and using our energy and intention for things we really care about. There is really so much we can do when we're working with – and not against our passion. That comes out in this interview for sure, and maybe is a common thread in my personal definition of what a hero is – somebody who has identified their passion and purpose, and has oriented their life around it.   Show Links: Survey: https://bit.ly/10kh_survey Voicemail:  https://www.speakpipe.com/10khshow Email: info@10kh.show Twitter: @10khshow   Guest References Leigh Brasington's website: http://leighb.com Leigh's (free) book on Dependent Origination and Emptiness: http://sodapi.leighb.com/download.htm   Thank you everyone for listening!

Ian is a student and teacher in the Insight Tradition of Buddhism. He is a teacher, founding member, and past guiding teacher of Insight Community of the Desert in Palm Springs.Ayya Khema, Leigh Brasington, Narayan Liebenson, Larry Yang, and Arinna Weisman are key teachers who have inspired and illuminated his practice.Serving Queer community is a passion. 2023 marks his co-teaching of the 7th annual Queer retreat at Dhamma Dena Retreat Center with Leslie Booker.Ian teaches regular drop-in classes as well as retreats. He is a qualified teacher of MBSR, a graduate of Spirit Rock's Community Dharma Leader teacher training, and was formally invited by Arinna Weisman to teach in the lineage of U Ba Khin and Ruth Denison. Support the show______________ To participate live and be notified of upcoming speakers in advance, please Like us on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/gaybuddhistfellowship) or visit https://gaybuddhist.org/calendar/ To support our efforts to share these talks with LGBTQIA audiences worldwide, please visit www.GayBuddhist.org.There you can: Donate Learn how to participate live Find our schedule of upcoming speakers Join our mailing list or discussion forum Enjoy many hundreds of these recorded talks dating back to 1996 CREDITSAudio Engineer: George HubbardProducer: Tom BrueinMusic/Logo/Artwork: Derek Lassiter

Hello everyone and welcome back to The 10,000 Heroes Show, your new favorite podcast. We had an excellent Season 2, and today I want to announce a little bit about Season 3 — some structural changes and some episode previews.   So one big experiment in Season 3 is that Nate and I will do our debriefs as separate episodes. So we'll have the guest interview as one episode and the debrief as another episode after that. My hope is that it will make the different types of content easier to find.    It'll also help me get to 10,000 faster. Maybe 250 years instead of 500, at the current rate.   The other big experiment is that I have set up a voicemail dropbox for podcast listeners. I want to hear your take on the episodes – what you learned, what you loved, and what you didn't. I'll be including that link on the show notes to every episode. So please, if you were moved by an episode, go to that link, tell us which episode you just listened to, and how it affected your life. https://www.speakpipe.com/10khshow   So those are the structural changes. In terms of guests, we already have the first 6 episodes scheduled.   The first interview of Season 3, episode 26, is with an old friend of mine, Harrison Gardner, who gets deep into how the physical structures that surround us affect our lives, and how we can affect theirs.   Episode 28 features a mystical poet, Haleh Liza, who is totally fluent in my love language, which is Rumi. It's one of my favorite interviews in the whole show – Nate did a fantastic job.   In Episode 30 I talk to Evan Wagoner Lynch about an self-therapy art project he created involves a Squirrel puppet and went viral on tik-tok.   In Episode 32, Nate interviews an herbalist, Richard Mandelbaum, about balancing different intellectual traditions.   After that, we have a meditation teacher, Leigh Brasington in Episode 34. I was so honored to get to do that interview and deeply surprised by what Leigh had to say.   And the sixth episode in Season 3, Episode 36, is with rhythm teacher Zorina Wolf. Zorina gets real deep real fast, and I had a total blast interviewing her and trying to grasp the nature of Time in ways only a real drummer can.   As you probably noticed, those are all even episodes. The “odd” ones, in more ways than one, will be the debriefs I do with Nate.   I am very excited about the beginning of this Season. I would love to hear from you, please leave us a message in our fancy mailbox, and of course, follow us on twitter @10khshow to get the latest for episode release dates and the like.   Thank you. Thank you. Thank you!

Episode 15: Leigh Brasington and Owen Muir, M.D. In this episode, we hear Leigh's version of the story of Dombipa, the tiger-rider, and Dombi Yogini, his partner. This story features a female tantric Buddhist adept and a great king, and is made all the more delightful by Leigh's retelling of it. 

Episode 12: Leigh Brasington, Michael Hewett, and Dr. Adam Safron. In this episode, we talk with Leigh Brasington, a renowned teacher of Buddhist states of concentration called the jhanas. We take a deep dive into the inner experience of these highly concentrated states, and hear about Leigh's life-changing moment of insight into the true nature of reality.

