Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast (Be Here Now Network)

Roshi Joan explains the Three Jewels of refuge and how we can find a safe place within ourselves. We are given the call to take refuge in the awakened nature of all beings, a refuge in the moment, and in the interconnectedness of all beings. In doing so, we find the Buddha nature within. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gil Fronsdal returns with guidance on how we might practice during difficult times.   Our first reaction to difficult times is to seek out a temporary relief. What would happen, however, if we focus our attention on letting go of the suffering instead? See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In this episode, Saints and Sonnets, guest teacher, Mirabai Starr, shares with us the poetry and stories of two Spanish mystic saints who shared a deep devotion and who held a love for God in their heart that burned like fire. Mirabai gives a rich historical context to the lives of St. Teresa of Ávila and St. John of the Cross, and brings many parallels to the eastern spiritual experience. How do we turn our suffering in the darkest of times into a candle of hope? Show Notes 01:15 - After a brief introduction Mirabai begins to tell us of the intertwined stories of, St.John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila. Both were influenced by the teachings of Judaism and Islam before converting to Catholicism. We are given a better understanding of how their cultural background and Spain's history of mysticism informed their teachings and work. 04:44 - The early life and visionary experiences of Teresa are explored. It is explained via these experiences, that Teresa calls raptures, are very similar to what the Indian saints call samadhi. It is not long however before she attracted the attention of the Inquisition which would come to a head later in life. 09:50 - We jump forward one generation to St. John of the Cross. Born in 1542 to a poor family, John worked as a boy in a nearby hospice to support his parents and siblings. He quickly drew notice with the unique loving-kindness and care he showed the patients there. John is sent by the church to the University of Salamanca on scholarship to study Catholicism, where he is exposed to Islamic teachings as well. 12:15 - Back to 1535, we find Teresa entering the Order of the Carmelites on mount Carmel in modern day northern Isreal. She sees the order as having strayed from its roots and given into materialism and political corruption. Teresa begins a reform that seeks to return to the more contemplative tradition. This is a labor she spends most of her life seeing through to completion. 12:55 - Much later in 1571, struggling with her reformation of the Carmelite Order, Teresa hears stories of the 23-year-old John and summons him to her. John shared her views on reformation and agreed to help Teresa with her efforts. They met quick success and formed the Discalced (barefoot) Carmelite Order, which quickly spreads across the Catholic world. 15:25 - In return for his efforts in helping Teresa reform the order, John is imprisoned by the Inquisition. For nine months he was kept isolated in a cell atop a Spanish monastery. John passed the days by creating and reciting poetry. Through unknown means, John eventually escapes his captivity. Miraculously, he follows a black dog away from the monastery and is led to a local Discalced convent whose nuns brought John back to health. While recovering at the convent, John writes his most famous poem "Dark Night of the Soul", which John called an outpouring of love for God from his soul. 19:40 - Mirabai reads an excerpt from "Dark Night of the Soul", and discusses the meaning behind some of the stanzas. 24:35 - A comparison between Ram Dass's teachings of ego, soul, and with the Christian teachings of Via Negative, the way of negation. 28:11 - A reading of "Keeping Quiet", by Pablo Neruda. 30:30 - A reading of "O My Friends", by Mira Bai 31:40 - Reflections on the journey of the soul. 33:15 - A reading of "Love Dogs", by Rumi. 34:55 - Question and Response  with Mirabai and crowd. Starting with a question on how we know the difference between legitimate accounts of saints and hagiography. 40:10 - How to maintain faith during our personal "dark night of the soul" experience. 46:20 - Mirabai continues the "Q&R" with questions on dealing with paradoxes and trying to grasp at epiphanies.   For events news and more from Mirabai, visit her website. Mirabai Starr writes, speaks and leads retreats on the inter-spiritual teachings of the mystics. Known for her revolutionary translations of John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, and Julian of Norwich, Mirabai renders mystical masterpieces accessible, beautiful, and relevant to a contemporary circle of seekers. Her commentaries on the interconnected wisdom of all traditions are lyrical and evocative. She builds bridges not only between religious traditions, but also between contemplative life and compassionate service, between cultivating an inner relationship with the Beloved and expressing that intimacy in community, between the transformational power of loss and longing for the sacred. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

How does spiritual practice work when we are out in the world and not around those who are committed to being loving all the time? Eventually, we discover that everything is love. Mirabai tells her story of life after the passing of Neem Karoli Baba in 1973. Leaving her community in India, Mirabai asked the question, “How can you be in a world you are not creating and still go where there is no love?” Finding direction in the wisdom of her guru, Mirabai set out on a journey that took her and her family across the world. In her journey, she experienced and learned to see love in everyone. Learning that there really is no them and us. Instead, it is all just us and everything is love. “Never go where there is no love” – Neem Karoli Baba. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This talk from Roshi Joan Halifax looks at reversing the dynamic of the defended heart, and finding strength in vulnerability. Roshi reflects on: - How our practice can confirm our inherent strength to uphold ourselves in the midst of any conditions. - To practice or realize fundamental equanimity and stay absolutely tender hearted. - "We are plagued by fear--fear in the experience of a separate and solid self. Which we need to define and defend." - At times even our own spirituality can be put out there as a defense. - Love is a meltdown that re-establishes a more unified base of brilliance goodness and sadness.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Gil speaks about the concept of self and not-self. For all the teachings of not-self (anatta) in Buddhism, there is also the concept of the great self (mahatma). Early texts show the character of the Buddha as someone with a very advanced self-concept. He had a strong sense of identity and gave accounts of his experiences and spiritual capacities in the first person. What is the relationship between being spiritually awake and the concept of self? Gil explains that early Buddhist tradition did not try to answer the question of “who am I” initially. Instead, it raises other questions such as “what is freedom?” What is it to be psychologically and spiritually free from the shackles of our own mind? The beginning of wisdom is recognizing that our mental traps exist in the first place. The ancient tradition teaches us to develop our self as an island refuge. From this refuge, we may observe the deceptions and patterns of our mind. Understanding how we are caught in our own traps allows us to overcome them and become free from the vise of self.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Roshi Joan Halifax returns to explore the idea of a blessed catastrophe and reflects on the transformative power of suffering. In this life, there are moments of the blessed catastrophe which challenge our resilience and strength of character. Like a crucible, these moments burn away our faults and impurities. Through her experiences, Roshi Joan gives us insight into working through these trials and how these experiences lead us to the Buddha Nature and the Divine.   See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

JoAnna Hardy returns to shares discussion and guided practice around imbibing choiceless awareness in the present moment.

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In this unique Dharma talk stemming from the Insight Meditation Society's Retreat for 18 - 32 Year Olds, JoAnna Hardy offers a potent guided practice for opening to the state of choiceless awareness. From there, she discusses the connection between anxiety and excitement, before opening to audience questions on sleep, metta, imagery, and dropping thoughts.

This talk from JoAnna Hardy was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Using the experience of her mother’s recent death, Trudy talks about ways to practice with emotional reactivity and pure strong emotion.

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Originally recorded in 2008 by the Insight Meditation Society.

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Buddhist Master, Thich Nhat Hanh, explores how we can joyfully bring mindfulness into everyday activities like phone calls, driving, and walking. 

This special episode of the Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast I hosted by Jackie Dobrinska, Love Serve Remember Foundation’s Director of Outreach and Education, and brought to you by the Ojai Foundation.

Click here for a full transcription: beherenownetwork.com/thich-nhat-hanh

You can also follow along with captions on Youtube: https://youtu.be/Y5mPFvqkVnk

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This week, Buddhist Teacher Gil Fronsdal explores our quality of well-being and how we can cultivate ease, happiness, and contentment on the path to inner liberation.

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In this talk on cultivating well-being through Buddhist practice, Gil touches on:

• Happiness as something we do not pursue, but cultivate by creating and recognizing conditions for it
• The “three breath journey” meditation practice, which helps to shift perception and be present
• Developing clarity and ease through mindfulness practice
• Transforming challenging emotions and experiences by befriending them non-judgmentally
• Physical presence and awareness in the body as a part of cultivating well-being
• Experimenting with different mindfulness techniques to find what brings you joy and ease

“We create the conditions for happiness, and we learn to recognize the conditions that bring it forth. But we try not to be the cause of happiness, but we are cultivating happiness and well-being.” – Gil Fronsdal

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JoAnna Hardy sheds light on 'the great balancing act,' offering Buddhist insight into inclusion, ethics, self-reliance, control, karma, manifestation, and nature.

This talk from JoAnna Hardy was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

 

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Guiding us through The Four Immeasurables, author and teacher Lama Tsomo lectures about developing deep connections.

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In this episode, Lama Tsomo teaches us about:

• Technology as a window to the world
• How to have deep, satisfying connection
• The four immeasurables
• Loving-kindness, compassion, and equanimity
• Near and Far Enemies

About Lama Tsomo:

Born Linda Pritzker, Lama Tsomo followed a path of spiritual inquiry and study that ultimately led to her ordination as one of the few American lamas in the Tibetan Buddhism. Today she works to share the teachings of the Namchak tradition, making its time-tested meditation practices accessible to westerners.

“Each of the four boundless qualities gets us past our ego fixations and joins us with another in a way that brings right relationship. We can feel that rightness and joining when it happens. As we know from neuroscience, that feeling registers in that ever-popular left middle pre-frontal lobe — a main locust of positive emotions.” – Lama Tsomo

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On this episode of the BHNN Guest Podcast, East Forest and Marisa Radha Weppner discuss the role of song in psychedelics and explore how the ethereal can be accessed through music.

In this episode, East Forest and Marisa Radha Weppner discuss:

• The many ways we can arrive at non-ordinary states
• The power of intention when making music
• How music can act as a bridge to the ethereal
• How music can influence emotional states and brain states
• Music as a birthright and how anyone can be and is a musician
• The exponential growth rate of society
• Reclaiming creativity as a necessary technology
• Psychedelics and music as propellers into a trance state
• Truly giving ourselves over to the music
• Having a guide or therapist to work with
• The impact of intention and set and setting

About East Forest:

East Forest is a multidisciplinary artist, producer, and ceremony guide. Since 2008, East Forest’s “lush” (Rolling Stone) and “blissful” (NPR) music has blended ambient, neoclassical, electronic, and avant-pop to explore sound as a tool for inner journeys and consciousness expansion. Known for being the first musician to collaborate with Ram Dass, his latest endeavor is the feature-length film Music for Mushrooms, a narrative documentary showcasing the transformative power of psychedelics, music, and community.

