We are faced with global challenges like environmental degradation, inequality, and social unrest. By integrating Buddhist wisdom into contemporary contexts, we can find meaningful ways to tackle the complexities of the modern age and foster a greater sense of compassion, understanding, and collective responsibility.
The Wisdom of Alan Watts
Alan Watts (January 6, 1915 – November 16, 1973) was a British and American philosopher, writer, and speaker known for interpreting and popularizing Eastern philosophy—particularly Buddhism, Zen, Taoism, and Hinduism—for a Western audience.
Promise of Redemption vs. Power of Mindfulness
This four-part series is focused on issues of faith and belief and their relationship to experience and knowledge. These questions relate to our sense of personal agency and responsibility for our actions and are reflected in the historical evolution of Buddhist thought. They are also reflected in our capacity to understand recent developments in cognitive neuroscience.
A Buddhist Social Ethic For The New Century
This four part series, based on the writings of Bhikkhu Bodhi, explores the unfulfilled promise of the 19th Century, the tragedy of the 20th Century and the paradox of the 21st Century. There are two choices ahead of us: untrammeled development guided by science and technology or the use of technology for the betterment of humankind.
Buddhism and Quantum Physics
This series examines the historical evolution from the Buddha’s teaching of Anatta to Nagajuna’s teaching of Emptiness or Sunyata. Then it explores the relationship between Emptiness and the philosophical cutting edge of quantum physics. It explores how we bring these teachings into our everyday lives.
Individual Episodes
Click on title for more information and to listen. Scroll down for more recent.
Apathy, Cynicism, Hopelessness, and Despair
Face to face with the decline and end of our lives, do we meet it with a wisdom born of experience-based knowledge or with faith and beliefs?
Recorded Feb. 2013
21 min.
Understanding Donald Trump from a Dharma Perspective
Topics Include: 1) Introduction and Prayer for Forgiveness. 2) Understanding reality from a Karmic perspective. 3) Understanding our social reality from a global economic perspective. 4) Seeing the new reality from a Dharmic perspective. 5) Mindfulness of our own feelings, mindfulness of those who suffer. Discussion begins at 44 minutes. Meditation on the new reality begins 1: 15 minutes
Recorded Nov. 12, 2016
Enduring the COVID 19 Pandemic
1) Acknowledging the Covid 19 Pandemic 2) Maintaining a steadiness of heart. 3) Having compassion for ourselves and acknowledging our humanity. 4) Working with the idea of death. Acknowledging our profound interconnectedness. 5) Appreciating the work of first responders in our community as true bodhisattvas. 6) Finding our own most noble aspiration in this difficult time.
Recorded February 2, 2020
Sharing Our Experiences in the Pandemic
1) Why this is not a time for a traditional Dharma talk, but for a time of sharing and listening to each others stories with compassion and lovingkindness. 2) Sharing the story of one of our members who just came out of a triple bypass surgery. 3) Grieving for a lost parent and conflict with siblings. Feeling our spiritual connectedness to those we love and those who are in suffering. 4) Learning to contribute and be of assistance to others in this time of difficulty. 5) Understanding the transformational power of mindfulness in terms of karma and the relationship between past, present and future.
Recorded May 9, 2020
70,000 Deaths of Despair
1) Realizing the historic significance of the moment and its impact on our personal and social lives. 2) Comprehending 70,000 deaths of despair. 3) Realizing that everything that is happening is OK. The reality of karma playing through our lives. 4) Jane Goodall and impact of Covid 19 on the natural world. 5) Our inability to see the results of our collective karma on the natural world. 6) Seeing the reality of our lives playing out karmically at the personal and collective level.
Recorded May 16, 2020
The Power of Liminal Space
1) How to see this historic period of Covid 19 in a positive way and not as totally wasted. 2) Reading of the statement of the Dalai Lama on the response to the pandemic. 3) Transforming hardship into opportunity. 4) Learning how to see clearly and realistically and not get caught up in our suffering. 5) The concept of “liminal” space. How to use this transitional time as time of growth, development and maturity.
Recorded May 30, 2020
Finding Endurance and the Problem of Systemic Racism
1) The two national issues confronting us today, the Covid 19 pandemic and systemic racial injustice. 2) Sharing an essay by David Brooks on Endurance. 3) The story of Believer Bozovic in Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzoginia. How he survived and found resilience through that difficult siege. 4) The sessions for us in terms of the teaching of the Dharma. 5) Sharing of a statement by Uila Marx on system racism in our culture. 6) The issue of white privilege and how it can implicitly bias our own views of the world.
Recorded June 6, 2020
White Privilege
1) Uila Marx’s statement on white privilege and Hawaii’s unique situation. 2) The problem of unconscious forms of racism and implicit bias in our daily lives. 3) The power of conditioning in our lives. 4) My first experience with white privilege while at Spirit Rock and my general experience with racism in the Peace Corps. 5) My experience encountering two “black dudes” in the Don Quixote department store. 6) Impact of the George Floyd video and the effect of racial conditioning in my own life. 7) The importance of the Dharma and meditation in revealing our patterns of unconscious bias.
Recorded June 13, 2020
Conditioning and Implicit Bias
1) Sharing of emails from the previous week. 2) Sharing of resources on white privilege and implicit bias. 3) The talk by the Dalai Lama on resilience, compassion and healing. 4) Conditioning, the root of implicit bias. 5) The role of meditation: samatha or concentration meditation and vipassana or mindfulness meditation. 6)Meditation and the rooting out of implicit bias.