Let's focus in on concentration, exploring: the arms of Baphomet; solve et coagula as "analysis and concentration"; how the mainstream lauds concentration; the prevalence of Attention Deficit Disorder; the union of dissolving and coalescing; Buddhist meditation; vipassana(insight) as solve, versus shamatha (concentration) as coagula; the nature and aims of shamatha practice; coagula and shamathapractice in relation to magick, sorcery, and ritual; belief-shifting and confirmation bias; the cultivation of psychic powers through concentration; solve, insight, and mysticism; undoing the duality between shamatha and vipassana; how insight requires concentration and concentration requires insight; some advice on how to approach shamatha practice; the importance of allowing some space for reflection in shamatha; Leigh Brasington on mindfulness of breathing; the psychological approach to concentration in contrast to concentration itself; the factors of concentration; rapture and happiness; concentration not a means to an end, but the connection with the object itself; the absurdity of the mainstream view; parallels with magick, ritual, and being in love; how there can only be concentration upon something that brings rapture and happiness; personal experience of difficulties during concentration retreats; panic attacks and depression; the mistake of trying to analyse one's way out of issues surfacing from concentration practice; the fruits of concentration practice as mental bodybuilding; concentration retreats as psychedelic voyages, calling for surrender and opening rather than analysis; the similarities of my mistake to the mainstream view of concentration; the role of my character in my mistake; concentration and "productivity"; manifestation as productivity or connection; action versus connection; obstacles to connection; how our relationship to our own mind might impede concentration; Winnicott on "primitive agony"; the mind's terror of itself; personal experiences of this; how retreats can provoke terrors, but perhaps also expose them to understanding; Dan Latner's account of his experiences; overcoming primitive agonies as a realisation of not what we cannot do, but perhaps what we are not doing; spirituality and occultism as discourses in which it is more possible to encounter concentration itself. Support the podcast and access extra material at: https://patreon.com/oeith Leigh Brasington (2017). Entering the jhanas, https://tinyurl.com/y63jfvtr (lionsroar.com). Accessed January 2022. Dan Latner (2021). 1. Episode Zero: The Dang Lantern Podcast, https://tinyurl.com/3h6ze2f2 (spotify.com). Accessed January 2022. Éliphas Lévi (1856). Baphomet, or the Sabbatic Goat, https://tinyurl.com/3mfpbya3 (wikimedia.org). Accessed January 2022. Donald Woods Winnicott (1974). Fear of breakdown. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 1 (1-2): 103–107.

If reincarnation is real, then how does it impact on our lives here and now? We consider: the question of how reincarnation manifests in everyday experience; comparison of contact with the dead versus reincarnation; reasons for the relevance of reincarnation; spiritual attainment and insight into past lives; the AUTOTAR working; audio scrying with tinfoil; my supposed incarnation as Otto Berg; why the results failed to convince; the rejection of reincarnation in contemporary western Buddhism; Stephen Batchelor's agnostic viewpoint; Leigh Brasington on rebirth as “an immortality project” and on the Buddha's possible lack of belief in rebirth; the secular materialist style of Buddhism; reincarnation as a disposable doctrine, versus reincarnation as a springboard for productive contemplation; that what is reborn is karma rather than the self; karma as a tennis ball; the thrower and the catcher; contact with the dead as confrontation with the other, versus reincarnation as a continuation of the same; ways in which the dead physically return: incorruptibles; stigmatics; and organ transplant anomalies; incorruptibles as persisting physically not through rebirth but by being regarded as the living as not fully dead; Christ, the persistent returner; the stigmatic as carrying Christ's karma but having no identification with it; organ transplant anomalies as more like a haunting than an instance of rebirth; the experience of reincarnation as identification with something in another as a continuation of ourselves; why experience of a past life is not necessarily a memory; karma as not an experience but an impact upon experience; the EHNB working and its interesting results; tendencies, traits, and predispositions as possible manifestations of karma; my vision of a past life; its mixture of memory and imagination; its relevance to my current life; its recurrence in other workings and in therapy; reincarnation as a continuation of karmic issues; how that which reincarnates never manifests; Rudolf Steiner on the individual as a species; reincarnations and species; reincarnation and the living of similar lives; cases of reincarnation in rural China; individualism as an obscuration of how people are mostly alike; Steiner's previous incarnation as St Thomas Aquinas; the similar missions of Steiner and Aquinas; differences between Steiner's view of reincarnation and that of the Buddha; awakening as the end of rebirth and karma, versus rebirth as humanity's fulfilment of a much larger project; karma as our manner of falling away from truth; the importance of self-compassion when working with karma. Support the podcast and access additional material at: https://patreon.com/oeith Stephen Batchelor (2021). Rebirth: a case for Buddhist agnosticism. https://tinyurl.com/mrxjp993(stephenbatchelor.org). Accessed December 2021. Steve James (2021). Guru Viking podcast ep122: mysteries of dependent origination – Leigh Brasington. https://tinyurl.com/2p96s8f2(youtube.com). Accessed December 2021. Steve James (2021). Guru Viking podcast ep120: meditation virtuoso – Delson Armstrong. https://tinyurl.com/2p8ed2wt (youtube.com). Accessed December 2021. Changzhen Li (2018). 100 Reincarnation Cases in Pingyang: Extraordinary True Stories of Kam People Who Recall Past Lives. Self-published. T.H. Meyer (2010). Rudolf Steiner's Core Mission: The Birth and Development of Spiritual-Scientific Karma Research. Forest Row: Temple Lodge. Rudolf Steiner (1971). Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man. Forest Row: Anthroposophic Press.

Episode 8: Leigh Brasington and Owen Muir, M.D. In this episode, we speak to Leigh Brasington, a renowned teacher of Buddhist states of concentration called the jhānas. We discuss the role of pleasure in spiritual practice and meditation, trust between teachers and students, problems with the modern mindfulness movement, and how love can help integrate difficult spiritual realizations.