“If you think about psychedelic ceremonies across human history, almost all of them were guided by songs and music. The same thing is used in the background of stores, birthday parties, weddings, working out, music is everywhere. But, it is the one thing that guides a ceremony typically. It could be been dancing, it could’ve been you always walk, no, it’s music. It’s showing us the power and potential of how it’s deeply connected to non-dual, to the mystery itself, it’s a kind of bridge.” – East Forest

About Marisa Radha Weppner:

Marisa Radha Weppner is a mom, author, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, DJ, teacher, minister, psychedelic therapist, community organizer, life coach, podcaster, and entrepreneur. She has taught yoga since 2002. Known for her authentic self-expression, she empowers others to embody their soul’s wisdom, bringing a real-world mix of eastern spirituality and western psychology to her students. Her online yoga classes and book “Vinyasa Yoga Made Simple: 27 days of Self Discovery” are available through udaya.com. You can listen to her meditation album “Guidance” on all streaming platforms, or tune into her podcast Love, Service, Wisdom.

“I bet if we go back in human history there wasn’t even a word for musician it was just what we all did as humans together. Now, it’s become something different that we are or aren’t, that we relegate to a certain subset of the population. But I would say we all are musicians and part of our awakening takes us back to that.” – Marisa Radha Weppner

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

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Spring Washam offers Middle Way reflections on befriending your body through the lens of Buddha and Metta.

This talk from Spring Washam was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Exploring Bhakti, Buddhism, and lessons from wise teachers, Krishna Das and Robert Thurman come together for a wide-ranging discussion.

This recording is from the 2020 Cultivating Wise Hope Virtual Retreat. Find more heart-focused teachings like this, along with practices and digital courses from Ram Dass and friends with Ram Dass’ Inner Academy: Learn More

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In this episode, Krishna Das and Robert Thurman discuss:

• The miracles of Maharaj-ji
• How all people are wholly embraced by divine love
• Bhakti as devotional heart-to-heart merging
• An exploration of dreams and being happy to let go
• Being brave enough to have a heart and experience wonder
• A breakdown of the three parts of ‘Om’
• Sovereignty and the tremendous power we all have
• Recognizing that Nirvana is everywhere
• Lessons from Jesus and Christianity
• Looking to Kali and being fierce but always with love

About Krishna Das:

Layering traditional Hindu kirtan with instantly accessible melodies and modern instrumentation, Grammy nominee Krishna Das has been called yoga’s “rock star.” With a remarkably soulful voice that touches the deepest chord in even the most casual listener, Krishna Das – known to friends, family, and fans as simply KD – has taken the call-and-response chanting out of yoga centers and into concert halls, becoming a worldwide icon and the best-selling chant artist of all time. His album ‘Live Ananda’ (released January 2012) was nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Age album category.

KD spent the late ’60s traveling across the country as a student of Ram Dass, and in August 1970, he finally made the journey to India, which led him to Ram Dass’ own beloved guru, Neem Karoli Baba, known to most as Maharaj-ji. Krishna Das now travels the world sharing his kirtan practice and wonderful stories of his life, of Maharaji-ji, of his life on the Path and discusses bringing chanting into our lives through retreats and workshops. To date, KD has released 15 well-received albums, most recently Trust in the Heart released in October 2017.

MORE INFORMATION and OFFERINGS VISIT: https://krishnadas.com/ KRISHNA DAS ON SOCIAL: FACEBOOK: facebook.com/KrishnaDasMusic INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/krishnadasmusic YOUTUBE: / krishnadasmusic X: @krishnadas #KrishnaDas

About Robert Thurman:

Robert Thurman is the Jey Tsong Khapa Professor of Indo-Tibetan Buddhist Studies in the Department of Religion at Columbia University and President of the Tibet House U.S., and is the President of the American Institute of Buddhist Studies. His new book, Wisdom Is Bliss: Four Friendly Fun Facts That Can Change Your Life, is now available.

“To be fully alive in union, in heart-merger with love, it has to be beyond heartbreak. Yet, beyond heartbreak is not without coming back and being brave enough to have a heart and expressing. It has to be still wonder. You still have to be living in wonder.” – Robert Thurman

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Trudy Goodman Kornfield reflects on the nature of identity and offers practices to help take a step back, slow down, and breathe.

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Nick Polizzi sits down with Sandra Ingerman for a conversation around what shamanic practices have to offer the Western world.

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Spring Washam applies Wise Metta to our daily lives—offering us the potential of recognizing our innate inner radiance.

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In this Dharma Talk from Spirit Rock Meditation Center's Yucca Valley Spring Retreat on May 6th, 2009—Spring Washam explores the potential of loving ourself and others through the practice of lovingkindness.

 

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JoAnna Hardy gives us perspective on the origins of metta and guides us through a gentle meditation to cultivate loving kindness for ourselves and all beings.

“One of my favorite teachings around this idea of metta, or loving kindness, care, friendliness, benevolence, is that naturally from a mind and heart that are at ease, this quality comes alive. So we don't actually have to do anything to make it happen.” - JoAnna Hardy

In this offering from a 2018 Spirit Rock retreat, JoAnna gently guides us through a metta meditation, softly exploring:

• Clearing the hindrances of our being through mindfulness practice and allowing our natural state of metta to emerge
• The origins of metta
• Metta as the antidote to fear, aversion, and hatred
• The undefended heart and the undefended mind
• How we feel about wishing for the wellbeing of ourselves and of beings who: are easy to love, we feel neutral towards, we have a light agitation towards, feels like a difficult person to love

Explore JoAnna's heartwork here

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher's council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs.

Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

Graphic via Khwanchai AMstocker

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Exploring the nature of empowered compassionate service, Spring Washam shares inspirational stories of selflessness and interconnection.

What does it mean to take an open heart into the world? Spring Washam takes a clear and insightful look into how we can meet each moment with an openhearted joy of compassionate service. Sharing a handful of stories from inspirational beings that represent the discernible truths of interconnectedness and interdependence, Spring elucidates how we can more fully offer our compassionate heart to the world.

For more information on her teachings, personal sessions, book, upcoming retreats, and digital offerings, visit SpringWasham.com

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In a stimulating talk on reincarnation, ego-death, and other dimensions, renowned Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee bridges this world and the next.

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This week, teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee returns to explore:

• The unknowable essence of death
• Lessons and instructions from the Upanishads
• Dying to the ego before we die to this physical world
• The transcendent dimension of our own being
• Having choice in the afterlife if one transcends their ego in their life
• How relationships with spiritual teachers can last lifetime after lifetime
• Reincarnation and unfinished spiritual lessons
• Journeying through other dimensions
• Death as a friend and destination
• How easy it is to be caught in the distortions of the world
• Learning the lessons of our individual souls
• Being surrounded by an all-embracing light

About Llewellyn:

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Check out his new podcast Working With Oneness.

“The further one travels along the spiritual path, the more life and death are intertwined. The mystery for me has always been how life covers over so much of our true nature, which

death reveals.” – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

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Pondering what it means to awaken spiritually, Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee examines the possibility of life beyond the illusions of ego that are fed by our distorted culture.

Two cultural icons. Two unique perspectives... One understanding of the presence of the way.

Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass"

In this episode, Llewellyn tells us his thoughts on:

• What a spiritual awakening can look and feels like
• Being here now for our individual self and the world
• Having an awareness for the distortions of our culture
• Perception versus what is present
• Culturally created illusions and conditioning
• The primal experience of life and creation
• The relationship between humanity and the world
• The archetypal Garden of Eden and divine presence
• When reality meets with our illusions
• How the ego manipulates our thoughts
• The non-existence of separateness in nature

“A primary spiritual experience is to be awake in the moment, to experience life as it is. In this moment we experience life not through the patterns of the mind, or the illusions of the ego, but a simple, direct experience of life around us.”

 – Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

About Llewellyn:

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Check out his new podcast Working With Oneness.

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This episode of the BHNN Guest Podcast features JoAnna Hardy in a discussion of suffering, control, and The Four Noble Truths at the Insight Meditation Society.

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“It is kind of interesting to push the edge of our practice a little bit and engage with instead of always backing down too [that which we are not comfortable with].” – JoAnna Hardy

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Focusing on the ways that Buddhism points us inward, Gil Fronsdal explains the dharma in a brief and accessible way.

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In this guest episode, Gil lectures on:

• Emptiness within Theravada Buddhism
• What happens after our basic necessities are met
• How we are versus what we do
• Becoming free from doctrines
• The importance of practice and heightened sensitivity
• Suffering and the cessation of suffering
• Skillful actions and improving the quality of inner life
• The portability of inner wealth
• The limitations of obsessing over the self
• Craving and how we can hold sensations without clinging

“You can experience suffering in all of many forms and you can experience the liberation and freedom from it, the absence of it. The guideline here is what you can know for yourself. The inner life, the quality of your life, what you can know for yourself, that’s really what this tradition is pointing to.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee returns to share When the Source Ran Free, his pandemic passage on the magic of living stories for returning sacredness back into our relationship with Earth.

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, PhD has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was 19 years old. In 1991, he became the successor of his teacher, Irina Tweedie, who brought this particular Indian branch of Sufism to the West. He is an extensive lecturer, author of several books, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Learn more about Llewellyn and The Golden Sufi Center.

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In this BHNN Guest Podcast, get ready for some spiritual nourishment from John Lockley as he guides us in healing our hungry ghosts and discusses devotion, ancestors, and other audience questions with Jackie Dobrinska.

Join Spring and a collection of dharma teachers in exploring the intersection of Buddhism & Bhakti at the inaugural Love Serve Remember Summer Mountain Retreat August 25th - 29th in Boone, NC!

John Lockley is an international speaker, teacher, and healer. He runs shamanic retreats and uses the techniques of prayer, dream work and connection to nature to help people connect with their own ancestors and spiritual traditions. He is one of the first white men, in recent history, to become a fully initiated sangoma in the Xhosa lineage of South Africa. Find out more about John’s work by reading about his Mentoring, Zoom Sessions, In-Person Divinations, Plant Healing and Monthly Webinars. 