Recorded June 20, 2020
Meditation and Implicit Bias
1) Unconscious conditioning, the roots of implicit bias and the role of meditation: their relevance to the teaching of the Buddha. 2) The power of conditioning: the example of Donald Trump and other examples of negative conditioning. 3) The role of conditioning in forming our patterns of implicit bias as well as our sense of self and other. The definition of conventional and absolute reality. 4) How implicit bias expresses itself in negative emotions generally aroused around a sense of threat or danger. 5) How these native emotions are actually mild forms of PTSD. The dynamics of trauma in the mind. How traumas get embedded in our implicit memory. 6) the role of meditation in overcoming our implicit biases. Recognizing, accepting and integrating reactive emotions into our adult explicit memory. 7) From a Buddhist perspective, seeing impermanence, non-self and suffering and its karmic legacy. 8) Coming to a fundamental understanding of the universal common humanity of all beings and our fundamental interconnectedness.
Recorded June 27, 2020
Conventional and Absolute Reality and Our Relationship to the Material World
1) Stealing and the difference between conventional reality and absolute reality. 2) Suzuki Roshi’s quotation on stealing or taking what is not given. 3) Answer to the question concerning the quotation: how we use our understanding of absolute reality to inform our actions in the conventional world. 4) The evolution of laws and conventions regarding property over the centuries: the natural state of the animal world and the eventual tragedy of the commons. 5) The consequences of private ownership: economic exchange, the evolution of money, and the role of social convention. 6) The power of economic status to create our identities in the world. 7) Why, according to Suzuki Roshi, we don’t own anything in an ultimate sense. How we can be more open, generous, compassionate and kind in relation to the things we own. 8) The Buddha’s understanding of conventional reality and the importance of moral and ethical behavior. 9) The principles of communism and capitalism and their relationship to the Buddha’s teachings.
Recorded May 8, 2021
Racism and the Dharma
1) Sharing of a very powerful message about the experiences of one of our members who grew up as an Asian American male in America: A story of rejection, alienation and, finally, redemption as he came to accept and forgive the white society into which he was born. 2) The danger of falling into a sense of “victimhood”: the textbook definition of suffering. 3) Who is the abuser aRend who is the abused? The concept of Self in the Buddhist teachings. 4) Recognizing and accepting our response to bigotry as a natural karmic response to provocation of any kind and learning how to let it go. Not identifying and creating a “self” out of our reactions. 5) Secondly, have compassion for those who would oppress us and understand that we are capable of those same behaviors ourselves. 6) Examples of racism and homophobia in other cultures, not only in America. Other groups that are discriminated against and overlooked in American society. 7) The real story is about hatred and cruelty, and self and other and we ourselves could be the victim or the perpetrator. We are all the same. 8) Follow up comments: Learning about the Asian experience in America. Discrimination in India among the castes. Learning how to appreciate our common humanity and how far we are yet from it as a species.
Recorded March 27, 2021
Abortion
1) Reading of an email and response regarding the revocation of reproductive rights in America. 2) Explanation of the Liberative Framework and the Pragmatic Karmic Framework as a basis for making a decision about the termination of an unborn child. 3) Comment on the history of abortion as a move by the medical profession to control the birth process as means to consolidate their own power over the reproductive process. 4) Comment by a physician on being part of the decision to terminate a pregnancy and the importance of compassion. 5) The teaching of hiri and ottapa or regret and remorse in coming to terms with past regretful decisions. 6) Comment about the experience of young minority women during the 60s and 70s and the need for a national dialogue on the experience of women in the choice process. 7) Comment on a woman who had to make an abortion decision under difficult circumstances.
May 22, 2022
Working with Donald Trump 2024
Topics Include: 1) Reading of essay: Who We Are From a Dharma Perspective; 2) Open discussion: Working with difficult emotions; Having empathy for those who are in suffering; How to maintain an open and compassionate heart; How to move forward with pro-active compassionate action; 3) Why Buddhism is consistent with our most basic Democratic values.
November 9, 2024
Overcoming Despair and Cynicism in the Face of Suffering in Modern Society
Topics Include: 1) Why we meditate: the concept of samvega, or spiritual urgency; 2) Discontent in modern society, global crises, personal encounters with suffering, motivation for social change and spiritual practice, avoiding despair and cynicism; 3) What is pasada, the counterbalance to samvega; 4) Qualities of pasada: clarity, serene confidence, emotional balance, openness and receptivity, joy and inspiration; 5) How pasada arises: contemplation of the Dharma, witnessing noble qualities, personal practice, generosity and virtue; 6) What is the importance of pasada: motivation, stability, wholesome mind states; 7) How to approach samvega constructively: acknowledge and accept it, transform it into energy for practice, simplify your life, seek a supportive community, take action with wisdom, practice generosity, spend time in nature, take gradual steps toward renunciation; 8) Samvega as a precious awakening to transformation and spiritual growth.
June 28, 2025
Christmas Message 2025
Topics Include: 1) Finding the true spiritual meaning of Christmas in this age of cruelty and suffering; 2) The idea of the Incarnation in the Christian faith; 3) The meaning of the story of the birth of Jesus: how the sacred manifests in our everyday lives; 4) The meaning of the Incarnation in Buddhism; 5) The spiritual meaning of meditation in Buddhism; 6) Coming to that larger space of awareness that sees our thoughts, feelings, and emotions; 7) Pure awareness as Nibbana: that state that is never born and never dies: the sacred presence; 8) The integration of conventional reality and our sacred presence in the world; 9) The expression of interconnectedness as love or metta; 10) Metta as part of a four-part practice of love (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (uppekha): the four Brahmaviharas; 11) Brief meditation on the four Brahmaviharas.
December 27, 2025