In this episode I am joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher to discuss his new book ‘Dependent Origination and Emptiness: SODAPI'. Leigh lifts the lid on his writing process, including how he overcame severe writer's block to complete the book that his students had been asking for years, and shares his reasoning for making the book free. Leigh reveals why he considers the dependent origination to be at the heart of the Buddha's teaching, and traces different interpretations of the doctrine throughout the Buddhist literature. Leigh draws on the works of Nagarjuna to discuss emptiness, and levels a critique of the teaching of reincarnation which he calls an ‘immortality project'. Leigh explains why he translates ‘dukkha' as the hippy slang word ‘bummer', how he came up with the acronym SODAPI - Streams of Dependently Arising Phenomena Interacting, and offers medium and long term strategy advice for how to practice this powerful method to achieve the liberation of promised in Buddhism. … Video version at: https://www.guruviking.com/ep122-mysteries-of-dependent-origination-leigh-brasington/ Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics include: 00:00 - Intro 01:03 - Leigh's new book 02:24 - Why the book is free 06:00 - Dharma teacher income 09:35 - What is dependent origination? 13:21 - Inspired by teachers 18:00 - The writing process 20:15 - Overcoming writer's block 23:00 - Dukkha is a bummer 30:36 - Various sutta presentations on dependent originations 37:55 - Dependencies not causes 43:04 - Consciousness and the body 45:25 - Critique of religious immortality projects 49:12 - kāmataṇhā (NB: Leigh meant to use the word bhavataṇhā, not kāmataṇhā) 52:35 - Moment to moment model 55:17 - Buddhism without reincarnation? 01:01:37 - Jakatta tales and the tulku system 01:08:56 - Short and long term practice strategies 01:16:27 - Is mindfulness of vedana enough to uproot ignorance? 01:19:56 - Nagarjuna and the implications of the emptiness doctrine 01:23:43 - How did Leigh come up with SODAPI? 01:29:07 - Sañña and the Honeyball Sutta 01:32:27 - How to practice dependent origination for jhana meditators … Previous episodes with Leigh: - https://www.guruviking.com/?s=BRASINGTON … To find out more about Leigh, visit: - http://leighb.com 
 Read Leigh's new book ‘Dependent Origination and Emptiness: SODAPI': - http://sodapi.leighb.com/download.htm 
 
For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com … Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

In this episode we consider the effect of meditation practice and classical enlightenment on sexuality, as we continue the ongoing conversation between:

 - Shinzen Young, meditation teacher and neuroscience research consultant
 - Chelsey Fasano, a Columbia University neuroscience student 
- Dr Jay Sanguinetti, Assistant Director for the Center for Consciousness Studies and Research Professor at the University of New Mexico We recall Leigh Brasington's statements in episode 115 that many of his students experience states of meditative absorption as erotic in nature, and we consider Chelsey's observation that Leigh's brain scans in these absorption states resemble images of the brain during orgasm. I contrast early Buddhist scriptural statements which state that it is impossible for enlightened people to have sexual intercourse with later, highly sexual accounts of enlightened masters such as ‘The Saint of 5000 Women', Drukpa Kunley, and Rinzai saint and erotic poet Ikkyū Sōjun, and pose the question, ‘What does the data say?'. In the face of this apparent disagreement within the wisdom traditions about the effect of realisation on sexuality, what trends have the panel observed in the sexuality of their meditation students, and in their ultra-sound subjects, and what might that tell us about the real world consequences of deep meditation practice and/or brain stimulation aimed at classical enlightenment. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/ep119-sex-and-enlightenment-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-jay-sanguinetti/

 Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'.
 … Topics include: 
 00:00 - Intro 01:29 - Jhana and orgasm 04:31 - Buddha vs Durkpa Kunley 11:07 - Shinzen on the sutras 15:12 - Who was Drukpa Kunley? 17:13 - Ikkyu and Zen 18:52 - Are arhats impotent? 22:37 - Jay on relationship to drives 24:33 - Screwing up on the job 26:43 - Different practices, different results? 31:12 - Being enlightened vs acting enlightened 36:07 - The single most important factor 39:22 - What is integration? 44:47 - Ethical guidelines vs commandments 50:53 - What does the data say? 56:33 - Neuroscience interventions in sexuality 01:01:58 - A logical conundrum 01:03:08 - Shinzen's experience from the field 01:06:23 - Can any human being be free of sin? 01:08:13 - Benchmarks vs complete liberation as an end point 01:10:58 - What does it mean to be a certified a teacher 01:13:36 - Jay analyses the logic 01:16:25 - Chelsey's dimensional analysis 01:18:53 - A job for applied category theory 01:24:00 - Shinzen's advice to mathematicians and category theorists 01:26:30 - Aversion and the system 01:28:39 - Compassion cascading 01:32:57 - Complex systems … Previous episodes in this series: - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlkzlKFgdknxjhwG5wmXRVfrkeGczVPVI 
… To find out more about Shinzen, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep37-shinzen-young-pandemic-edition-guru-viking-podcast/ - www.shinzen.org To find out more about Chelsey, visit: - www.chelseyfasano.com To find our more about Dr Sanguinetti, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep102-dr-jay-sanguinetti-cults-science-the-dalai-lama/ - https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Leigh Brasington - Right Concentration In this episode of Meta Perspective we discussed Right Concentration; The Jhanas, Insight practice, Stream Entry and Dependant Origination. See the video interview on the Meta Perspective YouTube channel.