Jackie Dobrinska is a beloved holistic health educator, wise woman pracitioner, yoga therapist, minister and author. Jackie has mentored with some of the world's preeminent teachers, scholars and visionaries in mind-body health, weaving together wisdom traditions from around the world. She teaches regionally at universities, hospitals, studios, businesses, and national conferences and festival, passing on the tools that empower individuals in their own health and transformation. In addition to her her wellness programs in wellness, yoga, herbs, healthy eating and women's health, she is the founding director of the Greater Asheville Yoga Association and core staff for SE Wise Women. Learn more at: A Simple Vibrant Life

“This is what I am offering to all of us, to become aware of the craving inside of us, and then to replace it with some kind of spiritual practice and then that in itself is going to make a huge difference on the world.” – John Lockley

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In this episode, Shira and Jordana are talking about finding love when you’re a person who’s focused on personal and spiritual growth. Is it easier or more difficult?

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Joined by dating coach Francesca Hogi, Jordana Reim & Shira Lazar dive into:

*What is the biggest lie we tell ourselves about dating?

*What creates longevity in relationships?

*How do we know if the person we are dating is “the one”?

*How can we prepare ourselves to meet our partner?

*Francesca’s RAW equation: Ready? Able? Willing? And how it can help you filter who you’re dating.

“For most people, what they actually need to understand is the power that they have to change the things they believe about love so that they can make love an inevitable thing that happens in their life.” – Francesca Hogi 

Francesca Hogi is a coach, podcast host, speaker, and matchmaker. Her passion is helping people get into healthy, lasting relationships through the power of self love and empowered dating strategies.

An internationally recognized and award-winning love expert, Francesca’s been featured on The Today Show, in Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, The Huffington Post, and more. She is the founder of The True Love Society membership community, and hosts the podcast Dear Franny, where she gives candid love advice. Francesca writes about digital romance for Forbes.com, Bustle.com and more. Prior to her love career, Francesca was a corporate attorney and appeared on two seasons of the iconic reality TV show Survivor. She lives in Los Angeles with her boyfriend and their dog, Toast. Find Francesca here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dearfranny/

Clubhouse:https://www.clubhouse.com/@dearfranny

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dear-franny/id1475127865

60 Day Romantic Activation: https://school.francescahogi.com/60-day-romantic-activation



Peace Inside Live is a mindfulness platform for a global collective across web3 video, audio and in-person channels.

Peace Inside was founded by Emmy-nominated broadcaster, Media CEO, NFT collector and strategic advisor, Shira Lazar and meditation guide, author and master facilitator, Jordana Reim. Along with a network of 100+ global facilitators we serve clients including Dinomonks NFT, Knights of Degen, The Boys & Girls Clubs of America, HBO, Spotify and Capital One.

Find us on all social channels instagram.com/peaceinsidelive 

Follow hosts Shira & Jordana instagram.com/shiralazar  instagram.com/jordana_is_

Learn more at: www.peaceinside.live

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Trudy Goodman reflects on the fruits of mindfulness and shares practices that hasten our inevitable awakening.

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Insight meditation (Vipassanā) teacher JoAnna Hardy shares a toolkit for working with our emotions and thoughts. 

JoAnna Hardy has received her training in the Theravada insight tradition through the Spirit Rock/IMS program led by Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein, and others. She brings the Dharma to communities and individuals who don't typically have access to traditional settings. JoAnna is a co-founder of the Meditation Coalition, learn more at meditationcoalition.org

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The Mindshift Podcast Returns to Be Here Now Network for an interview with Dr. Raghu Appasani on coping skills and the joy of missing out.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode of Mindshift, Shira and Jordana speak with their guest, Dr. Raghu Appasani about:

• Loneliness, comparison, and social media
• Prioritizing our own needs
• Recognizing our circle of control
• Showing up authentically for ourselves
• Making decisions to be in the present
• JOMO aka the Joy of Missing Out
• Committing to daily acts of self-care
• Being mindful of what media we consume
• Setting time aside to process emotions
• Negativity and cognitive bias
• Understanding our emotions and how to cope
• Boundaries and how to set them
• Insights on cultivating joy

Get a copy of The JOMO Journal HERE

“We have full agency and control on the joy of missing out versus the fear of missing out. When we think about what you can do for your own mental health it comes down to what can you control, what can’t you control. When you choose to not go to something or you make a decision to be in the present moment with yourself, you can make an active decision on what type of emotion or feeling you want associated with that.” – Raghu Appasani, MD

About Raghu Appasani, MD:

Dr. Raghu Appasani is an Integrative & Addiction psychiatrist and psychotherapist known for his innovative approach to mental well-being. With a deep commitment to evidence-based practices, he combines psychotherapy, pharmacology, nutrition, and holistic methods to provide personalized care. Dr. Appasani is also a dedicated neuroscientist, exploring the clinical applications of non-ordinary states of consciousness and delving into the human experience. As an entrepreneur, he founded The MINDS Foundation, a mental health NGO in India, and serves as the Chief Medical Officer at PYM Health. Dr. Appasani extends his expertise by advising various mental health organizations, including Mud\Wtr, demonstrating his unwavering dedication to improving mental health globally. He is additionally the Program Director of Nutrition/Youth/Metabolic Mental Health & Psychedelics at the California Institute for Stress & Resilience. Keep up with Dr. Raghu on his website or on Instagram.

About Shira Lazar:

Shira Lazar, an Emmy-nominated pioneer in digital culture and emerging trends, is renowned for her impactful web-first news brand, ‘What’s Trending’. With a knack for recognizing the pulse of the digital age, Shira has graced various prestigious platforms including SXSW, VeeCon and CES, earning her a coveted spot on Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology list. As a passionate advocate for digital evolution, Shira’s insights and expertise have resonated with audiences worldwide. Venturing beyond the digital realm, Shira’s commitment to holistic well-being led her to co-found Peace Inside Live. Fusing her profound understanding of the digital landscape with a passion for inner peace and wellness, she has effectively bridged the gap between technology and mindfulness. Through Peace Inside Live, Shira endeavors to bring tranquility and balance to the fast-paced corporate world, highlighting the significance of mental well-being in today’s digital age.

About Jordana Reim:

Jordana Reim has dedicated her life to expanding consciousness – her own, her community’s, and humanity’s.Her teaching journey began in 2008 after her first Yoga Teacher Training with YogaWorks. She has spent the last decade refining her personal practice through travels and residencies at some of the most sacred and beautiful places on Earth including the islands of Thailand, ashrams of India and the Himalayas of Nepal. On a continual search for higher ground, the New Jersey-native shares her considerable learnings as she coaches others in corporate, group and private meditation, breathing, and other wellness modalities. Trained in the Himalayas of Nepal, Jordana is a facilitator and teacher’s trainer for Vedic Sound Healing, a practice of energy healing through sound & vibration. Jordana’s classes are a retreat for mind. Students call her both calming and enlightening and “a recipe for blissful days and sleep!” Her original meditations have been streamed over 1 million times worldwide. 

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Roshi Joan Halifax is joined by Wendy Johnson at Upaya Zen Center for a conversation about grounding ourselves in the roots of our practice.

 

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Gil Fronsdal explores the Buddha’s teachings on beauty and care, sharing their relationship to karma, meditation, the witness, and the Dharma.

This talk is from the April 15, 2020 Spirit Rock Rock Meditation Center: Living Through Awareness Online Retreat. Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher at the Insight Meditation Center and the Insight Retreat Center in California. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana since 1975 and has a Ph.D. in Buddhist Studies from Stanford. He has trained in both the Japanese Soto Zen tradition and the Insight Meditation lineage of Theravada Buddhism of Southeast Asia. Gil was trained as a Vipassana teacher by Jack Kornfield and is part of the Vipassana teachers’ collective at Spirit Rock Meditation Center.

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Welcome to the final episode of this special guest mini-series where host David Devine speaks with the founders of The Holistic Life Foundation – Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez – about all the synchronicities that lead to their new book: Let Your Light Shine.

Order Let Your Light Shine for insightful lessons on how mindfulness can empower children and rebuild communities.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

The Holistic Life Foundation is a Baltimore-based nonprofit organization committed to nurturing the wellness of children and adults in underserved communities. It was founded by Ali Smith, Atman Smith, and Andres Gonzalez. Through a comprehensive approach that helps children develop their inner lives through yoga, mindfulness, and self-care. HLF demonstrates a deep commitment to learning, community, and stewardship of the environment. HLF is also committed to developing high-quality evidence-based programs and curriculum to improve community well-being. Order their new book, Let Your Light Shine, to learn more about how mindfulness can empower children and rebuild communities.

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Visionary artist, Martina Hoffmann, describes her encounters with spirit through dreams, nature, psychedelics and more.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Martina Hoffman offers a talk on:

• Encountering spirit through dreaming, nature, and more
• The interweaving of creativity and spirit
• Attempting to express the ineffable
• Entering into meditation through art
• Martina’s expansive spiritual evolution
• Lucid dreaming and transitioning from dream to awakening
• Out of body experiences and feeling everything deeply
• Martina’s experience with psychedelics and receiving grace
• The many ways that one can heal (physically, spiritually, emotionally)
• Letting go and embracing new beginnings
• How challenging moments prepare us for the final journey

About Martina Hoffmann:

German-born, Martina Hoffmann partially grew up in Cameroon, West Africa. She studied art education with and sculpting at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt/Main, Germany. During this time she also met the Fantastic Realist, Robert Venosa, and greatly inspired by his work, began her work as a painter. During their 30 year relationship they closely worked together, taught workshops worldwide and shared studios, both in the US as well as in Europe. Today Martina Hoffmann works as a painter and sculptress and remains a central figure in contemporary Visionary Art. Her paintings offer the viewer a detailed glimpse into her inner landscapes – imagery that has been inspired by expanded states of consciousness. Her Visionary Realism is decidedly feminine and places the ‘Universal Woman’ in an intimate cosmos. She transcribes her ecstatic experiences but also her subtle reflections on the nature of women in a realistic style which marries the fantastic to the sacred. Check out Martina’s work on her website.

“My eyes opened, this beautiful blue sphere appeared in front of me and was suspended by electric energy. I made a painting of it. It had a message that said don’t be afraid. They explained to me how I had to go through this process to help me become the person I was supposed to be.” – Martina Hoffmann

About The Host, Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

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On this episode of the Be Here Now Network’s Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal examines the Five Hindrances of the mind which make it difficult for us to be mindful and present

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In this dharma talk, Spring Washam explores the important role of community, or Sangha, in our spiritual practice, and the wisdom that can be found in inclusion.

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Nina Rao visits Dr. Jaya Prasada in India for a conversation that explores the spiritual legacy of contemporary Indian Saint, Sri Siddhi Ma.

This podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

Dr Jaya Prasada is the author of the new book Sri Siddhi Ma: The Story of Neem Karoli Baba's Spiritual Legacy. Jaya was born on 13 August 1948 in Lucknow, India. She graduated from Loreto College, and earned her master’s degree from the University of Lucknow. In 1981, she did her PhD on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from the University of Rohilkhand. Jaya lived for thirty-seven years in the closest proximity to the divine mother Sri Siddhi Ma, who inherited the spiritual legacy of Neem Karoli Baba. Her debut book, Sri Siddhi Ma, is dedicated to her guru Sri Siddhi Ma and takes us into the life and times of the silent saint of Kainchi. Jaya lives between Kainchi Dham and her home ‘Teertham’ in Nainital, where Sri Siddhi Ma took mahasamadhi in December 2017. She is an ardent photographer, a keen mountain traveller and likes to keep up with technology.

This episode is an impromptu recording made on location in the hills of India. Due to these circumstances, this episode is a soundscape of daily life in the hills of India. If you have any trouble hearing Jaya and Nina's conversation, please tune into the video version of this podcast for subtitles: youtu.be/ZobVBY0hCiY

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Robert Thurman joins Nina Rao for a conversation around strategies we can use to restore our balance with the natural world.

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Insight meditation teacher JoAnna Hardy returns to the BHNN Guest Podcast to talk about the ways in which effort can help create balance in our spiritual practice.

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Ram Dev joins the Ram Dass Fellowship to provide tools for spiritual healing to all listeners during this time of uncertainty.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

Hosted by Jackie Dobrinska, Ram Dev discusses:

• The anxiety that arose during the pandemic
• Navigating uncertainty in life and death
• Reframing uncertainty as a positive and exciting phenomena
• Finding inspiration in uncertainty for deepening our practice
• Having compassion for our anxiety and our fear when it does arise
• Caregiving as spiritual practice & avoiding burnout
• Fear vs. faith and transmuting grief into compassion
• Seeing everyone as the guru, the mother, or God
• How to have a conscious dying process
• Opening our hearts and being with things the way they are

This conversation was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join a fellowship gathering near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.

About RamDev:

RamDev Dale Borglum is the founder and Executive Director of The Living/Dying Project. He is a pioneer in the conscious dying movement and has worked directly with thousands of people with life-threatening illness and their families for over 30 years. In 1981, Dale founded the first residential facility for people who wished to die consciously in the United States, The Dying Center. He has taught and lectured extensively on the topics of spiritual support for those with life-threatening illness, on caregiving as a spiritual practice, and on healing at the edge, the edge of illness, of death, of loss, of crisis. Check out RamDev’s podcast, Healing at the Edge, on the Be Here Now Network.

Learn more about The Living/Dying Project at livingdying.org

RamDev’s March Healing at the Edge workshops: https://livingdying.org/2025workshop/

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an interspiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

Learn more about Jackie’s work at asimplevibrantlife.com.

 “Is it possible to use uncertainty, not as something that’s a problem or something we are getting tight in relationship to, but it’s bringing juice to our life, it’s bringing excitement in a certain way.” – RamDev

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Trudy Goodman offers wisdom on how to use mindfulness when working with difficult emotions.

“This is sometimes not so easy, to recognize what we’re feeling. Often our feelings are hidden under repetitive thought loops that are kind of our minds' way of protecting or defending against feelings that might seem hard to bear. But actually, it is more painful to be caught in the looping, obsessive, repetitive thinking than to simply take a breath and let that attention drop down and sense what the feeling is under them.” —Trudy Goodman

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Nina Rao talks with tiger conservationists Dr. Ullas Karanth and Dr. Krithi Karanth about their work at the Centre for Wildlife Studies in India.

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Gil Fronsdal returns to the BHNN Guest Podcast for a dharma talk centered on dependent origination and its connection to emptiness, suffering, and the notion of self.

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Honoring the full spectrum of human experiences, Trudy Goodman explores our interconnection to all things and how to reconcile personal and universal truths.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, Trudy Goodman weaves through:

• Awareness of impermanence
• Emptiness and the vast universal activity of the Dharma
• Deepening our practice and gaining clarity
• The Heart Sutra
• The Form and Formless
• Tantra of the spiritual world and the conventional world
• Letting go of control
• Identifying with our mental illness versus being aware
• Being mindful when we are out of balance
• Honoring our personal truths an unique human experiences

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

This Dharma talk was originally recorded in 2008 at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center during a month long insight-meditation retreat. Find the rest of the talks from this retreat on Dharmaseed.org.

“To be whole and complete on our spiritual path, we need to honor the full catastrophe; the darkness and the light, the relative and the absolute, the personal and the universal, the whole spectrum of our experience, of humanness.” – Trudy Goodman

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In a dharma talk on relative and ultimate reality, JoAnna Hardy discusses how to hold the complexity of life.

This lecture was recorded at the Insight Meditation Retreat for 18–32 Year Olds and originally published by Dharmaseed.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, JoAnna Hardy offers a talk on:

• How and why we keep returning to our suffering
• Dominant paradigms and what is out of our control
• The way that the Buddhist experience introduces us to ultimate reality
• Relative reality and what is happening on the ground
• How we are all invited to be free via the Four Noble Truths
• The ways we struggle with trying to control other people
• Anatta, identity, and the way we hold onto our self-hood
• How we show up in the world through our speech, actions, and thoughts
• The Eightfold Path as the things we can control
• Paying attention to who we spend our time with

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs. Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“I’ve really worked on this practice of looking at a person; I’m not only looking at them. I’m looking at probably thousands of people who stand behind them, who have created them, who have created their way of thinking, their way of being. Every teacher, every friend, every person they come into contact with creates this being that is in front of us.” – JoAnna Hardy

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Considering how we relate to the world, Gil Fronsdal offers insight into freedom from our mental constructs through stillness of mind.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal offers wisdom on:

• The relationship between fundamental insight and fundamental happiness
• Dividing the present moment into three parts (what's happening, our relationship to it, and the self)
• The Anicca Vata Sankhara chant, an important chant among Theravada Buddhists
• Seeing happiness through stilling our mental constructions
• Objective reality versus human-made conventions
• Understanding the world of relatedness and settling it down
• Being aware of the breath within the breath
• The season of being in relationship and the season of letting things be
• The ever-presence of awareness and the freedom it can bring
• Buddhist practice helps us see when something is a construction
• Seeing the arising and passing of all mental activity 

We have all these conventions and they’re useful, we play with them, they’re antidotes, they settle things. It’s also possible to relate to the breathing, to be present for the breath, without a convention, but present. The mind doesn’t go towards the breath, the breath doesn’t go to you, the breath arises in awareness. The awareness doesn’t go anywhere.” – Gil Fronsdal

This 2008 recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

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Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan Lee returns with a collection of heartful poetry that touches on nature, soul, prayer, and practices of the heart.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, Llewellyn Vaughan Lee recites his writings on:

• *Restoring the inner garden of our souls
• *Moving into a relational way of being
• *The restlessness of our culture and how we can surrender to a more natural rhythm
• *Finding belonging within the natural world
• *A conscious return to present moment awareness
• *The mystery of breath-work and it’s connection between the inner and outer world

Learn more about Llewellyn and find more resources at: The Golden Sufi Center

“We can also re-imagine the inner garden of our soul, create a place protected from the demands of greed and desires. We can work to restore this inner land often polluted by the noise and clutter of today’s world. Returning it to its natural beauty and sense of peace. Through prayer and love we water and nurture the garden until it flowers into our life.” – Llewellyn Vaughan Lee

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If you enjoy the Road Home Podcast, we think that you will appreciate this conversation about the ways we can develop our confidence through the practices of mindfulness and meditation with Be Here Now Network Teachers Ethan Nichtern and Sharon Salzberg.

This conversation originally aired on The Road Home Podcast with Ethan Nichtern. You can find the Road Home Podcast in your podcast player along with Sharon Salzberg's podcast Metta Hour for insight on integrating the wisdom and practices of Buddhism into our lives.

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Relationship expert Ken Page joins Francesca Maximé on the BHNN Guest Podcast to talk about love, relationships, and Ken’s book, Deeper Dating.

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In an inspiring talk on resiliency, Lama Rod Owens discusses remaining devoted to liberation despite our struggles.

Lama Rod Owens covers the dharma of freedom, loving ourselves, ancestral work, and the power of meditation in this BHNN Guest Podcast episode.

This Dharma Talk was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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NEW Meditation Series: Pause, Breathe, Be Here Now with Ram Dass, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield, Tara Brach, Joseph Goldstein, John Lockley, Ram Dev, Trudy Goodman, Lama Tsultrim Allione—FREE January 16 to 25. Sit in true peace, love, and tranquility. Join thousands of people around the world for this collective meditation experience: onecommune.com/ramdass 

"My brokenheartedness doesn't hold me. The despair doesn't hold me, the sorrow doesn't hold me. I, with the support of joy, gratitude, kindness, compassion, love, I hold the brokenheartedness." — Lama Rod Owens

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Nina Rao hosts Satsang elders Mirabai Bush, Parvati Markus, and Radha Baum in sharing stories from the female perspective about Indian mystic and Guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

Joining together in a virtual remembrance and celebration of the life and teachings of Indian Guru, Neem Karoli Baba, on the anniversary of his Mahasamadhi, Nina invites powerful female Satsang elders Mirabai Bush, Parvati Markus, and Radha Baum to share stories of their time spent in his presence after following the path laid out by Ram Dass to India in the early 1970s. Illuminating the deep transmission of gathering in community and sharing stories of the Guru, Nina welcomes us all to meet where our rivers merge, joining in Satsang and darshan of the divine loving presence known affectionately as Maharajji.