In this episode special guest Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas', joins the ongoing conversation featuring: 

- Shinzen Young, meditation teacher and neuroscience research consultant
 - Chelsey Fasano, a Columbia University neuroscience student
 - Dr Jay Sanguinetti, Assistant Director for the Center for Consciousness Studies and Research Professor at the University of New Mexico In this episode Shinzen and Leigh engage in a detailed discussion about the variety of classifications of jhana in Buddhist scripture and the competing interpretations of them that exist today. They examine the contents and political context of 5th century text the Visuddhimagga and its author Buddhagosa and consider possible conflicts between its jhana system and the those of the Sutta and Abhidhamma literature. Chelsey reveals fascinating research on the neuroscience of pleasure and its relationship to meditational bliss, Jay shares the research on cognitive bias and religious belief, and the group ask the question if jhana and kriya phenomena are actually forms of epileptic seizure. … Video version available at: https://www.guruviking.com/ep115-jhana-ego-orgasm-leigh-brasington-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-sanguinetti/ 
Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'.
 … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 01:45 - Sutta vs Visuddhimagga jhanas 06:53 - Complete absorption and nimitta 09:35 - Do jhanas confer an evolutionary advantage? 11:54 - Orgasmic jhanas 14:18 - Shinzen and Leigh discuss jhanas and lineage 25:40 - How enlightened was Buddhagosa? 29:55 -Sutta vs Abhidhamma vs Visuddhimagga 33:01 - Why did the Visuddhimagga become so popular? 37:14 - Leigh's orientation vs Shinzen's orientation 43:36 - The spiritual ego 47:11 - Cognitive bias and defense mechanisms in spiritual practice 54:38 - Sutta Nipāta on dogmatism and bias 59:05 - Is grasping fundamental to the brain? 01:01:54 - Leigh's enlightenment test 01:07:34 - The nature of pleasure 01:14:28 - Reducing inhibition to reveal states of bliss 01:15:33 - Centre-surround neurons 01:22:25 - Sensory processing according to Buddhism 01:27:24 - The neuroscience of pleasure 01:32:43 - Jhana and kriya as kinds of epileptic seizure 01:42:58 - Leigh's upcoming book on dependent origination … Previous episodes in this series: - https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLlkzlKFgdknxjhwG5wmXRVfrkeGczVPVI To find out more about Leigh, visit, - https://www.guruviking.com/ep18-leigh-brasington-guru-viking-interviews/ - http://www.leighb.com/ - Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-Stimulating a Reward System - https://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2013/653572/ - How Many Jhanas Are There? http://www.leighb.com/howmanyjhanas.htm To find out more about Shinzen, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep37-shinzen-young-pandemic-edition-guru-viking-podcast/ - www.shinzen.org To find out more about Chelsey, visit: - www.chelseyfasano.com To find our more about Dr Sanguinetti, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep102-dr-jay-sanguinetti-cults-science-the-dalai-lama/ - https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Welcome to Dharma PhD! In this episode we talk about Paṭiccasamuppāda, Dependent Origination, using John Peacocks', "Buddhism Before the Theravada, Part 5" as a jumping off point. We talk about how Paṭiccasamuppāda, Dependent Origination, has myriad implications. And then we focus on just one implication, causing skillful behaviors and mental/emotinal states to arise by putting the conditions in place that encourage those behaviors/mental states to arise more spontaneously. Particularly we talk about environmental factors. A few things referred to: Bodhi College, an organization that teaches Secular Buddhism: bodhi-college.org. Stephen Batchelor's book After Buddhism. Leigh Brasington, a Jhāna teacher: leighb.com. The talk we're referring to: "Buddhism Before the Theravada, Part 5" (https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/2598). Bhikkhu Bodhi's book Reading the Buddha's Discourses in Pāli. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs: https://bigthink.com/robby-berman/the-missing-apex-of-maslows-hierarchy-could-save-us-all. The 2,500 word blog post I referred to on a framework for thinking about the different implications of Paṭiccasamuppāda: https://dharmaphd.com/2021/09/27/parsing-pa%e1%b9%adiccasamuppada/. and finally, Alain de Botton's book: Religion for Atheists. *** A transcript of and link to John Peacock's talk is available here: https://dharmaphd.com/2021/09/28/john-peacock-buddhism-before-the-theravada-part-5-2011-09-04/ And a transcript of this podcast episode is available here: Want to get in touch? We'd love to hear from you! Email us at hello@dharmaphd.com.

Roger Thisdell talks to Brendan about jhana meditation and the transformational experience born of such high state cultivation which suddenly left him with "a mind which represents itself as permanently centreless and without the sense of a singly, positioned epistemic agent." 0:00 Introduction 3:40 Jhana Meditation: An Overview 13:09 The Phenomenology of No "Self" 18:36 The Epistemology and Ontology of No "Self" 24:01 Roger's Story 31:16 Suffering and No "Self" 34:44 The Web vs. the Spider 41:33 Navigating States 49:33 Development: States vs. Stages 53:57 Nonduality 56:00 Jhana: The Ladder That You Throw Away 58:24 The God beyond "God": Beyond I AM 1:09:16 Cessation: Is There Awareness beyond Experience? "Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas" by Leigh Brasington: https://www.amazon.com/Right-Concentr... Graph source: https://www.suttavada.foundation/brai... Comparison of Christian and Buddhist cosmological systems with consideration of their relationship to jhanas (mentioned at 58:24) available here: https://www.brendangrahamdempsey.com/... www.BrendanGrahamDempsey.com