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Llewellyn returns with a microdose of poetic wisdom exploring the space between stories, between the known and unknown worlds, a space that is also present with each and every breath.

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center. Check out his new podcast Working With Oneness.

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In a wildly inspirational talk, musician John Forté and holistic educator Jackie Dobrinska discuss resonance, integration & catharsis through the lens of music.

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Grammy-nominated recording artist, filmmaker, writer, and activist John Forté was first recognized for his work with the multi-platinum hip-hop group The Fugees. Since then, Forté has been involved in a number of creative and advocacy-based projects. As a classically trained hip-hop and pop veteran, Forté blends sleek rhythms and catchy hooks – in the process turning some difficult life experiences into introspective, uplifting music.

Listen now! Click the link to stream John Forté’s new album: Vessels, Angels & Ancestors

Jackie Dobrinska is a beloved holistic health educator, wise woman practitioner, yoga therapist, minister, director of education, and author. Jackie has mentored with some of the world’s preeminent teachers, scholars and visionaries in mind-body health, weaving together wisdom traditions from around the world. She teaches regionally at universities, hospitals, studios, businesses, and national conferences and festivals, passing on the tools that empower individuals in their own health and transformation. In addition to her programs in wellness, yoga, herbs, healthy eating and women’s health, she is the founding director of the Greater Asheville Yoga Association and core staff for SE Wise Women. Learn more at: A Simple Vibrant Life

Today’s episode was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join satsang near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.  

“The process where art inspires life, life inspires art, for me has always been put into a song. If I really want to talk about it, if I really want to preserve it in the amber of time, put it into a song.” – John Forté

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In a reflection on absorbing the power of compassion, Matthieu Ricard shares his meditative story with Rohan Gunatillake.

This episode was originally aired on Meditative Story, a podcast that combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with the immediate, science-backed benefits of mindfulness practice – all surrounded by breathtaking and cinematic music. You can find Meditative Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

Matthieu Ricard takes us on a meditative journey through:

• Exposure to extraordinary people
• The correlation between intelligence, creativity, and human goodness
• How documentary images of Tibet inspired Matthieu to experience the far east for himself
• The smells, sounds, and sensations of entering India for the first time
• Meeting Kangyur Rinpoche and experiencing an aura of peace
• Leaving after his PhD to study full time with Kangyur Rinpoche in India
• Allowing presence to permeate our minds
• Actualizing the Buddha nature

About Matthieu Ricard:

Matthieu Ricard is a Nepalese-French writer, photographer, translator and Buddhist monk who resides at Shechen Tennyi Dargyeling Monastery in Nepal. He is also the author of Notebooks Of A Wandering Monk. He has spent years of his life in the presence of some of the world’s greatest mindfulness practitioners and felt the weight of their powerful compassion. Learn more about Matthieu and his work HERE.

About Rohan Gunatillake:

Rohan Gunatillake is a writer, entrepreneur, and host of the podcast Meditative Story. By artfully crafting meditations to compliment each guest’s story, Rohan blends mindfulness with narrative to create a unique listening experience, encouraging listeners to use someone else’s transformative moment as the basis for their own. He’s also the founder of the best-selling app Buddhify, and author of Modern Mindfulness: How to Be More Relaxed, Focused, and Kind While Living in a Fast, Digital, Always-On World.

“We do not need words. We do not need to analyze or even comprehend. The quality of the presence is self-evident. It is best to just experience it, let it permeate your mind and become a part of you. Ultimately, it is up to each practitioner to actualize the Buddha nature dwelling within each of us.” – Matthieu Ricard

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The Be Here Now Guest Podcast presents a talk from Stephen Levine that explores the psychological and spiritual stages of dying.

Stephen Levine was an American poet, author and Buddhist teacher best known for his work on death and dying. He was a friend and colleague to many Be Here Now Network Teachers. Along with Ram Dass, Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg, Stephen is responsible for making the teachings of Theravada Buddhism more widely available to students in the West. He also helped establish the Living/Dying Projectwith Dale Borglum and Ram Dass. Find more talks and writings from Stephen and his wife Ondrea at levinetalks.com.

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Live from Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Trudy Goodman offers insight on skillfully working with the breath by infusing mindfulness with lovingkindness.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Buddhist teacher Trudy Goodman discusses:

• Keeping the breath company with our attention from start to finish
• The breath as a rudder to navigate our inner experience
• Staying attuned and connected to the movement of the breath
• Finding safety and relaxation in our breath
• Alternative practices for those with asthma or other breathing concerns
• Studying the birth and death of experience
• How the Buddha practiced mindfulness of breath during his great awakening
• Feeling the breath within the breath
• Returning to the breath when our attention strays

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

“We’re really looking at and studying the birth and death of experience, how a breath arises, moves, and passes away.” – Trudy Goodman

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In a full episode dedicated to the Hanuman Chalisa, Krishna Das chants with retreat attendees and explains the power of this moving mantra.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self. 

In this 2019 recording from the Ram Dass Open Your Heart in Paradise Retreat, Krishna Das is joined onstage with his band for a Hanuman Chalisa workshop. Harkening the Hanuman Chalisa as “a long invocation to awaken our hearts and to move us deeper into ourselves, into that love,” Krishna Das describes this particular mantra as a practice that connects us to Hanuman’s flow of grace. Chanting the Chalisa helps to remove obstacles from our path while fulfilling our purest desires.

With these intentions set, Krishna Das and friends lead a cascading waterfall of some of their most potent and recognizable Hanuman Chalisa melodies. Communing together as we listen to this episode, we’re able to sense our universal connection and tap into that love that Krishna Das speaks of.

Interested in joining us in Maui for the 2025 Ram Dass Open Your Heart In Paradise Retreat? Click HERE to learn more.

About Krishna Das:

Layering traditional Hindu kirtan with instantly accessible melodies and modern instrumentation, Grammy nominee Krishna Das has been called yoga’s “rock star.” With a remarkably soulful voice that touches the deepest chord in even the most casual listener, Krishna Das – known to friends, family, and fans as simply KD – has taken the call-and-response chanting out of yoga centers and into concert halls, becoming a worldwide icon and the best-selling chant artist of all time. His album ‘Live Ananda’ (released January 2012) was nominated for a Grammy in the Best New Age album category.

KD spent the late ’60s traveling across the country as a student of Ram Dass, and in August 1970, he finally made the journey to India, which led him to Ram Dass’ own beloved guru, Neem Karoli Baba, known to most as Maharaj-ji. Krishna Das now travels the world sharing his kirtan practice and wonderful stories of his life, of Maharaji-ji, of his life on the Path and discusses bringing chanting into our lives through retreats and workshops. To date, KD has released 15 well-received albums, most recently Trust in the Heart released in October 2017.

For more wisdom and worship from Krishna Das, be sure to check out his podcast Pilgrim Heart on the Be Here Now Network.

MORE INFORMATION and OFFERINGS VISIT: https://krishnadas.com/ KRISHNA DAS ON SOCIAL: FACEBOOK: facebook.com/KrishnaDasMusic INSTAGRAM: instagram.com/krishnadasmusic YOUTUBE: / krishnadasmusic X: @krishnadas #KrishnaDas

“This is a long invocation to awaken our hearts and to move us deeper into ourselves, into that love. You don’t have to know what all these words mean, but you can read the translation. But what we can do, even if we don’t understand the actual meaning of the words, we can understand that this practice is a practice of connecting, connecting with that flow of grace that is Hanuman. The flow of grace that removes all obstacles from our path and allows to recognize that love in ourselves and others.” – Krishna Das

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In this immersive episode, Sharon Salzberg shares the journey of her spiritual life with the host of Meditative Story, Rohan Gunatillake.

This episode was originally aired on Meditative Story, a podcast that combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with the immediate, science-backed benefits of mindfulness practice – all surrounded by breathtaking and cinematic music. You can find Meditative Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

Sharon Salzberg shares her story:

• Sharon’s first trip to India
• How disappointments and discomforts can lead to self-discovery
• Being kind to ourselves and allowing slip-ups to happen
• The initial meeting of Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein
• Goenka’s non-verbal advice to Sharon and how laughter can release fear and anger
• Reorienting ourselves when we veer off course
• A guided meditation

"It will take a while before I learn that the skillful response to feeling anger is to feel it, and then, even to take an interest in it. I don’t have to let it carry me into action that I may regret. I already feel the lesson that life is teaching me over and over again: we all face challenges. It’s how we become who we are. You don’t have to judge yourself all the time. Give yourself a break.” – Sharon Salzberg

About Sharon Salzberg:

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation pioneer, world-renowned teacher, and New York Times bestselling author. She is one of the first to bring mindfulness and lovingkindness meditation to mainstream American culture over 45 years ago, inspiring generations of meditation teachers and wellness influencers. Sharon is co-founder of The Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, and the author of twelve books, including the New York Times bestseller, Real Happiness, now in its second edition, and her seminal work, Lovingkindness.

Her forthcoming release, Real Life: The Journey from Isolation to Openness and Freedom, is set for release in April of 2023 from Flatiron Books. Her podcast, The Metta Hour, has amassed five million downloads and features interviews with thought leaders from the mindfulness movement and beyond.

Learn more about Sharon and order your copy of her new book at www.sharonsalzberg.com

About Rohan Gunatillake:

Rohan Gunatillake is a writer, entrepreneur, and host of the podcast Meditative Story. By artfully crafting meditations to compliment each guest’s story, Rohan blends mindfulness with narrative to create a unique listening experience, encouraging listeners to use someone else’s transformative moment as the basis for their own. He’s also the founder of the best-selling app Buddhify, and author of Modern Mindfulness: How to Be More Relaxed, Focused, and Kind While Living in a Fast, Digital, Always-On World.

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Moving through the senses, JoAnna Hardy guides listeners in a meditation to acquire stillness of the mind.

Today’s episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, JoAnna Hardy guides us through:

• The benefits of having clarity and a still mind
• The breath-body central focus
• Gaining self-trust
• Paying attention to the sounds and sights around us without assigning meaning
• Working the muscle of awareness
• Reengaging with the breath when the mind gets busy

This recording is from the Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center: Mindfulness for Educators.

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs. Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“It’s important that we start that way, with this breath-body central focus, to really collect, gather, and sustain the capacity of our mind to be more still. From that stillness, this really beautiful self-trust comes. We can trust ourselves more because we are not at the whimsy of that chaotic mind.” – JoAnna Hardy

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Offering listeners the gift of receiving metta, JoAnna Hardy leads a guided meditation using The Awesome Book of Love.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, JoAnna describes:

• The ways that love can be felt and expressed
• Touch deprivation and the power of a hug
• Mātā Amritānandamayī, the hugging saint
• Allowing ourselves to receive kindness and love
• The generosity in letting someone give
• The Awesome Book of Love and the beauty of listening to stories
• A guided meditation on love

Ram Dass' Love Serve Remember Foundation and the Alan Watts Organization invite you to open your mind, open your heart, and tap into the living truth of Alan Watts and Ram Dass. Learn more about this special 4-week Virtual Course:"The Presence of the Way: The Dharma of Alan Watts and Ram Dass"

About JoAnna Hardy: 

JoAnna Hardy is an insight meditation (Vipassanā) practitioner and teacher; she is on faculty at the University of Southern California, a meditation trainer at Apple Fitness+, a founding member of the Meditation Coalition, a teacher’s council member at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, a visiting retreat teacher at Insight Meditation Society, and a collaborator on many online meditation Apps and programs.

Her greatest passion is to teach meditation in communities that are dedicated to seeing the truth of how racism, gender inequality and oppression go hand in hand with the compassionate action teachings in Buddhism and related perspectives to social and racial justice. 

“Maybe the expression or experience of love, maybe it’s through the way that you feed your body, or the way that you eat, or the way that you exercise, or the way that you share a smile with a stranger when you’re walking down the street. Maybe it’s how hard you work and the care that you put into your profession. Maybe you’re a good friend. Maybe you’re a good listener. – JoAnna Hardy

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Mingyur Rinpoche joins the BHNN Guest Podcast, sharing a dharma talk exploring meditation, open awareness, making friends with your problems, and overcoming the monkey mind.

Born in 1975, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche is a much-loved and accomplished Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher. From a young age, he was drawn to a life of contemplation. In addition to extensive training in the meditative and philosophical traditions of Tibetan Buddhism, Rinpoche has maintained a lifelong interest in Western science and psychology. Rinpoche currently teaches throughout the world, with centers on four continents. His candid and often humorous accounts of his own personal difficulties have endeared him to Buddhist and non-Buddhist students alike. Learn more about Rinpoche and find his worldwide teaching schedule at tergar.org.

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This week on the Be Here Now Network’s Guest Podcast, Piet Hut joins Loch Kelly to discuss what Western science and Tibetan Buddhism have to teach us about the timeless awareness that comes with being in the moment. 

Piet Hut is one of the founders of YHouse, and currently its President. He is also a Professor of Astrophysics and the Head of the Program in Interdisciplinary Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He has been invited to give talks at various conferences on science and consciousness for more than 20 years. 

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The Spirit Underground's Lama Rod Owens offers a guided benefactor practice and chanting of the Tibetan Buddhist mantra, 'Om Mani Padme Hum.'

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

"As we move through really difficult situations, it's so important that we call into our practice help, support, and care. That's always a part of my practice. I think so much of my practice is really just asking for help over and over again, and asking to see the love, the care that I deserve, that we all deserve." – Lama Rod Owens

In this talk, Lama Rod Owens offers:

• Insights around help, support, love, and care within our practice along the spiritual path
• A guided "benefactor practice" – a metta practice focused around a source of refuge, love, and care
• Chanting of and meaning behind the resonant Tibetan Buddhist mantra, "Om Mani Padme Hum"

This episode sourced from DharmaSeed was recorded at the Spirit Rock Meditation Center retreat for Deepening into the Heart of Love and Freedom on 11/3/2020.

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On this episode of the Be Here Now Network’s Guest Podcast, Graham Hancock joins Nick Polizzi to talk about re-examining the history of humanity and the role sacred medicines have played in our development.

  

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From Big Mind to granular attention, Trudy Goodman illuminates how to live simultaneously from universal and personal truths, staying present with it all.

In this Dharma talk from Spirit Rock’s Monthlong Retreat on March, 20th, 2011, Trudy Goodman explores the two truths—the two major facets of this one jewel called life—absolute and relative; or, as Trudy eloquently paints them: universal and personal. Peering through the lens of these two simultaneous planes of truth, Trudy shares reflective stories and Buddhist insight exploring wisdom as a factor of awakening.

This talk from Trudy Goodman was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Distinguishing commentary from direct experience, Gil Fronsdal helps us break free from the conventions and comparisons that the mind makes.

Today's episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal speaks to listeners about:

• Paying homage to those who have purified their hearts
• Direct experience versus attempting to describe things
• The way that comparison arises
• Self-image and appreciating our own suchness
• Resting in the part of ourselves that is not an idea or a concept
• The conditioning that can happen from society
• Wisdom from sitting with physical pain
• Living in the present moment instead of the stories we tell ourselves
• Letting things be as they are
• Seeing God in our simple, direct experiences
• Coming back to the breath and practicing all throughout the day

This 1998 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“Most of us know the wonderful smell of a rose, but if you could try to describe in words what that fragrance is, you’d have a hard time I think. The actual sense, the direct experience of smell, is something we can all experience; seeing this flower as it is. In Buddhism, there is a lot of emphasis on seeing things as they are.” – Gil Fronsdal

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In this podcast, Stephanie Nash interviews Loch Kelly about his unique Shift Into Freedom glimpse method of meditation.

Stephanie Nash is a Mindfulness Coach and Integrative Counselor who is an expert in the Unified Mindfulness system developed by Shinzen Young (with whom she has worked closely and) whose techniques and strategies have become an integral part of her personal experience as well as her teaching. 

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Renowned Buddhist teacher, Frank Ostaseski, discusses death, impermanence, and the principle of non-waiting.

Today’s episode was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join a fellowship gathering near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

 Hosted by Jackie Dobrinska, this recording from the Ram Dass Fellowship features Frank Ostaseski discussing:

• Creation stories and the shaping of humans
• Why the breath is so important (Including a guided breath meditation!)
• The five invitations and how these principles are designed to help you embrace life to the fullest
• Navigating life transitions, coping with loss, facing serious illness, or personal crises
• Heartfelt real-life stories combined with ancient wisdom
• How an awareness of mortality can be a supportive companion on the journey to living well
• Regarding death as a final stage of growth
• Not waiting as an antidote to regret
• The beauty of life when we recognize and accept impermanence

About Frank Ostaseski:

Frank Ostaseski, an internationally respected Buddhist teacher and pioneer in end-of-life care, has accompanied over 1,000 people through their dying process. Acclaimed author of The Five Invitations, Frank co-founded the first Buddhist hospice in America—The Zen Hospice Project. In 2005, he founded the Metta Institute, through which he has trained countless clinicians and caregivers, building a national network of educators, advocates, and guides for those facing a life-threatening illness.

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an interspiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

Learn more about Jackie’s work at asimplevibrantlife.com.

“I think when we embrace impermanence a certain grace can enter into our lives. We can treasure experiences, we can feel deeply, all without clinging. We’re free to savor and touch the texture of every passing moment.” – Frank Ostaseski

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Guiding us along the path, Gil Fronsdal shows how to develop spirituality into enduring inner strengths rather than solitary experiences.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this episode, Gil Fronsdal teaches listeners about:

• Developing personal, inner strengths
• The tendency of meditators to over-value spiritual experiences
• Wisdom as one of our inner strengths
• The clarity of awakening and seeing the functions of our heart and mind
• How something arises and how something ceases
• What it means to be awake in the here and now
• Recognizing all of the times we are in the past or the future
• Shedding, letting go, and simplifying our experience
• Finding the path in the present moment
• Remaining composed and settling our entire being
• How the Buddhist path does not have a destination

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

“The right attitude, the right intention, is to begin finding that way of being that simplifies our experience. One of the right intentions is the intention of letting go, of renunciation. You can’t take a lot of baggage with you, even good baggage, if you want to walk the path.” – Gil Fronsdal

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Yoga innovator, Jocelyn Kay Levy, is joined by kirtan wallah, Nina Rao, to share Mothers' perspectives on spiritual practice, offering personal stories and advice from Siddhi Ma.

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Loch Kelly invites us to expand our model of who we are and what heals.

Find show notes and resources here: https://beherenownetwork.com/bhnn-guest-podcast-ep-29-who-we-are/

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Trudy Goodman Kornfield explores devotion as a path to wisdom, and how to approach spiritual practice with pure devotion while still being mindful of impermanence. 

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Kelly Carlin joins Chris Bashinelli for a conversation around the journey to authenticity and being in the moment, humanity and transparency, and the trappings of fame and celebrity.

Kelly Carlin is a writer, speaker and broadcast host. She is also a practitioner of Zen Buddhism, has a Masters in Jungian/Archetypal psychology, and is a producer on-screen and in the theater. Daughter of comedian George Carlin, Kelly comes from a family steeped in comedy, full of big ideas and warm hearts. Learn more about Kelly’s work, find her podcast, radio show and more at thekellycarlinsite.com.

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Spring Washam offers a Dharma talk that explores the power of faith on the spiritual path.

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In this episode of the Ram Dass Explorer’s Club, Buddhist teacher Spring Washam delves into the real work that comes before and after a journey with plant medicine.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This conversation was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Explorer’s club. To learn more and sign up to join a Ram Dass fellowship gathering near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.

In this episode, Spring Washam and Jackie Dobrinska explore:

• Medicine as the gateway, practice as the real work
• Awakening to the truth of interconnectedness
• Metta, the loving-kindness practice / four qualities of heart and mind
• The liberation that can be found within community
• Moving away from hyper-independence and giving more value to love
• Thinking about our ‘why’ when it comes to using psychedelics
• Learning how to love ourselves, each other, and this broken world
• The future of psychedelic legalization and the destruction of systems
• Coming back to meditation, devotion, and chanting
• A Q&A session with listeners on trauma, patterns, set & setting, and more

About Spring Washam:

Spring Washam is a well-known teacher, author, and visionary leader based in Oakland, California. She is the author of A Fierce Heart: Finding Strength, Courage and Wisdom in Any Moment and her newest book, The Spirit of Harriet Tubman: Awakening from the Underground. Spring is considered a pioneer in bringing mindfulness-based meditation practices to diverse communities. She is one of the founding teachers at the East Bay Meditation Center, located in downtown Oakland, CA. She has practiced and studied Buddhist philosophy in both the Theravada and Tibetan schools of Buddhism since 1999. She is a member of the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in northern California where she was trained for over a decade.