In this episode special guest Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas', joins the ongoing conversation featuring: - Shinzen Young, meditation teacher and neuroscience research consultant - Chelsey Fasano, a Columbia University neuroscience student, - Dr Jay Sanguinetti, Assistant Director for the Center for Consciousness Studies and Research Professor at the University of New Mexico In this episode Leigh shares his work with jhana meditation and neuroscience, summarising his 2013 paper ‘Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation' and showing his brain scans in profound states of samadhi. Dr Sanguinetti offers his own interpretation of Leigh's scans, and Chelsey asks why mystics report states of nothingness as so much more satisfying than the mundane pleasures associated with the reward systems of the brain. Listen in as Shinzen and Leigh, old friends with decades of elite-level meditation experience, engage in far reaching discussions of samadhi, , the nature of spiritual insights, deathlessness vs immortality, bliss and the cosmic leela, and what foundational math debates about set vs category have to say about Buddhist notions of paticca-samuppada. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/ep110-case-study-of-ecstatic-meditation-leigh-brasington-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-sanguinetti/ Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'. … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 01:22 - Leigh overviews his work in jhana meditation and neuroscience 06:10 - Leigh's brain scans in jhana states 10:26 - What are the jhanas? 15:32 - Dr Sanguinetti comments on Leigh's brain scans 17:50 - Samadhi and the positive feedback loop 26:53 - Shinzen and Leigh on foundational math, set vs category, and paticca-samuppada 39:42 - Why is no-self so fulfilling? 47:00 - Shinzen and Leigh on death 54:07 - Jhanas are just the warm-up 01:00:01 - What are spiritual insights and why are they so rewarding? 01:08:29 - Dr Sanguinetti comments on nested levels and jhana practice protocol 01:16:30 - Retraining the default mode to nothingness 01:22:34 - A test of spiritual liberation and sensory deprivation hallucination 01:33:19 - Attention both amplifies and inhibits 01:35:37 - ‘The Emperor's New Mind' 01:38:37 - SODAPI 01:40:59 - Bliss and the Cosmic Leela 01:50:47 - Three Gates of Liberation 01:55:31 - Immortality project vs deathlessness … Previous episodes in this series: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep72-shinzen-young-and-chelsey-fasano-tantra-neuroscience-and-true-enlightenment/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep76-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-2-the-science-of-enlightenment/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep81-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-3-orgasm-epilepsy-mystical-experience/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep86-bliss-enlightenment-fristonian-physics-feat-chelsey-fasano-shinzen-young-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep94-the-enlightenment-button-feat-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep103-dopamine-meditation-fibonacci-feat-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ To find out more about Leigh, visit, - https://www.guruviking.com/ep18-leigh-brasington-guru-viking-interviews/ - http://www.leighb.com/ - Case Study of Ecstatic Meditation: fMRI and EEG Evidence of Self-Stimulating a Reward System - https://www.hindawi.com/journals/np/2013/653572/ To find out more about Shinzen, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep37-shinzen-young-pandemic-edition-guru-viking-podcast/ - www.shinzen.org To find out more about Chelsey, visit: - www.chelseyfasano.com To find our more about Dr Sanguinetti, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep102-dr-jay-sanguinetti-cults-science-the-dalai-lama/ - https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

(Cambridge Insight Meditation Center)

In this episode I host part 6 of an ongoing conversation between Shinzen Young, meditation teacher and neuroscience research consultant, Chelsey Fasano, a Columbia University neuroscience student, and Dr Jay Sanguinetti, Assistant Director for the Center for Consciousness Studies and Research Professor at the University of New Mexico. In this episode we take a deep dive into the dopaminergic reward system, including current thinking on its function and role, and its interaction with meditation practice and Buddhist notions of craving and suffering. We also discuss what to do after enlightenment, and speculate about the Fibonacci sequence as a universal constant. … Video version: https://www.guruviking.com/ep103-dopamine-meditation-fibonacci-feat-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ 
Also available on Youtube, iTunes, & Spotify – search ‘Guru Viking Podcast'.
 … Topics Include: 00:00 - Intro 00:44 - International attention and Sir Roger Penrose 02:38 - What is the reward system and how does it function? 06:45 - The punishment system 09:50 - Social media and the basal ganglia 11:09 - Meditation's effects on the basal ganglia 14:50 - SART and the work of Dr David Vago 19:37 - Meditation and resting tonic dopamine levels 22:24 - Knytl & Opitz on meditation and negative reinforcement 25:14 - What is resting tonic dopamine? 27:04 - Leigh Brasington and Haggerty's jhana study 30:19 - Is the Haggerty study fatally flawed? 32:21 - More to pleasure than dopamine 33:05 - The different jhana systems of Buddhism 35:36- Jay suggests a jhana study at his lab 37:26 - Integration of ecstatic experience across traditions 43:13 - Integrating the the top-down Self with the basal ganglia 45:47 - After enlightenment, what to do? 49:10 - Shinzen on measuring the endorphin rush 53:14 - Endorphins, Dopamine, and craving 55:48 - Hard and soft jhana, wet and dry vipassana 01:01:02 - Jay on in-brain competition and behaviour change 01:04:51 - Outcomes from Shinzen's life of practice 01:07:54 - The Fibonacci sequence as the universal constant 01:21:01 - Craving, conflict, and suffering … Previous episodes in this series: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep72-shinzen-young-and-chelsey-fasano-tantra-neuroscience-and-true-enlightenment/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep76-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-2-the-science-of-enlightenment/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep81-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-3-orgasm-epilepsy-mystical-experience/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep86-bliss-enlightenment-fristonian-physics-feat-chelsey-fasano-shinzen-young-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ - https://www.guruviking.com/ep94-the-enlightenment-button-feat-shinzen-young-chelsey-fasano-dr-jay-sanguinetti/ - To find out more about Shinzen, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep37-shinzen-young-pandemic-edition-guru-viking-podcast/ - www.shinzen.org To find out more about Chelsey, visit: - www.chelseyfasano.com To find our more about Dr Sanguinetti, visit: - https://www.guruviking.com/ep102-dr-jay-sanguinetti-cults-science-the-dalai-lama/ - https://www.jaysanguinetti.com/ For more interviews, videos, and more visit: - www.guruviking.com Music ‘Deva Dasi' by Steve James

Tara-Lloyd Burton sat their first Insight Meditation retreat with Joseph Goldstein, Jack Kornfield, and Sharon Salzberg in 1975, as a spiritually wounded Vietnam Veteran. In 1985 they incorporated the organization that founded Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. In 2000 they graduated with the charter class of SRMC's Community Dharma Leader training program. From that time forward they have served as resident guiding teacher (and more recently, environmental chaplain) for the Insight Meditation Community of Denver, Colorado. They have periodically assisted or co-taught Jhana retreats with Leigh Brasington since 2005. Lloyd's inner deva Tara came forth in their affirmation of gender fluidity in 2017, on retreat at the center they helped bring into being.For more on Tara-Llyod visit https://www.insightcolorado.org/Pages/V2_teachers.htmlFor everything learning to surf related visit adamasdel.org/learningtosurf

Buddhist teachings deep dive episode 2 with Leigh Brasington. Buddhist suttas, stream entry, interpretations of the jhanas, Daniel M. Ingram, 32 body types contemplations and much more. If you think this description is geeky, check out the episode to see what geeky really means

Leigh has been practicing meditation since 1985. He is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khema. He began teaching retreats in Europe and North America in 1997, and is the author of the book "Right Concentration - A Practical Guide to the Jhanas". This is first part of our in-depth exploration of different aspects of Buddhist teachings that Leigh generously took time and energy for. Show notesThe falling of the veil, spiritual hedonism and world tripThe story of Theravada nun Ayya KhemaWays to look at Pratītyasamutpāda - dependent originationFive skandhas, Eckart Tolle and taking a nap Emptiness or Śūnyatā, inherent existence and the deathlessImmortality projectLeighs process of studying the SuttasWhat are Jhanas or the stages of indestructible mindMorality, concentration, wisdomJhanas as a spectrum of concentration statesAs you go deeper the space of observer gets smallerDon't get fooled by your conceptsLeigh's and Nathan's take on the spiritual world of todayHow Buddhism translates into Western cultureHead over to www.escaping-samsara.com for the full list of references from this interview. You can find many more great references on Leigh's website.Feel grateful and would like to support us? Thank you!Here is our PAYPAL or PATREON account for contributions.

Kaccayanagotta Sutta — dependent co-arising read by Leigh Brasington

Upanisa Sutta — Transcendental Dependent Origination read by Leigh Brasington

Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation since 1985 and is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khayma. He began assisting Ven. Ayya Khemma in 1994, and began teaching retreats on his on in 1997. He is also authorized to teach by Jack Kornfield. He has taught the jhanas, along with multiple insight practices, at well over one hundred residential retreats throughout the United States and Europe. He is the author of the book Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. He has appeared on Dan Harris’s 10% Happier Podcast. Find more about his teaching and schedule at http://leighb.com. Leigh's Recommendations Heartwood of the Bodhi Tree: The Buddha's Teachings on Voidness Being Nobody, Going Nowhere: Meditations on the Buddhist Path Who Is My Self?: A Guide to Buddhist Meditation Michael Taft: https://deconstructingyourself.com/events Scroll down to Ongoing Events for the Thursday evening group meditation streamed on his youtube channel. Also explore his website for interesting podcasts Loving Kindness resource page: http://leighb.com/metta.htm My reading list: http://leighb.com/readlist.htm Comment from the host, Todd Scholl: This episode contains material that some may not consider secular. As with all episodes, the content does not necessarily reflect the opinions or views of Teachers Aligned. It is my belief that we should acknowledge the roots of mindfulness practice and be willing to explore those roots in a way that is respectful to people of all faith backgrounds. I heard Leigh on the 10% Happier Podcast with Dan Harris and was fascinated by his ideas. I reached out to him and was fortunate that he agreed to be a guest on the podcast. It was my honor to record this conversation with him. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/todd-scholl0/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/todd-scholl0/support

Nikki Mirghafori has been an Artificial Intelligence scientist for nearly three decades. She never intended to become a Buddhist teacher, but after establishing herself in her AI career, she devoted her time to extensive meditation training. She now teaches Dharma internationally. In this fascinating discussion, Nikki details her extraordinary life experiences. From growing up in Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, to writing a thank you letter to a tick that gave her Lyme disease. She talks about her meditation practice today and how it has evolved from when she first started. And she dives into the process and benefits of one of her more challenging teachings, the Mindfulness of Death. Plugzone: Nikki's Website: https://www.nikkimirghafori.com/ The Most Venerable Pa-Auk Tawya Sayadaw Bhaddanta Acinna: https://www.paaukforestmonastery.org/about-us Podcast Episode #10 Leigh Brasington: https://podcasts.apple.com/my/podcast/10-leigh-brasington/id1087147821?i=1000367352158 Ten Percent Happier Gift: https://www.tenpercent.com/gift Ten Percent Happier Podcast Insiders Feedback Group: https://10percenthappier.typeform.com/to/vHz4q4 Have a question for Dan? Leave us a voicemail: 646-883-8326