In addition to being a teacher, she is also a shamanic practitioner and has studied indigenous healing practices since 2008. She is the founder of Lotus Vine Journeys, a one-of-a-kind organization that blends indigenous healing practices with Buddhist wisdom in South America. Her writings and dharma teachings have appeared in many online journals and publications. She currently teaches meditation retreats and leads workshops, and classes worldwide.

Spring currently teaches meditation retreats and leads workshops, and classes worldwide: springwasham.com and is cohost of her own podcast on Be Here Now Network, The Spirit Underground.

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is the Director of Education, Community & Inclusion for Ram Dass’ Love, Serve, Remember Foundation and the current host of Ram Dass’ Here & Now podcast. She is also a teacher, coach, and spiritual director with the privilege of marrying two decades of mystical studies with 15 years of expertise in holistic wellness. As an inter-spiritual minister, Jackie was ordained in Creation Spirituality in 2016 and has also studied extensively in several other lineages – the plant-medicine-based Pachakuti Mesa Tradition, Sri Vidya Tantra, Western European Shamanism, Christian Mysticism, the Wise Woman Tradition, and others. Today, in addition to building courses and community for LSRF, she leads workshops and coaches individuals to discover, nourish and live from their most authentic selves. 

“The medicine is the gateway but the practice is the real work. Nothing is real until it’s lived.” – Spring Washam

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Gil Fronsdal explores the different ways we can approach the Buddhist concept of emptiness, and how letting go of attachment to the self can feel scary but is actually very safe.

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Joseph Goldstein joins Rohan Gunatillake to share the meditative story of how he first learned to integrate his spirituality into everyday life.

This episode was originally aired on Meditative Story, a podcast that combines the emotional pull of first-person storytelling with the immediate, science-backed benefits of mindfulness practice – all surrounded by breathtaking and cinematic music. You can find Meditative Story on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and more!

 Joseph Goldstein shares a personal story about:

• One of the most transformative moments in Joseph’s life
• The beginning of Joseph’s enlightenment journey
• Integrating the spiritual gifts Joseph learned from the East into his everyday life in the West
• Learning to embrace the uncomfortable feeling of not-knowing
• How Joseph first connected with Ram Dass
• Joseph’s first job teaching a meditation class
• Saying yes and allowing opportunities to present themselves
• A guided mindfulness practice

“It’s as if my life exists as two separate strands. One is the strand of my practice, which feels clear and stable. The other is how that practice will manifest and how I can ever hope to apply it to the world. Spiritually, I am flying high. But I have no idea where to land.” – Joseph Goldstein

About Joseph Goldstein:

Joseph Goldstein has been leading insight and loving-kindness meditation retreats worldwide since 1974. He is a co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, where he is one of the organization’s guiding teachers. In 1989, together with several other teachers and students of insight meditation, he helped establish the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.

About Rohan Gunatillake:

Rohan Gunatillake is a writer, entrepreneur, and host of the podcast Meditative Story. By artfully crafting meditations to compliment each guest’s story, Rohan blends mindfulness with narrative to create a unique listening experience, encouraging listeners to use someone else’s transformative moment as the basis for their own. He’s also the founder of the best-selling app Buddhify, and author of Modern Mindfulness: How to Be More Relaxed, Focused, and Kind While Living in a Fast, Digital, Always-On World.

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Learning from the networks of connection among trees and fungi, Trudy Goodman offers a dharma talk about nature, the breath, and oneness.

This 2016 recording is from Spirit Rock’s Fall Insight Meditation Retreat and was originally published on Dharmaseed. 

In this episode, Trudy Goodman discusses:

• The fallacy of separate self and how we tend to forget our universal connection
• The matrix of identity that we create as we practice together
• Networks of connection in the natural world 
• Inter-breathing and the web of connection via breath
• The breath as the bridge between our conscious and unconscious
• Taking the backward step, a practice in subtle relaxation and receiving the moment
• Allowing things to appear and disappear as the path to awakening 
• Noticing our patterns of reaction as our body and breath anchor us 
• Seeing the changing way of life and how it can flow through us and in us
• Finding freedom in the present moment 
• Feeling more sane, little by little, through practice 
• Tools for remembering our oneness

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats, engages in activism work, and teaches workshops worldwide and online. She is also the voice of Trudy the Love Barbarian in the Netflix series, The Midnight Gospel. You can learn more about Trudy’s flourishing array of wonderful offerings at TrudyGoodman.com

“We are surrounded by these beautiful trees and plants, being so close to nature. I feel like they’re supporting, modeling, and showing us a way to be together here. We can experience this web in our own breath. We inter-breathe. We’re breathing not just each other's breath, but we’re breathing the breath of our ancestors. We’re breathing molecules that dinosaurs breathed, that the Buddha and his community breathed. We’re sharing air with all creatures really, and all those who came before us, all those who are currently in existence, and this breath will flow into all the future beings too.” – Trudy Goodman

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Gil Fronsdal gives a dharma talk around encountering truth in a retreat setting, letting go of attachments, and developing skills on the path of cultivation. 

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Learn how to access wisdom through intentional action and radical honesty with Buddhist teacher Trudy Goodman.

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"When we're honest we can look at ourselves directly. We can look at our own behavior. We can admit when we made a mistake and we can learn how to change at least some of our ways so that we do not cause that particular kind of harm again." – Trudy Goodman

In this episode, Trudy Goodman lectures on:

• Discontinuing harmful activities 
• Honesty and being direct
• The Dharma as our safety
• The consequences of our actions
• Integrity and looking at our motivations
• The coexistence of Love and Hate

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

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In this dharma talk, Spring Washam explores the Prajnaparamita, also known as the mother of the Buddhas, and why it’s so important to establish self-compassion.

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XO Higher Self podcast's, Bunny Michael, answers questions on fear, attachment, relationships, boundaries, & romancing our spirits into the unapologetic beauty of the wholeness of who we are.

Host of the XO Higher Self podcast, Bunny Michael, is a femme presenting non-binary rapper, actor, author, and visual artist best known for their Higher Self meme project on Instagram. Their work has been featured in The New York Times, HuffPost, Paper Magazine, Dazed and Confused, and Vice - where they host a digital show for the Broadly Channel called “Broadly Hotline.” Beyond their transformative books, Love Notes From You Higher Self, and, Me and My #HigherSelf, Bunny also played the role of Bea on Season 2 of HBO’s hit show, “High Maintenance.” Keep up with their upcoming projects at bunnymichael.com.

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Ram Dass joins Roshi Joan Halifax for a conversation around rethinking our approach to social action and developing practices that allow us to approach conflict with love and equanimity.

 

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Trudy Goodman shares Zen Master Dōgen's method, the Backward Step, for stepping back into awareness and receiving each moment as awakening.

Today's podcast is sponsored by BetterHelp. Click to receive 10% off your first month with your own licensed professional therapist: betterhelp.com/beherenow

In this episode, Trudy Goodman lectures on:

• Stories about Wonhyo, Bodhidharma, Ajahn Chah, and the Buddha
• How to work with what arises when sitting in retreat
• Dōgen Zenji’s Backward Step
• Dating Jack Kornfield
• Being present with different kinds of experiences

"When we have the capacity to be with our own suffering with a more steady presence, what happens is we can help other people with that steady presence. We can be with them through the ups and downs of their lives when we’re called to do that. And so freeing our hearts is a blessing, not just for ourselves, but for our world." – Trudy Goodman

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy's offerings at trudygoodman.com

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Gil Fronsdal returns to relay the story of the sudden awakening of Bahiya, as well as the liberating poem from the Buddha which it inspired. 

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In this Dharma Talk, Gil Fronsdal relays Buddhist wisdom in the form of poems and stories which point at the simplicity of liberation. Exploring true freedom as release rather than relief, he offers insight into how we can peel back our mental overlays and judgements so we can be with the sweet suchness of experience.

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Today's Dharma talk by Gil Fronsdal was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

"Who are you when you're not telling yourself who you are?" – Gil Fronsdal

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, we recieve a beautiful prose letter written and recited by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee to his granddaughter. It explores the state of the modern world and how the next generation can access the mythological magic of being alive.

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Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, PhD is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. He is the author of Sufism, the Transformation of the Heart, and the founder of The Golden Sufi Center.

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On this episode of the Be Here Now Network’s Guest Podcast, Mirabai Starr and Roshi Joan Halifax take questions from a live audience about the power of love and the need for perseverance.

 

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Gil Fronsdal discusses having confidence in what the Buddha represents within ourselves and being a refuge for all beings.

This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal explains:

• How the Buddha defined confidence and fate
• Instructions from the Buddha on making oneself a refuge
• Being a refuge and support for all beings
• Personal worth and finding yourself in community
• The benefit of having confidence in ourselves and in our practice
• The imperfections that stain the mind
• Having confidence in that which the Buddha represents within ourselves
• Reflecting on the times when our minds are not caught
• How the dharma is visible here and now, not there and then
• The balance between responsibility and allowing natural unfolding

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

This 2014 talk was originally published by Dharmaseed.

“The reference point for having confidence or faith or trust in the Buddha is not in the great power and wisdom of the Buddha, but rather something that we can know for ourselves, that we realize is reflected in the Buddha.” – Gil Fronsdal

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This week on the Be Here Now Network’s Guest Podcast Mark Epstein, M.D. examines the overlap between psychotherapy and meditation, looking at how we can use the Buddha’s own inner struggle as a model for our own.

 

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Spring Washam gives a dharma talk around the concept of Samsara and the freedom provided by the Eightfold Path, which is like the Yellow Brick Road that leads us away from suffering.

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Nina Rao interviews Nani Ma about her deep devotion to serving her guru and her service work with Ganga Prem Hospice.