Ep18: Leigh Brasington - Guru Viking Interviews In this episode I am joined by Leigh Brasington, Buddhist meditation teacher and author of ‘Right Concentration, A Practical Guide to the Jhanas’. Leigh talked about how he transformed from a self described pot-head to a serious meditation practitioner in his very first retreat. We learn how learning the jhanas - 8 altered states of consciousness, brought on by deep meditative concentration - from meditation master Ayya Khema radically changed his life’s direction. We discuss stream entry for non-monastics, why most people underestimate their meditation potential, Leigh’s controversial take on Western Dharma teachers who claim full awakening, and why the Siddhis, or supernormal powers, are so associated with the practice of jhanas. Let me know what you think in the comments section below! 00:21 - How Leigh first became interested in meditation 00:57 - Chögyam Trungpa, Ayya Khema, and Leigh’s first meditation retreat 02:20 - Pot head to yogi - giving up heavy pot use after the retreat 03:01 - Buddhist practice vs Buddhist religion 04:25 - How Leigh quit pot 05:05 - Ayya Khema, Leigh’s first teacher 06:48 - The importance of following instructions closely 09:03 - Discovering the first jhana in Thailand with Ajahn Buddhadasa 11:16 - Further studies and learning all 8 jhanas from Ayya Khema 12:46 - Insight training with Ayya Khema 15:25 - Did Ayya Khema use the 4 Path Model? 20:00 - Leigh on Stream Entry and gradual vs sudden awakening 23:46 - Is awakening achievable by non-monastics? 25:38 - Leigh’s controversial take on Western Dharma teachers who claim full awakening 27:52 - Sutta criteria for an arhat 30:45 - Did Ayya Khema become an arhat before her death? 32:45 - Learning Rigpa practice from Tsoknyi Rinpoche 37:19 - How Leigh uses the rigpa state in his own practice 40:51 - Comparisons between Tummo and the Jhana practices 44:14 - What are the jhanas and how are they practiced? 51:23 - Are the jhanas necessary for insight practice? 54:33 - Surprising obstacles to learning the jhanas and the role of talent. 1:01:16 - Why most people underestimate their concentration potential. 1:03:01 - The role of lifestyle and sexuality in meditation success 1:08:10 - Leigh’s take on the Siddhis, supernormal powers, achieved through concentration practice 1:16:16 - Considering anecdotes about the siddhis of teachers like Guru Ma and 16th Karmapa 1:18:45 - The current frontiers of Leigh’s personal practice 1:25:41 - The Buddha’s most important teaching 1:27:51 - Nagajuna and the Suttas Video version of this interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9xP28pzQAA To find out more about Leigh, visit: http://leighb.com For Leigh’s book, ‘Right Concentration’, visit: http://rc.leighb.com/index.html For more interviews, videos, and more visit: www.guruviking.com Music: ‘Deva Dasi’ by Steve James

Exploring the jhanas

Leigh Brasington began practicing meditation in 1985. And is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khema. Leigh began assisting Ven. Ayya Khemma in 1994 and began leading retreats on his own in 1997. Today he teaches in Europe and North America and is the author of the book, Right Concentration: A practical guide to the jhanas. Sit, Breathe, Bow is hosted by Ian White Maher. https://ianwhitemaher.com/ Sit, Breathe, Bow is sponsored by the Providence Zen Center. http://providencezen.org/  

from Washington, D.C. Happy Father’s Day! When my father Jack finally lets go of his house and his life, the most magnificent thing happens. He sends a profound message through a crossword puzzle before his time of death here. Is time simply an illusion then? This podcast is a story that I wrote in 2014 about my father passing from this dimensional field into the next. Jack does not want to go however, because he trusts only what he can see in front of him. He is constantly glancing at his watch to remind him that he is still living and breathing on this earth plane and as long as he can still see that watch, he is still alive and not in hell or anywhere else! Spacetime, as it is called is the theory that we exist in parallel universes where space and time are connected proving that the concept of time is simply an illusion. Everything that has ever been or ever will be is happening right now. The concept of time is simply an illusion made up of human memories, writes Leigh Brasington. Time is an illusion we created to try and measure the rate of changeof the present. It's always now. But it's an ever changing now. We usually think of time as having three parts - Past, Present, Future. But what is the Past - only a collection of memories. We can't experience the Past, we can only remember it. And we can only remember it in the Present (furthermore, our memories are noticeably unreliable). There is no objective thing that we call the Past; it can't be measured in any way; our only contact with it is in the Present. And what is the Future - only a mental construct in the Present. We can't experience the Future until it "becomes" the Present. Until then it is only a hope and dream. We can project what the Future may be like, but we are considerably less accurate than when we remember the Past. There is no objective thing that we call the Future; it can't be measured in any way; our only contact with it is in the Present. That leaves us with only the Present - the ever changing Present. This change that we experience in the ever present Present does have a "direction." Things change in the general direction of having greater entropy. Entropy is a measure of the amount of disorder in a system. That's why when we measure time we find it restricted to one direction (unlike when we measure distance) - things are changing such that the overall system has more and more entropy. Although the illusionary nature of time is the deep truth in this matter, it's not particularly practical. To be totally in harmony with this truth, you'd need to wear a watch that always said "now". But you'd be late for a lot of meetings .... leighb.com

Leigh Brasington speaks with host Michael W. Taft about Dependent Arising. Dependent Arising, also called Dependent Origination, is a Buddhist theory of reality that is famously complex, arcane, important, and fascinating. In this episode they discuss early Buddhist metaphysics, Pratītyasamutpāda—the “curious old rune”, the four noble truths version of Dependent Arising, the Vedic Hymn of Creation, Leigh’s model of SODAPI (Streams of Dependently Arising Processes Interacting), and how to use the teaching of Dependent Arising in practice and in life.Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation for decades and is the senior American student of the late Venerable Ayya Khema. Leigh began assisting her in 1994, and began teaching retreats on his own in 1997. He teaches in Europe and North America and is the author of the book Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. Find more about Leigh’s teaching and schedule at leighb.com. Support the creation of future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

Concentration master Leigh Brasington talks with Michael W. Taft about the jhanas, a Buddhist system of eight altered states of consciousness that arise in states of high concentration. The conversation dives deep into practicing each of these eight states, how the jhanas relate to vipassana practice, ways to work through major challenges that may arise, the so-called "powers" that are often attributed to concentration practice, and much more.Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation since 1985 and is the senior American student of the late Ven. Ayya Khema. Leigh began assisting Ven. Ayya Khemma in 1994, and began teaching retreats on his on in 1997. He teaches in Europe and North America and is the author of the book Right Concentration: A Practical Guide to the Jhanas. Find more about Leigh’s teaching and schedule at http://leighb.com.Show Notes0:31 - Introduction1:59 - The Jhanas, de-emphasis on jhana practice in American practice, the Visuddhimagga, Paw Auk Sawadaw, overview concentration vs vipassana5:23 - The variety of systems of jhana, why there are differences in what counts as jhana, sermons, meditation instructions and one on one interviews8:08 - The Jhanas - specific states10:16 - Did the Buddha learn the jhanas from his teachers?12:19 - The Buddha’s unique contribution – a well-concentrated mind can more accurately investigate reality – vipassana13:21 - Redefinition of the jhanas over time - Sutta to Abhidharma to Visuddhimagga15:37 - What makes concentration a jhana?17:36 - Jhana from a light switch or other object how to generate it, access concentration, feedback loops to generate piti-sukkha19:41 - Piti-sukkha gleeful happiness - variety of experience among meditators20:23 - How long does attention need to be there? Indistractability, and when to switch between access concentration and the first jhana22:26 - Why is this better than meditating on a cloud? Why meditate on piti-sukkha? A great way to set up your vipassana practice.24:34 - The higher jhanas, discussion of emotions with bodily components vs emotions as embodied with mental aspects.27:10 - Focus in the first four jhanas on the mental aspect of the emotion vs. the physical aspect28:36 - How long does it take to learn the jhanas29:36 - Unresolved psychological stuff may show up as a function of concentration, getting those up and out,32:04 -Example feeling of unworthiness, low self esteem, how to handle it,35:21 -Purification practice39:55 -Unwise action that won’t lead to the results you are hoping for, social media, where people are trying to get happiness and be safe42:21 -Strong piti in first jhana, moving from first to second jhana45:21 -Jhanic states and neurotransmitters and transition to third jhana, varying time in different jhanas47:56 -The Difference between the second and third jhana, third jhana afterglow49:38 - Moving into the fourth jhana, attention on the quiet stillness wherever you find it52:16 - Hanging out in the fourth jhana, and insight practice55:28 - Misinformation on the jhanas57:48 - The four immaterial jhanas1:00:40 - Getting to the fifth jhana1:02:17 - The sixth, seventh, and eighth jhanas1:05:03 - The ninth jhana - cessation of feeling and perception1:07:17 - Weird experiences with jhanic concentration, powers1:13:40 - Which jhanas are helpful for insight practice, even access concentration helps,1:15:01 - The jhanas and retreat1:15:17 - The importance of the jhanasYou can help to create future episodes of this podcast by contributing through Patreon.

Leigh Brasington has been practicing meditation for decades and is one of the most prominent American teachers of Jhana meditation. The Jhanas are a set of altered states of consciousness associated with profound amounts of bliss, happiness and ecstasy. Entering Jhana is done through meditating with intense concentration and it's considered a controversial topic by many in the Buddhist world. But can regular people access the Jhanas? And are they even real?

The Buddha explains how dependent co-arising functions in the development of right view.Listen to this sutta read by Leigh Brasington (03'47" 1.3 MB)Recorded by jtb 30 April 2006 in Barre, Massachusetts. Translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi. From »The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. (Somerville: »Wisdom Publications, 2000). Text is copyright © 2000 Wisdom Publications. Courtesy of, and with permission from, Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm Street, Somerville, MA 02144 USA, »www.wisdompubs.org.

The Buddha explains how seeing deeply into dependent co-arising leads to Awakening. The causal chain here includes an additional set of factors not present in the "standard" chain of dependent co-arising.Listen to this sutta read by Leigh Brasington (05'44" 2.0 MB)Recorded by jtb on 30 April 2006 in Barre, Massachusetts. Translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi. From »The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. (Somerville: »Wisdom Publications, 2000). Text is copyright © 2000 Wisdom Publications. Courtesy of, and with permission from, Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm Street, Somerville, MA 02144 USA, »www.wisdompubs.org.

The Buddha retells the story of how, on the eve of his Awakening, he re-discovered the long-forgotten laws of dependent co-arising and the Four Noble Truths.Listen to this sutta read by Leigh Brasington (08'16" 2.8 MB)Recorded by jtb on 30 April 2006 in Barre, Massachusetts. Translated from the Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi. From »The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans. (Somerville: »Wisdom Publications, 2000). Text is copyright © 2000 Wisdom Publications. Courtesy of, and with permission from, Wisdom Publications, 199 Elm Street, Somerville, MA 02144 USA, »www.wisdompubs.org.