If you are interested in donating to Ganga Prem Hospice, you can do so through a donation to End of Life Care International with a memo specifying you would like it to go to Ganga Prem.

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This time on the Be Here Now Network Guest Podcast, Nani Ma shares with us:

• Her religious upbringing into Christianity
• Being pulled to India from a young age
• Seeking liberation from suffering and pain
• The story of meeting her guru, Babaji
• The beauty and power of the Ganges river
• Her daily routine and how she meditates
• How to deal with difficulties by watching our breath
• Reaching one-pointedness through chanting single-worded mantras
• Moving through the physical death of a guru
• Forming cancer clinics in India and Ganga Prem Hospice

About Nani Ma:

Nani Ma is from the United Kingdom and sought spiritual enlightenment at a very young age. One day, she realized that serving the multitude and helping the needy is also an aspect of spiritual practice. So, she started taking care of the terminally ill cancer patients in the hospital, guiding the people who are suffering from pain and death to embark on a new journey. Together with Dr. A. K. Dewan, she established the Ganga Prem Hospice. Ganga Prem Hospice is a spiritually-orientated, non-profit hospice for terminally ill cancer patients. The Hospice has been constructed at the foot of the Himalayas on the bank of the river Ganga.

Krishna Das is offering two benefit kirtan concerts in Rishikesh October 2024 - details on KrishnaDas.com/Events

“When we watch our breath, it slows down. The breath and the mind are connected. Either the breath slows down and the mind slows down, or the mind catches hold of one thing, which is the name, and the name has its power by itself. The name has its own power.” – Nani Ma

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Defining relationships as a triangle between God, Self, and Other, Stephen and Ondrea Levine discuss opening and softening our hearts.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

In this archival episode, Stephen and Ondrea Levine explore:

• How relationships open our hearts in hell
• The difficulty in relationships as a path to purification
• How easy it is to be in a relationship, how hard it is to relate
• Relationships as a triangle between God, Other, and Self
• How fear and cruelty dissolves in a willingness to approach the truth
• Trying to let go of what keeps hearts separate
• Dying into life, letting the heart burst, and going on
• Practices that help us connect to ourselves and to forgive
• The tremendous work we can do at home
• Healing parental relationships
• How grief keeps us separate
• Each moment of love as complete and precious
• Learning how to love by watching how unloving we often are

About Stephen & Ondrea Levine:

Stephen Levine was an American poet, author and Buddhist teacher best known for his work on death and dying. He was a friend and colleague to many Be Here Now Network Teachers. Along with Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg, Stephen is responsible for making the teachings of Theravada Buddhism more widely available to students in the West. He also helped establish the Living/Dying Project with RamDev and Ram Dass.

For over thirty-two years, Stephen and his wife Ondrea Levine provided emotional and spiritual support for those who are life-threatened, and for caregivers. Through their healing and forgiveness workshops, many writings, and endless compassion, Stephen and Ondrea have touched the lives of thousands of people all over the world. They are the authors of numerous books, including Who Dies, Embracing the Beloved, and A Year to Live, among others. Find more talks and writings from Stephen and Ondrea at levinetalks.com.

“Relationship offers us an opportunity to open our heart in hell. The difficulty of relationship is one of its most exquisite opportunities for purification, for healing.” – Stephen Levine

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Explaining loving kindness as the antidote to fear and aggression, Trudy Goodman guides us in two meditative practices.

This talk was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

In this 2017 recording from the Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Trudy Goodman leads a talk on:

• Loving kindness as the antidote to fear
• Taming our inner aggression
• Strengthening the Brahmaviharas
• Offering Metta to ourselves and others
• The miracle of connecting to each other
• The jellyroll practice
• A traditional loving-kindness practice

“You are the source of life, and the mystery, and the magic of life itself manifesting as this body and everything it knows how to do and this mind and all the capacities and intelligence that it has and this ability to connect with each other in ways that are so, sometimes miraculous, sometimes painful too. But, all the abilities that we have, this is really what we’re treasuring and offering our respect and reverence to.” – Trudy Goodman

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Author, speaker, and scholar, Acharya Shunya, joins Jackie Dobrinska to illuminate Ma Durga’s shakti and clarity, teaching us how to truly ‘Roar Like a Goddess.’

In this sublime session from the Ram Dass Fellowship Livestreams, rest your heart and expand your awareness, as Vedic Scholar and award winning author of several bestselling books, Acharya Shunya, explores unlocking and accessing the Divine Feminine power of Shakti in each of us.

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Today’s episode was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join satsang near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.  

“Durga is your Mother – who else would you ask for things, but Durga?” – Acharya Shunya

About Acharya Shunya:

The ancient Vedic tradition of India, that has given birth to the lofty spiritual disciplines of Yoga, Ayurveda, and Adwaita believes that every being of every gender, binary and non-binary, is the bearer of divine feminine power known as Shakti. This power is not only formidable but also wise, awake and intuitive. Your spiritual relationship with this power shall determine many things, including what did you come here to blossom into? How can you become a gift to the universe? How can you fulfill your destiny and step into your own divine immensity? In this sublime session, rest your heart and expand your awareness, as Vedic Scholar and award winning author of several bestselling books including her latest Roar Like A Goddess, Acharya Shunya explores unlocking and accessing this locked feminine power. Acharya Shunya’s goddess teachings, because this wisdom can enhance anyone’s instant self-worth and help reclaim instant feminine-power from within. ... Acharya Shunya is a wisdom teacher and a catalyst for empowering health and elevating consciousness worldwide. She is an award-winning and internationally renowned author, speaker and scholar of nondual wisdom (Advaita) and a classically-trained master of Yoga and Ayurveda. The first female head of her 2,000-year-old Indian Vedic spiritual lineage, Acharya Shunya provides a rare opportunity to receive authentic teachings from a genuine Vedic master—one with a distinctly down-to-earth, feminine flavor who never lets us forget that our humanity is to be embodied and enjoyed.

About Jackie Dobrinska:

Jackie Dobrinska is a beloved holistic health educator, wise woman practitioner, yoga therapist, minister, director of education, and author. Jackie has mentored with some of the world’s preeminent teachers, scholars and visionaries in mind-body health, weaving together wisdom traditions from around the world. She teaches regionally at universities, hospitals, studios, businesses, and national conferences and festivals, passing on the tools that empower individuals in their own health and transformation. In addition to her programs in wellness, yoga, herbs, healthy eating and women’s health, she is the founding director of the Greater Asheville Yoga Association and core staff for SE Wise Women. Learn more at: A Simple Vibrant Life

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Trudy Goodman returns to share a resonant guided meditation practice on working with thoughts using mind, body, awareness, & imagination.

Trudy Goodman, Ph.D, is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. She also teaches residential retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, CA, Vallecitos Mountain Retreat Center, and Insight Meditation Society in Barre, MA, among others. Learn more at TrudyGoodman.com.

This talk from Trudy Goodman was originally published on DharmaSeed.org

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Insight Meditation teacher JoAnna Hardy returns to the BHNN Guest Podcast for a dharma talk about reframing the idea of love, and cultivating self love through Metta practice.

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Exploring how to untangle the threads of intense desire, teacher Trudy Goodman offers direction on meeting the Dharma.

Today’s podcast is brought to you by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/beherenow and get on your way to being your best self.

This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Buddhist teacher Trudy Goodman discusses:

• Being incarnated into this desire-body
• Diversity within desire and being tuned into different frequencies
• The pressure to conform to expectations
• Difficulty in knowing our deepest desires and embodying them
• Being determined to do what we want
• Coming home to the true self which is underneath everything
• Heartbreak and obstacles to connection as a place of learning
• Developing our ability to be with intense sensation and maintaining awareness
• Leaning into the call of the dharma

This recording from the Big Bear Retreat Center was originally published on Dharmaseed

About Trudy Goodman:

Trudy is a Vipassana teacher in the Theravada lineage and the Founding Teacher of InsightLA. For 25 years, in Cambridge, MA, Trudy practiced mindfulness-based psychotherapy with children, teenagers, couples and individuals. Trudy conducts retreats and workshops worldwide.

Learn more about Trudy’s offerings at trudygoodman.com

“This place of heartbreak, of the obstacles to love, connection, longing, relationship, this place is really the place that we learn how to hold this world of desire with a peaceful heart.” – Trudy Goodman

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In this talk, Adyashanti looks at what is necessary in order to undertake the journey of awakening and uncover our true nature.

Find show notes and resources here: https://beherenownetwork.com/bhnn-guest-podcast-ep-28-always-and-already/

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Psychedelic expert, Dr. Raymond Turpin, discusses how psychedelics shut down our ‘default-mode’ and expand our creativity in music, art, and more. 

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In this episode, Raymond and Jackie discuss:

• LSD and how it effects the creative process
• The history of LSD, bicycle day, and more
• Painting under the influence of LSD for greater imagination
• Using LSD to tackle professional problems and crack emotional blocks
• LSD and increased concentration/focus for accelerated solutions
• How Psychedelics shut down our default-mode network of the brain
• Seeing wider possibilities for creativity for the use of psychedelics 
• The Grateful Dead, musical telepathy, and their role in the culture of LSD
• Synergy of music, musician, and audience via flow states and psychedelics
• The power of psychedelic co-creation
• The therapeutic potential of LSD for the treatment of anxiety, depression, and more

This conversation was recorded as part of the Ram Dass Fellowship’s regular online gatherings. To learn more about the Ram Dass Fellowship and sign up to join a fellowship gathering near you, visit RamDass.org/Fellowship.

About Raymond Turpin:

Dr. Raymond Turpin is the Clinical Director for The Pearl Psychedelic Institute and President of the Board of Directors. He also serves as Co-Principal Investigator of The Pearl MDMA Project. Dr. Turpin has been studying the therapeutic uses of psychedelics and the relevant literature since the mid-1980s hoping to eventually legally use these medicines in his psychology practice. Specializing in the treatment of trauma, Dr. Turpin has extensive experience with children, adolescents, and families in a multitude of settings but has focused his practice on older adolescents and adults in recent years. 

“What they found with the LSD art, some of the precise craftsmanship that these artists normally had suffered a bit, but it had greater aesthetic value, greater imagination, more evidence of abstract perceptions.” – Raymond Turpin

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